The One With A Letter To Synod

You will hear many different opinions today and in the coming weeks and years about women bishops and today's vote by the General Synod. For the women who seek the, what I think is, a God-given right to be ordained bishop, there will be many many blogs reflecting on today. They shall be far more eloquent and humble and lack the typos I am renowned for, but here are my thoughts on today and its implications.

In terms of Christian journey, I am indebted to some of the mostly godly men I know: Hugh Boorman, Vaughn Lawfull, Larry Kavanagh, Gareth Wilde, Mike Pilavachi and a whole host of male clergy and Christians on Twitter. These people are the ones who first gave me the opportunities to preach in church and are the ones who send thousands of prayers up for me when I worry about who on earth I am to be speaking up in church.

As part of the Ladygrove Church in Didcot, Oxfordshire, I feel so blessed to have been brought up in a church where Spirit-led women leaders and preachers was not debated but lived. Consequently, I have in my 20 years of church-going, seen women used by God to bring healing and salvation on a massive scale.

Upon going to university, I first encountered Christians who held the opposing view of women in the church, to me. As a theology undergraduate, I encountered male students who scoff at my degree because of my gender, and because it is at a "normal" university as opposed to a theological college. Within the Christian Union, a university society, I witnessed leadership-gifted women sidelined by the belief that they were somehow inferior, and that this was a biblical truth.

I'm not going to get into Bible debates here.

I realised at the conclusion of my first year at university, that part of the very essence of who I am as a Christian had been effectively suffocated by my church/CU situation at university. Suddenly I had become meek and mild and too afraid to challenge "the big boys" who were "theologically sound." At a church weekend away, a third year student said to me, 'I just couldn't take a woman preacher seriously.' And I, to my shame, said nothing, I just smiled.

In second year, I developed a reputation for being...gobby. I break the mold of that perfect Christian girl and challenged the guys on what I saw as misogyny being passed off as theology. It didn't get me any friends, it got me a repuation; it got me the butt of jokes about rebuking and what have you.

If you follow me on Twitter then you know that I make jokes all the time about how people assume I'm going to be ordained and that I'm trying to avoid it. The thing is, God has threatened me with ordination. (Potentially wrong word choice there!) God has made it really quite clear that he's given me a gab for a reason, and it is for his use. But that gifting isn't acknowledged by the majority of Christians I know. It's frustrating and it's humbling and it really really hurts.

I thought the vote today would be a yes. Not out of arrogance but because I couldn't see how anyone could ignore women who have been so obviously called. I love the Church of England, which is why I think it just hurts so much right now that the church I love doesn't believe in me. That the church which contains the first men to affirm me as a person is the same church which has wounded me so much.

Because God, in his infinite wisdom, has given me a heart of the women of today; the ones like me who've endured utter rubbish. God has given me a divine kick up the backside to bring restoration and healing in His name to a hurting and broken generation.

Today, I've discovered that it's not just my generation of women God wants me to take the good news to. It's to the phenomenal women priests of today whose dog collars have just been spat on by Synod. To my generation of Christian girls: our female inspirations and affirmers need us to keep on fighting for restoration in Jesus' name.

Today's vote won't get rid of me from the Church of England. I love it too darn much, because I love a God who's made me, ordained me, that way.

Synod's decision wasn't a great 21st Birthday present for me.