Rose Lee-Norman

Sitting in the familiar, worn wooden pew of her childhood Catholic church in 1997, thirteen-year-old Rose rhythmically traced the solid oak divots with her fingers. The dark wood stain wore thin in certain places where parishioners sat, prayed, and worshipped for decades. Its curved edges were smooth and deliberate. A sliver of sunshine peered through the stained-glass window from across the aisle and glinted atop the pew in front of her. She could hear the creaking of her classmates around her in the pews behind and in front.

These pews at St. Francis Catholic Church in Buffalo, Minnesota, held many stories about the Holy Spirit inviting and attending, consoling and challenging people in this parish. Rose’s story was just one of many involving the Spirit’s work, but hers centered on a call—a call to full-time ministry to use her voice to tell others about Jesus’ transformational life, death, and resurrection. The enormity of this invitation caused her young hands to move up and down, back and forth, over and across the worn oak divots, evoking a calming sensation to a vision that felt impossibly distant and unbearably heavy for a girl raised in a church that had no place for her in the pulpit. 

Rose, petite and quiet, a rule-follower keenly aware of her body and the space it occupied, wanted to calm the tension of both ecstatic joy and the weighty significance of this moment. This call would defy her carefully defined, small, compliant self. A call to ministry would mean crossing a threshold into a space that, in her world, was not made for her. Accepting this call would mean saying yes to something she hadn’t ever seen before and wasn’t sure was possible. Ironically, the very pew where she heard this call stood in a church that had nurtured her spiritual life, yet as a female she was not welcome to fully participate in ministry beyond Scripture readings and announcements. Surely, she could never stand in the pulpit. How could this calling become a reality? How could she, a female, ever lead and teach a congregation? Was there room for a voice like hers? This reality seemed so far in the distance. It was the projection of a confident grown-up person, not the tentative young teenager she was.

But even deeper than the discomfort, was the hope she felt rising up. Rose was given a vision of what it meant to be a pastor called by God, one of purpose and clear identity. Without a doubt, God was calling her to this role. The call felt like an inserted memory that was always there, yet arrived abruptly. It felt like an audible voice, yet the words were muddled. She felt it as surely as the pew she sat on, yet it was a mysterious, intangible invitation.

Holding these hopes and questions, Rose wondered what a future of vocational ministry might be. Feeling that tension, again she massaged her hands over the solid oak divots of that pew. Back and forth, wondering how she could be called to pastor and preach, and how accepting this call would require a journey of discernment and detachment. Her call to ministry was more than just a personal decision, it was a communal journey of listening to the Holy Spirit, while also departing from a parish and tradition that had positively shaped her into a disciple of Jesus Christ. As most pastors do, Rose felt her calling was something sacred, something that was given to her with clarity, yet discovered over time. Now the memory of sitting in that pew is a sustaining anchor in ministry, a source of assurance and courage.

From that wooden pew in Minnesota, the Holy Spirit continued to guide and direct Rose to eventually attend Covenant Bible College in Ecuador 2003–2004. Following that one-year experience of immersive discipleship, she met professors, pastors, missionaries, and friends who affirmed her call to ministry and deep desire to study the Bible. She completed her undergraduate studies at North Park University, majoring in Biblical and Theological Studies in 2006. Later, she and her husband Ryan both attended Fuller Theological Seminary where they were members at Pasadena Covenant Church. 

Rose received her first pastoral call from Sanctuary Covenant Church, an urban, multiethnic church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she has served there since 2010, holding multiple roles over the years, including Director of Children’s Ministry, Pastor of Family Ministry, Pastor of Formation, and Executive Pastor. She was ordained to Word and Service with an emphasis in Christian Formation in 2015 and received her Doctor of Ministry from Boston University’s School of Theology in 2021. Rose has had the opportunity to co-teach “Women, the Bible, and the Church” at North Park Theological Seminary with Rev. Dr. Dennis R. Edwards, a course that articulates the biblical support for women in ministry. Additionally, in 2023 that shy, quiet girl from Minnesota, who never imagined herself preaching, was awarded the ECC’s “She Preaches” award for excellence in biblical preaching. 

Now as an ordained and practicing pastor, Rose can see how the pew of her childhood represents the complexity of her calling. In recalling that scene, Rose often visualizes an aerial view of her thirteen-year-old self, anchoring her in her call to pastor while simultaneously calling her forward in her vocation. The pew is a symbol of potential – representing where she started and where God has taken her, and the work still to do. It is a place of comfort when her calling becomes too heavy to bear. This memory reminds her of her ability to lead and use her voice for God’s kingdom, regardless of her gender. That memory is a symbol of assurance that her voice is needed in the Church. 
Rose’s call story is a reminder that tension is a part of faith formation. Sitting in that pew, she felt a tension she could not dismiss; this is true of most pastors in their call story. Yet that tension did not feel like something she had to expel, instead it felt like something to embrace. God was inviting her to name, process, hold, and live faithfully with the tension. Ultimately it would refine Rose’s pastoral ability to listen, learn, sit with, care for, and preach faithfully to her congregation. Rose first felt called to pastor within the tension and it is in that tension she continues to seek to live faithfully into her call. 

Recalling sitting in that pew as a young girl, has broadened Rose’s perspective beyond herself, reminding her of God’s active work and faithfulness in the world. It is a reminder for all of us of God’s holy and intimate presence among all Christ followers in the Church. Rose’s call was not simply personal in its entirety; it was an invitation to participate in God’s continued, collective work in the world beyond her childhood church and into God’s mosaic movement.

Rose spent many more years asking God how someone like her might stand up from that pew one day and take a position at a pulpit. It would not be until seventeen years later that Rev. Dr. Dennis R. Edwards, then Lead Pastor of Sanctuary Covenant Church, would invite her to stand up and take her position at a different pulpit, a pulpit that welcomed her voice, and preach her first sermon. And not surprisingly, Rose noticed her hands rhythmically moving across the wood of the pulpit to calm herself. This time she did not question if she was called to use her voice and step into her calling from God. Instead, she felt the pull of the congregation waiting with anticipation for what God might say through her. Her voice was needed, welcomed, and received with dignity. God was giving her something important to say, and she didn’t want to miss it. May we not miss what God has to say through our called and gifted sisters.