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Owning Your Space: Embracing Spiritual Leadership with Eliza Bast and Haley Wiggers
65 Plays24 days ago
This week, Eliza and Haley reflect on their individual journeys to embracing their call to spiritual leadership as women of color. Together, Eliza and Haley bring wisdom and grace as they share stories of navigating spaces where they have not always been welcomed or celebrated. And, they give perspective on how to keep showing up with courage, clarity, and truth, no matter the context where you are called to lead. Kind, generous, and boldly differentiated, Eliza and Haley are a gift you won't want to miss. Tune in to their conversation on female pastoring and leadership.
For more stories from brave, ordinary women, join us at Red Tent Living.
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Transcript
Welcome to the Red Tent Living Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
I'm Katie Stafford, and this is the Red Tent Living Podcast, where brave women host honest conversations about our beautiful and hard ordinary. Each week, we share stories with the hope of seeing one another a little better and affirming each other across different seasons and perspectives. We're excited for you to join us. Welcome to our table.
00:00:27
Speaker
Hi there,
Navigating Leadership as Women
00:00:29
Speaker
this is Katie from the Red Tint Living team and we're about to start an awesome episode between Elisa Bast and Hailey Wiggers, two strong, gifted, brilliant women who have ministry leadership roles and talk a little bit about what it's like to navigate those roles as women with grace and dignity and taking up their space. I'm really excited for you to tune in.
00:00:58
Speaker
Before that,
Upcoming Advent Series and Devotionals
00:00:59
Speaker
I just wanted to share that next week will be the beginning of our Advent series. It's a four week series that my mom and I engage in. And I'm really excited about this conversation. We're looking at the different themes of Advent, hope and peace and joy and love, but we're doing it in the context of examining the stages of carrying life. So conception, carrying labor and delivery. a bit of a different take on the Advent season and considering what it means that God is with us, and we really want you to be a part of it. So don't only tune in for our podcast each week, but you can also sign up at redtentliving.com to get a devotional delivered to your inbox each week to kind of guide your reflections and your journaling and take you through all of the passages that we read and consider.
00:02:05
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Excited for you to join us. All right, back to the episode.
Introducing Hailey and Alisa
00:02:10
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I think we are on. Do you want to introduce yourself first, Hailey? Sure, yeah. um My name is Hailey. I am one of many pastors on staff at a large church in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. And I've been here for five and a half years about. So I started in 19 and then COVID hit and it was crazy. My job was felt very obsolete. but um and So I've been here ever since. I have a husband and a four year old. Yeah. What about you? My name is Alisa and I served seven years on a church staff as a pastor of outreach in Southwest Michigan and then moved um to becoming a denominational executive ah for seven years, working across North America with churches, helping them with local mission and strategic ministry innovation. And now I'm the CEO of a national women's ministry.
00:03:04
Speaker
My degrees are business degrees. My goal is not to set out to become a leader of anything in church related at all. My goal was to become a lawyer, and here I am. Not a journey I thought I was going to be at. My goodness. Wow. As we unpack our stories, Hailey, would you be willing to share yours first? Yeah, I'd be happy to go first and pull it up here.
Hailey's Pastoral Calling
00:03:28
Speaker
um My story is called, My Calling is Birthed in the Dark.
00:03:35
Speaker
I woke up to a really dense fog encircling each layer of the ground. The fog was so dense, so incredibly hard to cut through. All I could see as my Subaru Ascent crept its way along the main drag were mucky fixtures that presented themselves as trees or houses as we drove along. I realized I had been holding my breath for most of the drive. The fog made for a world that I felt like I didn't recognize.
00:04:03
Speaker
Just eight hours earlier, America had voted in the 47th president of the United States. This particular result rebirthed to life in me both anger and lament, disappointment and disillusionment of the country that we so proudly cheered for just months before at the Paris Olympics. That switch felt drastic. As the fog over the earth hovered for most of the day, the disillusionment continued.
00:04:29
Speaker
Soon though, the disillusionment was joined with what felt like a surprisingly activating feeling, invitation. Almost immediately as I sauntered into my home away from home, my office, sloshing my feet one foot in front of the other, I unlocked my office door, plopped my stuff down, and got to work. Can I bring you coffee? How are you doing today, friend? Can I come snuggle your baby so you can get a few loads of laundry done?
00:04:58
Speaker
What do you need today? How can you be kind and gentle toward yourself these next few days? What voices will you let speak into your life over the next little while? These were just a few text messages, conversations, and phone calls tossed back and forth throughout the day between myself and a beloved friend or congregant or mentee.
00:05:19
Speaker
people, primarily women, who have reminded me of the expansiveness of the gospel, the dream of God for the marginalized, and the small deeds of the kingdom of God. My invitation to pastoral work, like anything that starts from a seed and needs tending and nurturing, was initiated underground. Within the soil of grief and loss, and the loss of my dad, and my own sort of emotional and spiritual fog that encircled my life in the year after, the seed grew tiny little roots.
00:05:49
Speaker
Grief changed everything for me. Who I was, who God was, and how God relates to us as his beloved creatures. Grief derailed my life in beautiful ways. I began running towards the grief and pain of others, learning how to hold space for loss and longing and ache. But instead of it feeling like a place of scarcity, it felt expansive, like there was something close to the heart of God there, and I would only find more invitation in it.
00:06:19
Speaker
In the afternoon of the dense fog, I sat with a young college student who had shared her life with me over the last year. She's been in the process of deconstructing her faith and I was grateful enough to get to hold space for all of her wonderings and questions. I just feel so misunderstood. I feel angry and sad, but mostly sad. I'm worried that some of the things will come to pass and it will have repercussions for my family.
00:06:48
Speaker
Her mother had immigrated to the US from South Korea, seeking refuge in the country that stands for opportunity. I just don't know if I can go to church anymore. I don't know if I can or want to read my Bible. It felt sacred to receive those words. In a large, primarily white conservative evangelical church, there were not many safe spaces to name one's struggle or complicated relationship with scripture or faith, really.
00:07:18
Speaker
After that conversation, I spoke on the phone with my boss and shared with him some gratitude for that moment, only to be met with what felt like a lack of understanding, advice telling me to remind her that Jesus is on the throne and what felt like a disregard for the sacredness of pastoral work. I hung out frustrated, misunderstood and unheard. I think he's missing the point. I thought to myself, yet he was my boss. He was in charge of my pastoral development.
00:07:48
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He sort of held a key to my ongoing career as a pastor, writing my reviews, advocating for my raise, and deciding whether or not I was worthy to expand my scope of pastoral care. For me, his lack of concern, lack of wonder, lack of spiritual imagination is what felt particularly worth lamenting.
00:08:07
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Like a familiar song that can play in the background without us having to stop and listen, the sarcasm, the gender jokes, the lack of representation in meetings or in the highest series of leadership has become background noise for me. It's not unique to my situation and I have learned to continue on with it playing in the background. But like the fog that lingered over the earth that day, suffocating any cracks of light in the sky.
00:08:33
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It's the cloud that hovers over our ways of thinking, our lack of creativity in finding ways to cut through, hold, or explore the fog and sit with people in the fog that lead me to feel like my church is stuck.
Quiet and Compassion in Church Culture
00:08:46
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In a church culture that values quick wit, humor, efficiency, and oftentimes what feels like puffed up knowledge, practices fueled by contemplation and quiet are met with resistance and hostile hesitation.
00:09:00
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If we never expand the way we are with others, never listen to our own with compassion and quiet, never renew our spiritual imagination to make space to actually hear the pain of our kin, we will never be renewed in our thinking towards those outside the fold. This way of being with, of listening to, of moving towards others is what has been birthed for me primarily in dark places. God's invitation for my life to be with others, to attend to them, their pain, their worlds, and point them to God's witness has been nurtured in the dark foy foggy places of my own life. These past few weeks, God has graciously affirmed that, giving me spaces to nurture that invitation and calling. And oftentimes that happens in the unseen foggy and dark places where there is pain or grief or lament involved. And I am okay with that.
00:09:59
Speaker
I'm learning to run into the fog, to swim in it as it lingers on and to bear witness to what I find within it. After all, at the dark tomb within a cloud of unknowing, Mary looked for Jesus there. And while it was still dark, he called to her. My calling has been nurtured primarily in dark and foggy places. It's been sustained by the knowing, the trusting that I've been invited there by the same Lord who called to Mary at the empty tomb.
00:10:30
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As my Subaru bounced back home that day, I noticed the fog had surrendered to the setting sun. Just as the sun's rays peeked through, bouncing off the cloudy tufts in the air, I let out a sigh. We are moving forward. God is still inviting and calling me. Tomorrow, I will roll up my sleeves and get to work again. But for now, it's time to rest. Thank you for sharing that. he I'm struck by the theme of invitation that that shows up multiple ways in your story, just that invitation from Mary to experience knowing in the middle of her lament at the tomb, the invitation that you've received in your own sense of calling. I'm curious if, as you think about being a woman in the place that you're in, do you think that, how do you think that informs your receptivity
Women's Receptivity in Leadership
00:11:22
Speaker
towards invitation? Do you think that's nuanced in a different way? because
00:11:26
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because of who you are. I think one thing that I have learned over the last couple of years is that like that word invitation, that like truly God is inviting us in all things. And I think because of my unique position and my place as a female and a woman of color in the place that I'm at, I and feel like I maybe sense and respond to invitations in what feels like a little bit of a different way. I'm looking a little more proactively for the ways like God is inviting me and us as a church to like just be and sit differently with people who we just don't pay attention to. like As somebody who desires that like to be received that way and longs for that and laments that that's not always my present reality,
00:12:24
Speaker
um I think I want to create that for other people in our midst. I think being a female plays a huge part in that, if that makes sense. No, it totally does. I mean, I just, yeah, I affirm that in my own experience, especially as a woman of color in predominantly Anglo spaces. There's a sense of having to own your space, but also be very sensitive to invitation.
00:12:53
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And I think that makes us sensitive to to inviting others too. Like there's a part where we've had to wait to be invited. There's been places where we've we've had to submit and surrender to that in some ways that have been both both bad and good. But I think there is a uniqueness in that that that God always impresses on us to invite the others. Like I'm always looking for who else needs to be at the table and can make space for other people to feel like the other in the room. So I think about the young woman that you're journeying with, um what a gift to have you make invitation for her and her vulnerability um and for her to feel safe in that. Yeah, I think that's, it does feel, it does feel like a gift. Like, and it's, I think part of why I wanted to write the piece that the way that I did was to talk about, yes, there are barriers and I could probably spend a lot of time talking about
00:13:52
Speaker
more of the frustrations but I think what has been something that I felt really deeply grateful for is like the gift that it is to hold and the honor like it feels like a ah really deep honor to me to get to sit with people in that way um even to to be a leader in the church that I am and to step on the stage and preach is a is an honor that I don't take lightly so I think For me, it's been really healing and good to think, like you said, I like that you said, it's a gift because it it really is. And I'm grateful for that. The other thing I just, I really just value and just affirm in your story too is, um, I think we get hopped up on this idea of like this calling, especially for ministry is going to come out of this, um, deeply motivated mountain tap experience. Like I'm going to steal away into a cave and God is going to talk to me on my silent retreat.
00:14:51
Speaker
And sometimes it is like those low valleys. It's not the mountain top. It is a low valley where we discover, where God meets us there and draws something out of us that wouldn't have been forced out any other way. And I love that about your story. Would you be willing to share just a little bit more of just what that process was like for you? Yeah. So my dad died six years ago.
00:15:17
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unexpectedly. And that was actually when we were living in Michigan at the time, I had just finished seminary out there. And anyway, I just was kind of like, in May, I was like, Okay, what am I supposed to be doing? And then my dad died three months later. And I've sort of called that time, like my spiritual rebirth a little bit, because up until that point, I had not walked through, I think, really the type of pain and tragedy that like,
00:15:46
Speaker
truly is formational, like in really, really deep ways. Like the Dark Knight of the soul. Yes. He hadn't really experienced that Dark Knight of the Soul yet. Yeah. Yes, exactly. And so, and I was working as a resident director at Hope College at the time.
00:16:04
Speaker
And then I was working kind of as a receptionist in a church in, in Holland and going through the loss of my dad and then like launching in my first year as an RD, I think I just sort of like began to pay attention to like pain really. Like my own made me a lot more sensitive to the things that were going on in other people's lives. I think I learned, I think too, like,
00:16:34
Speaker
how do I want to be received in my pain and my grief? Paying attention to that and sort of learning and practicing like, what does it mean then to receive other people? What does it mean for me to be on the care side of people walking through really hard things? And so I think that combination of like having that loss and processing that loss alongside of college students who were processing various degrees of pain and loss and identity, things that they were wrestling with. I just learned, I think, how to wrestle myself. So doing the own work, like doing my own spiritual work and then helping walk with others. So I think that really began me sort of paying attention to like, what is, what place does a grief and loss play in the spiritual life?
00:17:32
Speaker
Um, and so I think it just helped me be better. It helped prepare me for pastoral work. And it's also one of those things where I've said, like, it's sort of an impossible gift. Like I wouldn't receive it. Like if it meant my dad was still here,
Spiritual Rebirth Through Loss
00:17:53
Speaker
right? I don't, like, I wouldn't have wanted to receive that, but because this impossible, horrible thing happened.
00:18:02
Speaker
this sort of gift emerged. And then we wanted to move back to Sioux Falls, which is where my mom was, where my mom is, where I grew up. And so this role at this church opened up. And I think um like God had been working in my spirit to help prepare me for the work that I was about to enter into. And I think ever since then,
00:18:27
Speaker
like There have just been things in my life that I felt curious about because of the work that this spirit has done in me. And so that's helped me pursue like my curiosity, I think has fostered me to like, fueled me on to find these things that have been places that I have received.
00:18:50
Speaker
God's goodness and graciousness and being able to be affirmed in ministry. I think there's a sense of, you know, when you think about the kind of celebrity pastors that get like elevated as examples, it's very much like this very polished space of just like arriving and then like, now you should follow me. But um what I love, Haley, about your story is just this vulnerability of I am grieving. I'm walking with you and walk with me as I'm walking through this understanding my grieving.
00:19:20
Speaker
And that very much is like, that to me feels more central to the gospel. Like follow me as I follow Jesus. You know, for all the listeners, just so you know, I failed my pastoral care. Like they had assigned me a mentor. I'm not gifted that way. So Haley is a unicorn and I just want to ferment in space right now. Not my calling. So yes I just want to affirm, affirm, affirm. Part of, and I feel like, like what you said, like,
00:19:48
Speaker
It's just interesting you say that even like part of the work of pastoral work and something I'm learning as a female too is like, I don't have to be all things, right? So you naming like that's not, that's not where it's not my strength. Like I think that's really healthy and good. I think something I'm learning and paying attention to is this sort of sense of like.
00:20:08
Speaker
there's There's been this way of being a leader that's like, we're we're a leader in all capacities and we're efficient and good at all of these things, the sort of CEO as leader in the church. And I think something that's been nurtured in my own spirit by women and something that I feel like I heard you say just now is like, you are allowed to say, that's not me. um And I think that's really healthy and and good and something I'm young in my ministry career that I'm still learning. So I appreciate that you said that and named that. I just, I love that. I just want to affirm that. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, it's good. Will you want to read your story? I grew up in a faith tradition where women were always leading. There was never this conscious divorce or reckoning of women being on the stage, praying for people, standing in front,
00:21:06
Speaker
I never saw the overtness of power distancing by gender. It honestly had not occurred to me that there would be a barrier until I started my own formal process of working full-time for a ministry.
00:21:18
Speaker
Some of this, in large part, is attending a multiracial, predominantly minority church. There were simply too many others to start othering others. It wasn't until I entered a historic, mostly Anglo anglo experience that I encountered the shock of having my spiritual credentials questioned as I stepped into leadership. Now, this is not to embark on an encouragement of theological certainty. I have friends in all camps that believe all manners of things about who gets to take the pulpit.
00:21:47
Speaker
As a bridge builder, I can understand with compassion their own seat. I can remain both defined and connected about who I am, what I believe, and who they are and what they believe without feeling threatened or outraged. But I am not immune to disappointment. I remember being pregnant with my first son and having someone sheepishly come up one Sunday morning and ask me who was going to take my job.
00:22:10
Speaker
I was taken aback and asked, oh my gosh, am I getting fired? With equal astonishment, they stammered, well, no. I mean, you're pregnant. You know. I mean, you aren't going to keep working, are you? I politely asked if they had asked my husband the same thing, seeing as we were both expecting. Would someone be taking his job too? No? Well, OK then.
00:22:33
Speaker
It has been a journey of being the only in rooms, carrying the delicate privilege of navigating spaces with dignity, femininity, and tact. It has meant carrying my opinions and passion alongside my incredible resume and expertise in ways that is confident and humble. But that's every leader's journey. I just happen to also be in perimenopause.
00:22:53
Speaker
Because of the internal integration of women, embracing spiritual leadership has meant honoring my spirit, my soul, and my body as God has designed it in ways that manage both its glorious outcomes and my demanding expectations. I don't ignore that my body functions in cycles, meaning fatigue, energy, and illness come in predictable waves that allow me to be agile, intentional, and forethinking in how I plan and how I execute.
00:23:21
Speaker
It means extreme aggravation as I navigate approaching my fifties and my body needing different things, and me not having a chart to accommodate and discern that by. Rather, it's slowing down to listen, even as my body and soul have demanded it. In the past, that has looked like assuring men that my baby won't fall out on the stage when I preached while I'm pregnant. That would be both fantastical and nearly impossible, but would also be super unforgettable.
00:23:49
Speaker
It also means welcoming tears and movements of worship that embrace my entire being, holy, and not having to feel ashamed and surrendering to that. What a gift to have that normalized as a woman, to have my arms raised, swaying with the music, my tears welcomed before a sacred and holy God. But last, as I currently lead a women's ministry, it means leaning my voice into the throngs of strong voices, warriors who are carrying entire communities on their backs raising leaders and world changers and caregivers. I sing along with sweet songs of peace and nurturing and flourishing, whispering alongside hands that create and give and grow. I get to say that without diminishment or fear because I am a woman who is a spiritual leader and I think that's pretty darn good.
00:24:46
Speaker
Thank you. That was, I feel like I'm writing down so many phrases right now that I just love that you, I want to steal from you and borrow. It's called research. When you're studying, it's called research. Yeah. What was that like for you to write that? You know, it's, it's interesting because, you know, Haley, as I think about my own journey, um it's hard because
00:25:16
Speaker
you know, when i'm I'm acknowledging my own space. Right now, um i I'm just going to say this for and everybody who's listening. I don't think we talk
Menopause and Ministry
00:25:24
Speaker
about menopause and pyramenopause enough. It jacks your life. And nobody talks about that. There's no 50 books like when you're pregnant. I need the 50 books because I'm like, what's happening? My body's breaking down in ways I'm not anticipating. And it's changing. It's changing the way I'm doing ministry. And so it's it's changing the way I'm showing up. It's changing what I'm allowing space for.
00:25:45
Speaker
And so it's this unique moment where I'm leading on a team of individuals that we're all kind of in that same age space. And so we're having to stop and say, you know, I'm feeling a little tender today. My, my medication has changed. My hormones are a little off. I just need a break. And everybody going, Oh, okay. And that being so good, it's just so amazing to be in that space instead of just being like, I have to go to the bathroom, you know, and then just getting yourself together and coming back.
00:26:15
Speaker
Cause that's what pregnancy was like on a mostly male staff. You know, you just, you don't know what's happening and you know, your body is demanding things and you're just like, I feel like lost in my own body. And so it's this, I can write that out of today, a place of extreme gratitude and to just say it's, it's different being in a space where it's all women and there's this relief um to be experiencing something in my body as an integrated individual. That is so, so nice right now that it's so life giving.
00:26:45
Speaker
Hmm. Yeah. I, I just loved that. Like in your story too, there's, there's a borrow from the words I use often, right? Like the invitation to bring your, to allow your full self a seat at the table. That feels like, yeah, you named now that you're in a organization, you're leading all women. Like suddenly there's this, like, there's this room to sort of say like this, this part of me can breathe. Um.
00:27:15
Speaker
What was it like for you? You said you've been in this role seven years. This current role only three before, yeah, but the ah prior prior two roles, seven years each. Okay. What was it like to make that switch from like being where you were before leading? Yeah, that it's it's been interesting. You know, I'm Puerto Rican.
00:27:44
Speaker
I carry a lot of intensity as ah as a Latina and such as who I am. And so there's this part that being in male spaces, the intensity was was less hard. I didn't have to dial that down in some ways. Now, the hard part is that, and this is why I intentionally use the word expertise, is that I would say things with passion and clarity, like, nope, we've got to move in this direction. And they're like, ooh, she's so spicy. No, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not spicy. I'm impassioned because I'm correct. So you could say a lot of other things. it's It's not me being Latin here. It's me being right. so' just Let's not get it twisted. So there's a part where I had to be very like honest and upfront about that. And that was hard in those spaces that I'm just not passionate because, you know, I happen to be browner than you. But having to like modify that and come into a space that is more tender and is more, is is more soft. Um, I've had to really be more intentional about leaning into soft. And so like, Andy Colbert has a great book about, you know, a lot of that work and try softer. And so those have been like good tomes for me to say in this space,
00:28:44
Speaker
There's a time for intensity. It doesn't mean that that goes away, but there are times that I have to welcome softness in this journey and how I approach with softness that that needs to be different. We have hundreds of incredible high capacity volunteer leaders that are just all women. And so being able to to shift and pump the brakes and the accelerator to in the intensity and softness space has been good for my own spirituality and good good for my own discipleship.
00:29:16
Speaker
Yeah, that's good. um One other thing I just, I loved in your story. um There's no sense of when you were sharing, like, of any sort of scarcity. I loved how you honored and named, like, um the multiple perspectives who believe, like, who can take the pulpit and just said that with such, like,
00:29:44
Speaker
honoring and grace. You talked about, you use the phrase, it was a delicate privilege. And I i love that phrase too. And I think it just felt very, so much expansiveness like in in your story of like, there's room for all of these things. And this is who I am. And this is what God has invited me to do and how I see that playing out in seasons of my life. And right now.
00:30:14
Speaker
And so i I just really appreciate that. I imagine that comes with more experience right in your life to have her got their time for maturity, but um I just appreciate the expansiveness of your story. Like there's just, you're holding space for all the things. You know,
Legacy in Leadership
00:30:32
Speaker
Haley, I wish I could say that there was this like glorious moment where the spirit revealed that to me and his goodness, but where where that became certain for me was I was sitting in the middle seat on a plane. And I just remember consciously feeling there were two gentlemen on either side of me. And I was immediately thinking, how do I make myself smaller to, to be in this space? I mean, it was just like natural, just like, okay, these, you know, and they're, you know, without being vulgar, you know, they're spreading out on their knees or out and they're stretching their legs. And I'm like, they're in my space. And I'm like, what the heck? And I could feel myself just, okay, well, maybe I just need to, and I was like,
00:31:11
Speaker
golly how many times have I done this in my life where I felt like oh my gosh like how do I figure out how to make myself smaller here and I'm like there's defined space here there's defined space that's enough for you it's enough for me so like why am I not taking my space and why am I not encouraging you to take yours don't take mine too but you know how am I like what's and I just remember like okay I have just had it and I stomped my foot down I'm the gentleman who was in my space and I was like oh I'm sorry you're in my space And I just remember being like, I'm never going to stop apologizing for the space that I meant to be. Like this is, you know, middle seat forever. Who cares? You know, like this is, this is my life now. And when I turned 40, I just, I had a coach lovingly challenged me. He said, what do you want the third quarter of your life to be like? And I said, man, I want to.
00:32:05
Speaker
um I want to carry my calling in such a way that my shoulders are wide enough where anybody can climb on top and you don't have to see me, but you can see them. And I said, you know, i biblical stories are full of people that are carrying carrying one part of the baton for somebody else. And I said, I would leave a good legacy if there are young women that are coming behind me and you never see me. you know I never make it to the promised land. Like David, I i gather the things and and i so I'm saving money for somebody else. And there's disappointment in that, but also great beauty and just saying like, I'm passing the baton to you. Like climb on up, you know let me open the door wider so you can get through to, how do I share the chariot? And I feel like if I do that, then I can safely go under the arms of Jesus and he say, well done. And that will feel like good work. That's beautiful and encouraging. and
00:32:57
Speaker
want to ask. and I'm thinking of your story about taking up space. Like as I think even primarily me, I'm learning, like I'm still so new in ministry and pastoral work. how How would you encourage someone like me or women younger than you to learn what it looks like to sort of like take up their own sort of space? What what words of encouragement would you say?
00:33:27
Speaker
I love
Mentoring Young Women
00:33:28
Speaker
that. And I would love to hear how you're doing that too. I just, the short answer is don't take the bait. I think we get so excited to finally be invited to the table that we forget to drag another chair with us. And we're so like relieved that we finally made it that um the bait is like, you know, fight to keep your place. You worked so hard to get here. And that puts you in competition with It puts you in competition with whoever's coming after you and you don't even know it. And you just, you buy into that. And that's the scarcity mindset, right? Like that's the, there's only one seat and I better take it because I've worked so hard to get here. um And so I'm just curious, you know, Haley, it's your, you know, only four years, four and a half years into your journey of pastoral leadership. What do you think it might look like for you to be able to drag another chair to the tables that you're in?
00:34:16
Speaker
What has been fun for me that I have seen that is a gift of being in the context I'm at. We have a lot of young, like our staff, our congregation is very young, like below like 25 and younger. um There's a huge, huge population of young professionals, college students. That's awesome. And so we have the ability to bring on like interns and residents as a staff. And so The first thing that comes to my mind is beginning to figure out like, okay, I've had i've had a couple of moments where I'm like, I'm now like humbly in this position where I'm like, I don't really know what I'm doing, but women on our staff are coming to me and asking like, how do I do this? I'm like, I won, I don't really know, but that feels scary to me and humbling. Cause I'm like, I'm still figuring it out, but
00:35:14
Speaker
to sort of drag another seat up to the table, I think feels most tangibly for me, like primarily inviting other women on our staff to learn some of the things that I'm learning. And for us to learn alongside of each other, what does it look like for us to take up space? And I hear your story about it's not that I'm, if I'm not being spicy, I'm just right.
00:35:39
Speaker
to help them and us learn together. like Even if it feels kind of clunky, you're allowed to be assertive and to use your voice in this position in this way. And and it doesn't mean you're being this and this and this. It just means you're like listening to the sound of God's leading in your life, um the inner voice of love that's guiding you too, just as much as it's guiding everybody else around you.
00:36:08
Speaker
I think that sort of looks like it's been really fun for me to sort of invite other women into like what I'm learning and um like about my own sort of calling and and nurturing God's voice in my life yeah and to help them figure out what does that look like in this context that we're in where we have primarily men in upper leadership and how do we how do we just do that faithfully and allowing our full selves a seat at the table too.
00:36:38
Speaker
So, and then nurturing the, like helping these young college students who are wondering, should I go into ministry? Like helping ask them questions and nurture that sense of calling them. I love that. it it's It is. It's like, there's times when you know, there's times when I can give you an answer. And then I think, I think just operating on an abundance mentality says, even if I don't know, let's discover together. And that's, be again, back to your story of invitation. like You know, there are times when I know, but there are times when I'm like, I'm not sure, but let's go together. You know, let's discover together. Um, I just, I love that. Like you need to have a giant massive invitation, just like but i like i think RSVP sign behind you. will Thank you so much Haley for sharing your story and I'm grateful to be able to receive the gift of that today. Yes. Yeah. Thank you. It was so good to.
00:37:37
Speaker
hear from you and learn from you. And I am really grateful and like honored to get to just have this connection with you and same same hear and receive. I think I'll be pondering a lot, like one, your the expansiveness of your story. For me, I have to all like continually be paying attention to what I feel like, like well, this is mine. so it like Yeah, the scarcity mentality, I think. And so I think that that feels like an invitation to me from your story and something I'll be taking with me. So thank you.
00:38:17
Speaker
The Red Tent Living podcast is produced by myself, Katie Stafford, and edited by Erin Stafford. Our cover art is designed by Libby Johnson, and all our guests are part of