She Was Standing Right There

We have spent six sessions building the biblical case. We have handled the hard verses, walked through the Old Testament, traced the Spirit's promise, met the women in Paul's ministry, and stood at the empty tomb with the women Jesus sent. Now we do something different. We look at the women who came after the canon closed — the ones who read the same Bible we read and preached anyway. And we talk about the wounds. Because you cannot teach this subject honestly without talking about what the stop-sign verses have done to real women in real churches.

Jarena Lee — born free in 1783, called to preach, told no by the man who would become the first bishop of the AME Church, Richard Allen. She preached anyway. Eventually Allen himself heard her preach, and he publicly affirmed her call. She became the first woman authorized to preach in the AME Church, traveling thousands of miles on foot, preaching revival across the northeastern United States.

Mother Lizzie Robinson — the first woman ordained in the Church of God in Christ, the denomination my grandfather served and I grew up in. She was told to sit down. She stood up anyway. And her faithfulness opened a door that thousands of women have walked through since.

Frances Hunter — with her husband Charles, she led healing revivals across the world for decades. She laid hands on the sick and they recovered. She was not waiting for permission.

Marilyn Hickey — taught the Bible on television for decades, covering the globe with practical, Word-based teaching. A woman. On TV. Teaching the Bible. For decades. And God backed her up.

Joyce Meyer — one of the most widely known Bible teachers in the world. She has been criticized, dismissed, and mocked. She kept teaching. Millions have been helped.

Bishop Vashti Murphy McKenzie — the first woman elected bishop in the AME Church, in the year 2000. Two hundred years after Jarena Lee was told no, a woman sat in the bishop's chair in the same denomination. That is what a seed looks like when it finally grows.

These women are not footnotes. They are our mothers in the faith. They read the same Bible and concluded that God meant what He said. And they were right.

Now we need to talk about what has been done with the verses we studied in Parts One and Two. Because a lot of women in your group are carrying wounds. They were told their calling was pride. They were told they had a Jezebel spirit. They were told to be silent, to submit, to stay in their lane. Some of them were told they needed a male covering before God could use them — a doctrine that makes a husband or pastor into a mediator between a woman and her God, which the New Testament explicitly denies.

Some of them were told these things by people who loved them. Some were told by people who did not. All of them have had to make a choice: believe what was said about them, or believe what God has said about them. And that is not an easy choice when the people saying it hold Scripture in their hands and authority in their voice.

If you are leading this study, do not rush past this part. Let women name the wounds. Let them be angry. Let them grieve. The goal is not to produce bitter women — the goal is to produce free women. And freedom sometimes has to walk through grief to get to the other side.