As a kid at First United Methodist Church in Newton, Kan., I would often see an elderly couple sitting in the back of our sanctuary... there, in the deep, dark recesses, behind the accordion doors, where the hearing aid devices hung next to the offering envelopes and wooden Communion cup holders on the back of the pews.
It was a long way from where my mother would usually sit, second row back from the dais, north side of the sanctuary, just barely in the aisle. Here I would beg half a stick of Juicy Fruit or Doublemint or Spearmint gum, and chew until all the sweetness ran out. Then I would promptly fall asleep on Mom's lap, listening to Dr. Armour Evans preach.
There was a lot I was unaware of, back then... a lot I took for granted. I didn't think much of the fact that Mom chewed gum in church to try to cover up the smell of cigarette smoke on her breath. It didn't bother me that my Dad wasn't with us, because he worked such odd hours as a railroader that we seldom went anywhere together save the grocery store, unless he took vacation time. I also had no idea that others thought it strange that a woman would be a minister.
Sitting in that dark recess, just in front of the nursery and kindergarten room walls, was an elderly couple. So elderly that they appeared frail, thin, bent over. They looked ancient to me. The man's face looked rather sunken in, as I recall. But I knew who they were. And I knew there was something special about the woman.
She had a title, you see. She wasn't just Laura Bradbury. She was The Rev. Laura Bradbury. She was the only woman I knew who bore that name. Her husband had also been a minister--he was first--but in my mind, there was great significance because this woman was Someone.
I must have heard her preach a time or two, when Dr. Evans was gone or ill. I don't recall being especially impressed--what kid ever is, with a grownup's preaching? But I do remember having it firmly established in my mind that Women Could Preach. And Women Could Be Preachers.
So much so, that when some of us high schoolers went to Riverside Church in New York City years later, the thing I was taken with (aside from the marble walls in the bathroom) was that Women Could Be Ushers. Women collected our offering and took it up to the front to be blessed! Now that was something I had never seen in church before.
But women preachers? Of course.
It wasn't until I went into ministry that I discovered that The Rev. Laura was one of the first women ordained in Kansas, probably a decade before I was born. I had been sitting among a legacy in the making, and hadn't even realized it.
