The Pregnant Pastor, Part One

Rev. Dr. Aimee Copley Mulder started pastoring her first church 20 years ago as a pregnant pastor!  Join Aimee as she discusses how pregnancy and giving birth to kiddos creates a unique experience.  For the first five years of her ministry, Aimee had 3 boys under the age of 4 as Devin and her tried to figure out co-pastoring and parenting.  Listen to hear the joys, challenges and get your thoughts provoked by the pregnant pastor!

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

All glory to God. This is Amy Copley Mulder talking to you as a pastor who has been pregnant. Our topic today is the pregnant pastor. And for the first five years of my ministry, I was pregnant, having a baby, just getting over having a baby, or having a new baby. And so that experience leads us to our topic today. What does it mean to be the pregnant pastor? Part one, the pregnant pastor, all glory to God, coming now.

SPEAKER_00 0:45

Doesn't matter if you're young or alive. All that matters is you answer the door when Jesus comes to change your life. Give it up to God.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

And we were interviewing with all these district superintendents that would come by seminary, and we were interviewing here, and we were having phone calls here, and we were talking to this one and talking to that one. And we had gone all the way to my home district in South Texas, and there was an interview that was at Port Arthur, Texas. So I was about six months pregnant, maybe maybe five months. I was still a little cute as a new pregnant woman. And then in the later months, there was nothing that anyone could say about me that was other than just a big old pregnant lady. But anyway, I we inner we drove to this interview. Um we were young and dumb, but we just knew that this church would be great for us to be. We both knew it. It was hard for Devin to, you know, give up dreams of living by a stream or mountain or somewhere that wasn't scorching hot most of the year. But Port Arthur, Texas, was where we were going to start our ministry. And we graduated from Nazarene Theological Seminary in that 2006 year. And what was happening in our family at that time, it was truly exciting to be having our baby then, because the November prior, my husband's dad had passed away in 2005. And we just, it really threw our whole family off. You know, it just, my husband, his dad was his best friend, and he was only 24. Dave was only 51. And so this new baby was coming, and it was kind of like this new life given into the family. And probably there was so much importance placed upon the birth of Ford because it was our first, it was the first grandchild on both sides, and we were just extremely excited. But I just gotta let you know, I never thought about being a pastor vocationally without having the context of being pregnant. I was pregnant when I graduated from seminary, and we were on our way to Port Arthur, Texas, to start a brand new adventure. And what did that mean? I mean, I had a lot to prove. I was gonna show everybody that I could be a pastor. I didn't even know if I could do that. I mean, I did pretty good in school, but I was kind of weird. Devin was continuing his work at UPS, and UPS is a part of our story. That's United Parcel Service. Um, what can Brown Do for You has been a part of Amy and Devin Mulder's life a long, long time. Um, when we were in seminary, gave the best benefits, and Devin loaded cars, and then he went down and he actually had a miracle happen to him where he could transfer to Port Arthur, Texas and work there. And they were, you know, accepting of that. It doesn't usually happen in the UPS world. And he worked so hard for that company, but it gave us insurance so that the church didn't have to worry about paying for all of our bills. And we were this new thing called co-pastors, which meant we had to put a Venn diagram together to say, well, these are the things he's gonna do, and these are the things she's gonna do, and these are the things we're gonna do together. We didn't quite know what we were doing, and we felt like we're inventing the wheel. And then guess what? A new baby is coming in October, and then we're your young, new, dumb pastors. And here was our life. We started in July, and I just wasn't going to let the fact that I happened to be growing a human do anything to stop my stride. I was gonna show you that I that God called me and I'm a pastor, and I'm gonna be a mom, and I'm still gonna be a pastor. Now, I don't know, friends, where this huge chip on my shoulder came from. I don't know if any of you relate to this needing to prove yourself when you already got there. I think now they have wonderful names for it called like uh imposter syndrome. Maybe you're suffering from imposter syndrome, and just realize you are here in this space and that is enough. Be there in the space. And I do really appreciate that conversation. And there wasn't really an older pastor at that time that had taken an interest in me to say, you don't have to do it all, you don't have to have it all figured out, you can relax. I think that's why I hopefully, if any of my young pastor girlfriends are listening, I have been trying to take an interest in you to let you know that all of this can be done in balance. That when God called you, that he probably knew there was a high possibility that you would have a baby one of these days, and that that is also an extension of your calling. So I started my I started my ministry pregnant. And an interesting thing happened. South Texas is um on the border of Texas and Louisiana, it is um where we were in Port Arthur, is real East Texas, which means um it's Cajun country. So we're talking really good eating, we're talking boudin and Cajun spices and all of that good stuff, but it also means it is scorching hot, and it's not the scorching hot that is dry, it is about as humid as it can get. It feels like the air is full of everything. You can go out and check your mail in the middle of summer and you come back drenched. It is a sweaty thing, and so it unlike in Michigan where I live currently, not having air conditioner is not like an a thing you can do. You gotta have air. That's just you know, just like up here in Michigan, we gotta have heat. We can't just not have heat in a building. We gotta have heat. And so here we are. Here we are, and we're in Texas, and I I've got all these ideas, and I'm so excited. And the air conditioner went out in our house. Now, the parsonage was lovely. Port Arthur First Church of the Nazarene provided a wonderful, a wonderful um parsonage for us. It was beautiful. It was more than we would have got for ourselves, you know, with our pay, you know. But that not having air, we couldn't hardly handle it. And Devin Devin went to work and he said, Maybe you can handle it for today. And he likes to tell the story that when he came home, I was laying on the kitchen tile, which was good tile, just trying to cool off. So we called the church and said, we need a hotel while we're trying, while this air conditioner gets fixed, because my pregnant wife will not be sweating on the tile floor for a couple of days. So there was this sense that yes, the baby is coming. But I just, and people were excited. They threw us a beautiful shower, and it was just, they they were so excited, you're gonna have a baby. And I was excited about having a baby. But I'm gonna tell you, I didn't have a clue on what it would be. I'm sure, like everybody of y'all that have had a baby, like, how do you even know what's gonna happen here? I do just remember feeling extremely, are we sure that I am qualified or able to care for a human? We went, we went to all the birthing classes. We, I mean, I read every book. I had a highlighted journal. And our friends in Kansas City, when they sent us off to Fort Arthur, Texas, gave us a driver's manual for a baby. It was like called the baby's owner's manual, and it was great. It had all the things. So we were, we were studying, we were doing our due diligence. But the day that I went into labor, I was just overwhelmed with, oh, this is happening. It felt like something that I was in the back seat of and I was right driving. You know, it was crazy. The church was extremely precious to us. They were good to us. They gave us a shower, they talked to me about having a baby. But the church didn't really have a maternity policy because no church has really had a maternity policy. Not all the districts in the Church of Nazarene have a maternity policy for pastors. Some of my sisters that have had babies have had boards say, Well, it's not in the manual, so I don't know why you need a maternity policy. And I had such a burning desire to prove myself that I promise you did not come from around me or outside of me. It kind of came from within me. But I really think if there would have been someone that had gone through it before me walking alongside me, they would have said, you're gonna take maternity leave and you're gonna let the church stuff go. We'll be okay for the time it takes. Luckily for me, luckily for me, when the time came for Ford to be born, I went into labor. They gave me Pitocin at 7:30, and he was born at 11, and he just slipped right out. There was just, he was the easiest birth ever. In fact, his birth was so easy that I, when people go like, oh, my labor, and would talk about it, I just would get very quiet because I felt extremely badly that Ford just kind of came into the world like here I am, and I'm right on time, and I'm coming into the world my way. The church was so close to the hospital, the hospital was so close to the community, the community was not very large, and we didn't really understand how things worked then. So as soon as the boy was born and they were doing all the measurements, Devin went to get me something to eat because I was extremely hungry with my parents. And I just sat there, I just sat there in the bed and I just had the baby, and I was just recovering for about 10 minutes. My parents weren't there and Devin wasn't there. And then here comes a knock at the door, and it's one of my parishioners coming to say, hello, welcome to the world baby molder. And instead of saying, you can come back later, you can't come now. Because I just had a baby. I just squeezed a human being out of my body. Instead of saying that, I just said, Oh, give me a second, and I went with the nurse and cleaned myself up and put my put a put a some semblance of an outfit on. And in three minutes, I was able to say, hello, yes, I had the baby. So I wanted to make sure that everybody knew I could handle it. So maybe it's my personality. I really don't know, but I don't know why I had to feel this need to prove myself. You know, God had called me and equipped me. I had been preaching for a little bit. Everybody knew I could preach. While I was pregnant, I was preaching just fine. And I just was gonna show everybody I could have a baby and preach. And that means that she'll really want me to stay here. But giving birth to a human being is a little challenging. And even though that labor was easy, I mean I hadn't slept for the two months beforehand very well, and that, you know, explains this addiction I had to real housewives of Orange County in the middle of the night because I was trying to entertain myself while I was awake. That came in very helpful when I was trying to do late-night feeding. So and here it was pressure. Pressure. I had Ford on a Saturday. We called in someone to preach for us the next day. Devin had to go back to work on that Monday. My mom was with me. We came up with a family plan because I didn't plan for maternity leave. We came up with a family plan that I would preach the next Sunday. The first words out of my mouth as I was preaching that next Sunday, the first words of my sermon that week on that Sunday was, What are you doing up here? You just had a baby. And I said to the people, Well, we had a sermon ready. I went into labor, so I'm just giving you the sermon I already had. But I don't, I want to ask myself, and I can't go back in time and ask myself, I don't think anyone had that expectation of me. I don't think anyone had the expectation that I would give birth to a human and preach the following Sunday. What was going on? Why was that culture not telling me to sit down? Why was it a what happened? I was at a pastor meeting many years later, probably when this child that I just talked about giving birth to was probably about 11 or 12. And I was at this pastor meeting and they were talking about balance or something. And the speaker was this really learned professor and also had been a pastor and was a really it was a really good workshop. And I went to him in the like break time and I talked about this experience, like, and then I gave birth and then I preached. And how that really was a conflicting thing. Like, why wasn't the church surrounding me with the need to rest? Why did the district not say you need to rest? Why is the system not promoting this? And I'd already been on this journey, really trying to make sure we all have maternity leaves everywhere in my denomination, in the Church of the Nazarene. And so and it had I met some resistance that I wasn't expecting. And so I was just kind of talking to him about that. So when the session resumed, the esteemed speaker and professor got up and said, Amy Mulder. And I'm like, Oh, great, what did I do? And he said, tell them that story you were telling me. And I said, Oh, well, when I had my our first son, um I after I had had the baby, I preached the next Sunday. And the entire group that was in the workshop burst open in applause. And I swear to you, I did not know what to do. And I said, wait, I don't think we should I remember like I don't think we should applaud that. Like we should have told me why is our system kind of broken? And I couldn't get the I couldn't get my point out. They were so impressed with my work ethic that I would squeeze a human out and then stand behind the pulpit the next week. I looked over at one of my sister colleagues who was who had brought her baby to this conference, you know, because sometimes when you're nursing, it's just easier just to bring the baby, especially if they're like under six months. You can everybody can just hold the baby and ooh and on, it's no big deal. And I looked at her and the look on her face was stunned. I didn't know how to get my point across that it shouldn't matter what a pastor wants to prove, there should be space for birth and rest. As we close this part one of being the pregnant pastor, which I was for about it felt like five years. I know it's just three births, so it wasn't a full five years. It's just an interesting thing to note that where we were as a culture right then was that there was pressure from like the woman's movement and from being a good mom, and that you should only breastfeed or your baby is going to be, you know, and it's gonna have trouble. And then also like Ford just started walking at nine months and didn't crawl, and oh no, that means he's not gonna be a reader. I mean, there is pressure on momhood, just having a baby, being a mother. But being a pregnant pastor is a unique experience for me. And I just I hope that it spoke to you somehow. I hope this story found you. But as I look back at the age of 50 to my 30-year-old self starting having babies, I just want to say to her, and I'm gonna talk to my younger self, and I hope that you feel that God is using this to speak to you. Amy, you could have relaxed. It's okay that you didn't because you were filled with purpose and passion, but it's okay, dear child of God, to rest. It's okay to not strive for excellence every moment of the day. And you have nothing to prove to anybody. Look at my face, dear child. I am calling you to a life of joy and breathing deeply. And you can't breathe deeply if you're just living from achievement to achievement. You can't breathe deeply, child that I love, if you are just continuing to strive forward. I'm so glad that you were born and then you became a giver of life along with me. Rest next time and encourage others to take a break. And that's what God would be saying to me. But something that I want to make sure that I am very clear to you about I think the system failed me, but Port Arthur First Church the Nazarene did not. Those people loved us, they watched our babies for no money all the time. They like would call and beg to take the children, even when Cooper was a spitter-up or a of volcanic proportions. So I just want to make sure you know that we were loved and cared for. Michigan during the during pregnancy with Tucker and just how a different congregation's expectations of me as a pregnant pastor kind of exploded in in an interesting way. And I want to let you know that my promise to be real to you and to ask good questions are still here. So I want to leave you on this day of the All Glory to God podcast with this. What are you striving for? If you're striving to beat yourself up, you need to stop. If you're striving for a toward perfectionistic goal that no one could reach, you need to quit. If you're striving for approval of men that come in the form of a medal or a certificate, they all pass away. Look into the eyes of God. And He is saying, Child, I beg you, come sit a while and rest with me. Have an incredible day. All glory to God. Keep joining me twice a week. See you Tuesday.

SPEAKER_00 23:12

And so God let's give all the glory because He gives us His love. So it's a it's about time we give it up. So let's give all the glory to God.