Good News: Women in Ministry (Elizabeth Sherwood)

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 10:00 pm by Scot McKnight

Good News: Women in Ministry (Elizabeth Sherwood) 2015-03-13T22:00:54-05:00 Scot McKnight

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In keeping with the historical practice of Friends (Quakers), Newberg Friends Church, (Newberg, OR) experienced the leadership and speaking gifts of women from its inception in the 1870s to well into the 1900s. The Evangelical Movement of the 20th century impacted both the private faith experiences of congregants and the larger practice of the church. This was evident in numerous ways, with one being the adoption, at least in practice, of Evangelical attitudes against women preaching in gathered worship. In the 1970s, Nancy Woodward, while not a paid member of the pastoral staff, powerfully asserted that she would use her gifts to serve God and the church, not being limited to “women’s roles.” Her modeling seems to have led to a return, within Newberg Friends, of full acceptance of women in all ministry roles.

In the early 2000s, Newberg Friends hired Gregg Koskela as its lead pastor. Gregg had served as children’s pastor previously, as a recent graduate of Newberg’s George Fox University (an Evangelical Quaker institution connected with the Northwest Yearly Meeting of Friends), and had most recently been serving as a Friends pastor in Boise, ID. Due to both his Friends background and classroom experiences at Fuller Theological Seminary, Gregg came to NFC “deeply concerned that women who demonstrate gifts of spiritual leadership be affirmed and given a place to exercise those gifts in the church.” Throughout his now decade plus tenure at Newberg Friends, women have preached regularly, led worship, served and led as elders and deacons.

In 2004, Elizabeth Meeker Sherwood began to attend NFC, as she and her family had just moved to Newberg for her husband (and this article’s author) to teach at George Fox. A veteran of ministry leadership in para-church settings (Young Life), Elizabeth’s gifts soon caught the eye of Gregg who asked her to join the pastoral team of the church as the part-time administrative pastor. Koskela describes her as thriving in that role, “reforming our nomination process for committees, taking leadership of our trustees, overseeing our building manager, and completely reforming the structure and personnel of the cemetery our church owns, literally saving us from a huge financial black hole.”

Elizabeth’s ministry at NFC has extended well beyond behind the scenes administrative tasks, however. In her role, she has ministered to the Newberg community both relationally and from the pulpit. In describing her relational work, Melanie Springer Mock, (elder, GFU faculty and co-author of the soon to be released Chalice Press book, Meant to Be) says, “(Elizabeth) does the hard work of engaging difficult people. I have seen her use her gifts and calling to repair burned bridges, to make relationships right.”

Koskela feels that “her gifts are unique, because alongside those (administrative) duties, she brings an ability to communicate vision, and to preach prophetically with power. I have said publicly that she is in my list of top five people I’ve ever heard preach.” Springer Mock echoes that sentiment, saying, “her sermons are thoughtfully constructed and beautifully given; at times, what she says seems like prophesy.” One of her favorite song lyrics is an old Bruce Cockburn song about the need to “kick at the darkness, til it bleeds daylight.”

In 2013, Pastor Koskela applied for, and received, a Lily Foundation grant that enabled him to take a four-month sabbatical, leaving the church in need of interim leadership. He says, “when it came time to recommend someone to be the interim lead pastor, Elizabeth was easily the first person who came to mind. Others had more experience on staff here, but her gifts and her big picture mindset made her the best person for the job.” Enthusiastically affirmed by the elders of the church, Elizabeth led the church capably during those four months. One striking characteristic of that time was her choice to have eight sermons of the sixteen-week sabbatical be given by lay women and men in the congregation. Newberg Friends is a congregation with a number of retired pastors, retired missionaries and present and retired college faculty in its membership and she could easily have called upon any number of these to take these preaching slots. Instead she chose to ask people who were “little heard voices” in the congregation up to that point. As with all of her ministry leadership, Elizabeth brought a beautiful blend of clearly and powerfully using her own gifts and voice, while also enabling, nurturing and calling out the gifts of others.

Newberg Friends Church, and Elizabeth Meeker Sherwood’s ministry there (along with other paid and lay women), is a powerful testimony to what God can do in a church where men and women love, serve and respect one another and the gifting God gives to “the priesthood of all believers.”

Women and Ministry

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