FireFall Vol. 13: Women Translating Life
Pastor Abby Olufeyimi, Lent Resources by Women, "Why Can't You Just Be Sweet?" by Dr. Kathryn Lewis Mowry, Hindko Translation of New Testament, Celebrating Rev. Dra. Jessica Lugo Meléndez
Welcome to FireFall! This ecumenical free weekly newsletter was launched last fall as a way of amplifying and celebrating women around the world leading in the church and higher education.
In the U.S., it’s a day for reflection, action, gratitude, and resolve as we celebrate and honor the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; he was a remarkable leader who taught and modeled nonviolent resistance in the American Civil Rights movement of the twentieth century.
A Prayer for Your Day and Your Context: Pastor Abby Olufeyimi
Join this short prayer by Pastor Abby Olufeyimi, who shared this video a few years ago as part of the Prayer Shield UK initiative – let her lead you in prayer, picturing your own location and context as you pray.
Lent Devotional Books and Resources Written or Shaped by Women: Part 1
Enjoy this small sampling of Lent resources by women! Next week’s newsletter will feature more; paid subscribers will receive a special post with an extensive list.
These Lent books, devotionals, and even a playlist reflect a variety of denominations. (PS - as far as I can tell, there is a lot of opportunity for creators of Protestant Lent devotions in Spanish!) My book budget doesn’t stretch to all these, so most aren’t specific endorsements or recommendations, just collected for you to enjoy browsing!
Wild Hope: Stories for Lent from the Vanishing, Gayle Boss; illustrated by David G. Klein
I learned about this book while exploring a BioLogos podcast episode title that instantly had my heart: Lent Reflections from Wild Hope: The North Atlantic Right Whale. For ten minutes I listened to the author read her section on the North Atlantic Right Whale, pulling me in. What an unusual, exquisite side-door into Lent. (Was the liturgical calendar ever only for humans?)
Watch the book trailer here:
The publisher’s note remarks, “Pangolins and polar bears, olms, lemurs, and leopards. We share this planet with creatures magnificent, delicate, intricate—and now vanishing at a faster rate than at any other time in Earth’s history. Spend Lent with twenty-five of these endangered animals.”
Encourage Yourself in the Lord: The Already/Not Yet Playlist by Nilwona Nowlin, who serves on the ministerial team at Kingdom Covenant Church in Chicago. She created this playlist when she’d been in one of those seasons.
“By the time Lent rolled around that year, grief was my daily companion. While I knew goodness and mercy were also with me, grief shouted the loudest, often drowning out all other voices. I was physically and emotionally exhausted. What I needed more than anything was to follow King David’s lead in 1 Samuel 30:6: ‘David was in great danger….But David strengthened himself in the Lord his God.’ So I ‘went rogue’…I wouldn’t ignore reflection and lament, but I would add the practice of encouraging myself through reading Scripture and listening to praise and worship music.” Read more of “The Already Not Yet Playlist: Curating Joy in the Music of Lent” here.
Be sure to also check out these books:
Between Midnight and Dawn: A Literary Guide to Prayer for Lent, Holy Week, and Eastertide, compiled by Sarah Arthur
Lent of Liberation: Confronting the Legacy of American Slavery, Cheri L. Mills
Remember Your Death: Memento Mori Devotional, Theresa Aletheia Noble, FSP (what an epic cover…)
Everything Can Change in Forty Days: A Journey of Transformation through Christ, Jean Watson
You can also browse Dr. Kate Bowler’s free Lent collection downloads – Have a Beautiful, Terrible Lent echoes the title of her new book, and Bless the Lent We Actually Have and A Good Enough Lent are also still available for download. If you never read her Everything Happens for a Reason (And Other Lies I’ve Loved), stop what you’re doing and read it now.
“Why Can’t You Just Be Sweet? Experiences of Women Clergy in the Church of the Nazarene” - Dr. Kathryn Lewis Mowry
This study from Dr. Kathryn Lewis Mowry was published in the Summer 2023 issue of Didache: Faithful Teaching. Dr. Lewis Mowry is the J. P. Elizer chair of Christian ministry at Trevecca Nazarene University.
During 2021 and 2022, Dr. Lewis Mowry surveyed women clergy in the Church of the Nazarene. The findings and quotes are compelling but also likely familiar to women with experience ministering in congregational systems of church government; if that’s not your background, this may be an eye-opening resource.
In one section, Dr. Mowry observes: “Women clergy from many districts report that their interviews rarely, if ever, stay on the prescribed theme. They are often asked intimate details, often in front of a room full of men, about their dating life, if single, and their marriages, if married. A few women reported that questions about how they would juggle motherhood and ministry or some other aspect of their personal life as a woman overtook their interviews so that they were never asked the theological questions at all.” She quotes one respondent:
“I worked hard on the articles of faith for my district license interview. I wanted to be fully ready to have theological and ministry conversations, and the entire hour was spent on my dating life and questions about if I had plans to date. I didn’t know then how inappropriate, illegal, and out of bounds that was…There were no questions about Jesus or my call to ministry.”
Dr. Lewis Mowry continues:
“I must admit, even as a clergy woman myself, that as a researcher I was caught off guard by this theme [of a preference for sweet instead of strong]. I was floored when I heard it come up in some form or another in every focus group. Women clergy members are told frequently that they should be sweeter, that they should smile more, and that they should be humbler. Any kind of confidence or any mildly assertive leadership behavior calls sweetness into question.
One woman had ongoing conflict with a senior pastor because in his words ‘she wasn’t sweet enough.’ As she told the story, it became clear that being sweet meant being submissive and never having an opinion that would challenge his.
Another woman spoke confidently about her call in an ordination interview, only to have the committee second guess her call, asking if she was sure she didn’t just ‘want another notch on her belt.’ Her very seeking of ordination was questioned because she was accomplished in many areas of life.
A Latina woman pastoring a bi-lingual church spoke boldly about the things God was calling her to do, only to be told by a district board that she was ‘prouder of being Latina than of being Christian’ and that ‘they struggled with how much she needed to talk about her culture and her reality in light of scripture.’”
Dr. Mowry also shares some positive examples of church leaders being effective champions of women in church leadership. She quotes a respondent who recalled,
“I was in an interview to be a pastor, and it wasn’t all that smooth or welcoming, and then one person asked, ‘You have two small kids, and your husband is gone a lot with his job, so what will you do if there’s an emergency in the middle of the night and your husband is gone?’ I tried to answer the question, but then the District Superintendent interrupted, and he just said, ‘You know I’ve done quite a few of these interviews now, and I have never heard that question asked of a man, so I think we just need to be careful.’ In that moment, he made it possible for me to stand up for myself.”
Didache: Faithful Teaching is “an interdisciplinary academic journal offered on-line that explores the intersections of Christian conviction, culture and education for the Church of the Nazarene and other international Wesleyan communities in higher education.”
“A Long-Ago Seed: Hindko Translation of the New Testament Comes to Life”
In case you missed it, there’s a delightful story from the Evangelical Covenant Church on the long-term impact of one woman’s labor in scholarship an ministry. Read it in its entirety here.
Jean Sodemann was a missionary nurse and Bible translator in Pakistan for 40 years. She’s been living in Illinois for over 20 years. But, “last summer, she received an email informing her that the New Testament had just been published for the first time the language of Hindko.” A complex project she’d started decades before had come to fruition.
“As a nurse, Jean became aware of the language of Hindko, which was spoken by less than 3 percent of the Pakistani population. It was not a written language, and in order to care for her patients, she began to learn the language from Hindko speakers who could also speak Urdu...As Jean became fluent, she began writing things down in Hindko, using the Persian script of Urdu and creating three additional symbols to represent sounds found only in Hindko. At the time Wycliffe Bible Translators were active in Pakistan, looking for languages into which the Scriptures had yet to be translated. They heard of Jean’s work and asked if she was interested in doing Bible translation. She wondered how to do that for people who could not read. Wycliffe translators suggested translating and then recording onto cassette tapes. So in 1978, Jean began painstakingly translating the entire New Testament into Hindko. The work would take more than a decade to complete. She partnered with native Hindko speakers who helped her choose wording. After she finished a section, Wycliffe translators would review it for accuracy by talking with Hindko speakers about their understanding. Then she would contact a Pakistani recording technician…who brought equipment. The text was voiced by native speakers, with one voice for narration, another for Jesus, another for other speakers.”
How were the recordings used? “As the recordings were captured and copied, they were played at hospital bedsides and distributed throughout the region as the patients went home. Those recordings are still used.” But what happened to the written translation?
“In 1997, Jean retired and moved from Pakistan to Covenant Living of Northbrook...What ever happened to her handwritten translation of the New Testament? Over the years, the Hindko people became literate...For five years after Jean retired, Wycliffe seemed to be working toward publication. But then the team assigned to the Hindko project were sent to work at the home office…and Jean heard nothing about the project for more than 20 years. This summer, without warning, Jean received that unexpected email saying that her translation had been published.” Jean’s take? “it is a joy to see the faithfulness of God.” If you’re feeling discouraged, remember this story!
Spotlight: Rev. Dra. Jessica Lugo Meléndez
Congratulations to Rev. Dra. Jessica Lugo Meléndez! She will be installed as the next Executive Director of the Association for Hispanic Theological Education/Asociación para la Educación Teológica Hispana (AETH), “a network of people and institutions that since 1992 has been working in the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico and…Latin America and the Caribbean.”
The installation will be livestreamed from Puerto Rico on the AETH Facebook page on January 28th, 2024 at 5:00 pm AST. For more en Español or English, click here.
Thank you for supporting FireFall! FireFall is a weekly newsletter celebrating women in pastoral ministry and higher education by amplifying their voices across denominational silos and algorithms. Each week features an ecumenical mix of resources including books, practical tools, podcast episodes, and more. Volunteer Pastora Daniela generously shares her time and talents translating FireFall into Spanish.