Since last May, Sharon Gartland has served InterVarsity’s Graduate Faculty Ministry in the new position of National Coordinator for Women in the Academy and Professions. Sharon is married to Craig, the regional director for the Midwest region for GFM, and has been involved with InterVarsity since her student days. Recently she talked about her new ministry in a chapel service at InterVarsity’s National Service Center.
When I speak with some of the bright, gifted, well-educated women that we are trying to minister to in Graduate and Faculty Ministries, they tell me that they aren’t sure they fit in the evangelical church world. They use words like “I don’t fit in the box,” “they aren’t comfortable with all of my gifts,” “I’m not sure there is room for all of me here.” Many have shared that they feel caught between competing messages of who they are supposed to be at the church and in the academic world, and neither of those molds fit.
Those women outside of the church, whom we long to reach with the gospel message, often look at Christianity as a place of oppressing women, of misogyny, stereotyping. They would never dream of investigating a relationship with Jesus, because they see it as narrowing their existence as women rather than expanding it.
One of my dear friends used to joke with me that evangelizing well-educated, sharp women, was like trying to convince your cat to get into the cat carrier to take them to the vet. You can stick a comfy pillow and some good food, even a little catnip in there, and open the door up real wide, but you are still going to get that look from the cat that says “How stupid do you think I am?” I have no interest in that little, cramped space; why would they? I believe it is time to share the good news about how God really feels about women, in all their wonderful variety and giftedness.
I am grateful to InterVarsity because it has most consistently given me a spiritual home as a woman. I fit here as an outspoken, articulate woman with gifts in leading and teaching in ways that I still long for in a local church setting. There is room here for me to be all those things, and still adore babies, fiercely protect my children, love to crochet, scream at the sight of a snake, and hate to fill up the car or take out the trash and celebrate that I have a husband to do that for me.
In a new book, Living on the Boundaries: Evangelical Women, Feminism, and the Theological Academy, Christine Pohl and Nicole Kreegan interview 80 women who are academics in evangelical academies of higher learning. Many cite InterVarsity as an encouragement and influence to their calling. They are godly women serving Jesus in vibrant ways, despite the challenges put in their path.
InterVarsity gives women the accurate message of freedom in Christ. It sets the bar high for women to be accountable in the use of all of their gifts and consistently gives the message that God loves them and is pleased with the way he made them. My new position flows naturally out of an organization that has historically valued its female members.
My official job description is to “advance Graduate and Faculty Ministry’s endeavor to equip women and men to be a redeeming influence for women in the academy and professions.” Some of the things my job involves include:
- Listening to what it is like to be a woman and respond to a call to academia or professional world.
- Intercede for these women in prayer.
- Direct women to the truth about them in Scriptures through teaching, Bible study, development, etc.
- Help staff to think more strategically about evangelism to women in the Graduate Faculty Ministry context and provide training and resources to do that effectively.
- Develop ways to address the specific challenges that women who are pursuing advanced degrees, or who are on faculty, encounter in their particular settings.
- Provide access to women and their stories; to demonstrate the creative ways God has orchestrated lives, met needs and shown his goodness.
But I think my real job is to introduce women (and men) to the expansive heart God has for women. Jesus, by giving his life for our sins, invites us to enter God’s huge heart, a place so deep and wide that you can spread out, catch your breath, even dance if you want to; a place with room for every woman of every type and personality and abilities. In fact, those women are meant to be part of the glorious riches Scripture talks about in Ephesians 3:14-19. When they join his family, they become God’s treasured possessions! That’s a message worth sharing with all women, and one I pray will cause them to come running into God’s spacious place for them.
One woman’s story from the Graduate Faculty website.
