Voices: Meredith Summers: A woman called to ministry

I’ll never forget my call to ministry.

I was a sophomore in high school attending my church’s Disciple Now weekend. Our group sat in a circle in the living room of our host home, each of us praying silently about what the Lord had placed on our hearts. In that moment, it hit me with unmistakable clarity.

What had once been a question, something I had considered but never fully settled, suddenly became clear. I knew the Lord was calling me into ministry, and with excitement, I began discerning what that calling would be.

As a teenage girl called to ministry, I believed I had three options: children’s ministry, foreign missions, or marry a pastor. No one ever sat me down and said that outright. There was no conversation where a church leader outlined my future. But it was what I had seen, and so it was what I assumed.

For the next few years, I kept returning to the same question: What is the Lord calling me to do? I enjoyed children’s ministry, but I didn’t feel especially drawn to it. I hoped to be married one day, but I knew I couldn’t build a calling on that. That left foreign missions.

And honestly, it made sense. I loved missions. The church where I grew up emphasized it heavily, taking multiple short-term trips each year. I spent spring breaks serving along the border of Mexico, and the summer before my senior year, we traveled to Amman, Jordan, to serve in a Palestinian refugee camp.

During a week at Mission Arlington, my youth pastor’s wife pulled me aside after I taught the Bible lesson and told me I had the gift of teaching.

Missions gave me a place to serve, to use my gifts, and to be shaped in the way of Jesus as I encountered a world far beyond my own.

It seemed like the natural trajectory of my life, the answer to the prayer I had been praying since I was 16: Lord, what are you calling me to do? I believed I knew the answer. Now, I just needed to prepare.

Preparing

So, I enrolled at Howard Payne University (Sting ‘Em!) and majored in Cross Cultural Studies. My time there was marked by encouragement, affirmation, and an excellent education. Professors like Mary Carpenter, Gary Gramling, and the late Frankie Rainey shaped not only how I led and taught, but how I loved God and his people.

After graduating in 2006, I began pursuing a Master of Divinity at Baylor University’s Truett Theological Seminary.

While I felt confident in my call to missions, I didn’t yet know where or how that calling would take shape. Continuing to discern God’s call while also strengthening my training felt like the next right step.

During my time at Truett, I met a man who shared my passion for missions. We began dating, fell in love, and eventually married. It felt like everything was falling into place. God had given me a spouse, a best friend, and a ministry partner.

After seminary, we served together in a local church, welcomed a child into the world, and continued seeking God’s timing for the mission field. Then, three years later, what felt like the perfect opportunity landed in our laps.

My home church approached us about serving at a partner church in Vancouver, British Columbia. I remember being amazed at God’s kindness.

For years I had prayed and wondered what this calling would look like. Where I would go, who I would serve, how it would all come together. And now, here it was. To serve in a place connected to my home church, to see familiar faces on mission trips, to do ministry alongside them, it felt like more than I had ever imagined. I was living my calling.

It would be easy to end the story there. The girl who sensed God’s call at 16 followed it faithfully, and everything came together just as she had hoped.

But that’s not how the story goes.

Changing

After one year in Vancouver, my family returned home, and my story took a turn I never could have imagined. Divorce. My family was broken. My vision for ministry was shattered. I had always assumed I would serve in vocational ministry alongside my husband. Instead, at 30 years old, I found myself navigating a completely different reality.

I began teaching third grade and quietly assumed I would never serve in vocational ministry again. I couldn’t picture what that would even look like.

Then, about three years later, I heard my church, Pioneer Drive Baptist Church in Abilene, was looking for a minister to women and singles.

It took months to gather the courage to apply. This was never the kind of ministry I had envisioned for myself. But eventually, I found myself sitting across from the (now-retired) senior pastor, Stan Allcorn, sharing my story. I’ll never forget what he told me: “What you feel is your greatest weakness will become your greatest strength.”

A few months later, I came in view of a call. One year after that, I preached on a Sunday morning for the first time. Now, 10 years later, that young mom who once thought her family and ministry were beyond repair is, by the grace of God, serving as a family minister.

The place in my life that once felt like my greatest failure has become the very place God is using me most, because his strength is made perfect in weakness.

Deep joy, contentment, purpose

Recently, I sat across the table from a soon-to-be college graduate wrestling with her own calling. She was anxious, trying to make all the right choices to stay perfectly within God’s will.

I shared my story with her: the 16-year-old who felt called to missions, who tried to follow the path as faithfully as she could, and who now finds herself in a life that looks nothing like she once imagined.

By all logic, it might seem like I got it wrong, that I misheard God or drifted off course somewhere along the way. That maybe I’m living Plan B.

But nothing about my life feels like Plan B.

The deep joy, contentment, and purpose I feel—it feels like Plan A. That is the grace of God. He takes the brokenness, the unexpected turns, the things we would never choose, and weaves them into something only he could create.

My life and ministry look nothing like I thought they would. But every day, I am grateful his strength is made perfect in weakness, and his kindness never fails.

Meredith Summers is the family minister at Pioneer Drive Baptist Church in Abilene. The views expressed in this opinion article are those of the author.