07.02.2005

Rejoicing in the harvest

I am not able to contain the joy that I have felt during this first year serving as a ruling elder in my church. I want to share this experience with other Presbyterian women and I would like my message to reach as many women as possible and bear fruit in your lives.

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	Sonia González de Gómez

I am a retired teacher who worked for 25 years in the primary schools in El Progreso, Guatemala. Since 1973, I have lived in Guastatoya, a town north east of the capital, Guatemala City. In 1974 I married a Presbyterian, Hector Gómez, and began to work in the Presbyterian Church El Dios Vivo (“The Living God”) in 1976. Very soon I discovered my vocation: teaching in Sunday school and working with women in my local church. Later I worked with the women in the presbyterial and, beginning in 1982, with La Unión Sinódica, the women’s organization at the national level of the National Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Guatemala (IENPG).
I found the best opportunities to develop the gifts God gave me were in my work with women. I served the women’s organization as secretary, treasurer, and moderator, among other roles. I also had a part in the struggle for the ordination of women in the IENPG.
Before 1993 Presbyterian women in Guatemala were comfortable. We did not think the ministry of women included the roles of ruling elder or pastor. We had always heard that this work was only for men and we accepted that. But in 1993 two women from Guatemala, Aurora de Enríquez and I, attended a conference of women in Venezuela sponsored by the Alliance of Presbyterian and Reformed Churches of Latin America (AIPRAL). We had the opportunity to share with women whose ministry was much broader than ours. We saw women pastors serving the Lord’s Supper. We got to know women elders who had important responsibilities in their presbyteries. We were literally frightened by what we saw.
All this was in God’s plan because in this very same year a document along with a petition was presented to the Presbyterian Church of Guatemala by a group of Mayan women asking for approval to ordain women as ruling elders and pastors. This document and petition had a great impact on the assembly and the synod passed a resolution calling for study of the document.
With the help of the Central American Evangelical Centre for Pastoral Studies (CEDEPCA) and the few Guatemalan pastors who supported this idea, we began a very difficult process. It was difficult for the following reasons:
- we ourselves, as women, were not prepared to accept the idea that we could serve God in these ways;
- 90 per cent of the men and 95 per cent of the women were opposed to the idea that a woman could serve as a pastor or elder;
- it was new work for our women’s organization and we had no resources;
- we were not capable of reading the Bible in any other way than the way the pastors had taught us, and now we had to confront them.
There were meetings, Bible studies, conventions and the work of interpreting the Bible. We attended meetings with pastors and leaders who attacked us, accused us, and quoted obscure Bible texts against the ministry of women to us. We did not know how to defend ourselves because we did not fully understand the idea of women serving as pastors and elders. The women of the churches looked upon us with distrust and suspicion. Many women lost their privileges within the church. The rest of the women isolated us; they did not want the other women to listen to us.
Then a great miracle happened. This small group of women studying the document began to read the Bible with new eyes. None of us had prior preparation; none had gone to seminary. We discovered that the woman is included in God’s plan.
As we travelled together, God prepared and led us, and in five years, the Assembly of the IENPG, in May of 1998, gave its approval to the ordination of women. Now we could serve the Lord in the ministry of elder and pastor.
After 1998 in almost all the presbyteries, women were ordained as elders. They served as members of sessions as well as in their presbyteries and with the synod. But I was a member of Norte Presbytery, the most conservative presbytery, which vigorously opposed the idea of ordaining women even though it was a mandate from the synod. My husband, who supported me throughout the process, thought the same as I, “In Norte Presbytery they will never ordain a woman.”
My husband was called to his heavenly home, to live in the Lord’s presence, on 20 March 2002. He had always been the teacher of the adult Bible Sunday school class. During 2003, our church did not have a pastor and I was asked to teach the adult class, a service I performed with much love.
In God’s time and in the right time for my church I was elected to serve as a ruling elder on 28 December 2003, and was ordained to that office on 31 December 2003.
To serve the Lord in Guatemala is a challenge. A challenge because we want to be involved in all possible areas of work; we want our involvement as women to be different from what we often see in our church where, unfortunately, the leadership is infected with egotism, ambition, and corruption. There are many pastors with a double life. The Unión Sinódica is striving to educate and train women so that they can assume leadership roles within the government of the church and in these positions lead with faith, love, and true service, as our Lord taught us.
To serve the Lord in Guatemala is a challenge because the positions that the men attain, they attain only because they are men, and the women must exert a great deal of effort to attain such positions. Not one woman occupies a position of leadership unless she has attained it with testimony to her faith, work, and effort.
Nevertheless it is a joy to serve the Lord and so I say that we sow with tears but with joy we are participating in the harvest, reaping the fruit of our efforts, all to the glory of God.

Sonia González de Gómez