by Pastor Katie Trook

When I told my four sons that this Sunday is Women’s Sunday, one of them looked up and said, “What’s the big deal about that?”

My first instinct (in a house where I am very outnumbered) was to roll my eyes and give a little speech. But I paused. Because for them, women leading at The Church in Aurora isn’t a big deal. It feels normal. They see their mom and their friends’ moms active in church leadership.

And at TCIA, this has been normal for a long time.

  • Our church history is rich with examples. Women were given the right to vote in the church as early as 1847, decades before we could go to the polls. From there, the timeline is striking:
  • 1882: First woman to serve as an officer of the church, Mrs. Frank Hurd, elected Clerk
  • 1890: A woman was elected Treasurer
  • 1891: Ministry teams and committees launched that were led by and/or included women
  • 1897: Two women led the church in prayer during a service
  • 1898: A Deaconess Committee was created (with women serving in leadership alongside church governance)
  • 1941: The Women’s Guild President became a voting member of the Church Board
  • 1953: First female Moderator, Esther Petot
  • 1974: First female Elder, Joan S. Dart
  • 1979: First female Trustee, Ann Chapman
  • 1985: First female Pastor, Jane Van Auken

This weekend also falls alongside International Women’s Day (March 8), a global day honoring women’s contributions and drawing attention to the barriers women still face around the world. That makes this Sunday both things at once: wonderfully normal here, and absolutely worth pausing for on a global scale.

If women’s leadership ‘isn’t a big deal’ here, maybe that’s because our church has been doing for generations what Jesus did in Luke 13, seeing women, calling them forward, and making room for them to stand tall. I’m glad my sons think it’s normal. I want to make sure they never forget why.