Amanda Stubbert: Welcome to the SPU Voices podcast, where we tell personal stories with universal impact. I’m your host, Amanda Stubbert, and today we sat down with Pastor Rebecca Worl. She was born and raised as a missionary kid in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. After returning to the States, she finished school in Bellingham and went on to receive her undergraduate degree in theology from Seattle Pacific. Becca then earned her master’s in Theological and Biblical Studies at Fuller and subsequently served as associate pastor on staff at Cedar Creek Covenant in Maple Valley. In 2022, she joined the Pine Lake Covenant Church team as student ministries pastor, in addition to being a retreat speaker and itinerant preacher in the ECC. Becca, thank you so much for joining us today.
Becca Worl: Absolutely. Happy to be here.
Amanda: Well, just a quick shoutout to your parents, who I adore and have known for years. Can you give us a snapshot of what it’s like to grow up as a missionary kid and a daughter of Ruth and Brad Hill?
Becca: Yes. Man, my parents. So they were missionaries in the Congo for 20 years. That’s a long time.
Amanda: That’s a long time. That’s a long time.
Becca: (laughs) And yes, I was born there. Life in the Congo was interesting, to say the least. I love the country, I love the people, and it was a rich and beautiful upbringing, honestly. It had its challenges, obviously, but it was an amazing experience. Overall, I would say that God really formed me deeply in bringing me up as a third-culture kid in many ways. As far as being the daughter to Brad and Ruth Hill, that’s a kick. (laughs)
Amanda: (laughs) I would imagine.
Becca: They are passionate, amazing, amazing people, larger-than-life people, and faithful disciples of Christ. And so I would say just it’s an immense blessing, honestly, to be their daughter and how they have raised me so faithfully in the faith, and the integrity in which they serve the Lord is the example set before me in my life. And so to this day, too, I can’t do anything without my parents. You’d think in my 40s I’d be cutting that cord, but they’re my mentors, right? I send every sermon to them and say, “Check for heresy.” (laughs)
Amanda: (laughs) Typos and heresy, either one.
Becca: Typos and heresy, yeah.
Amanda: Get it out of there.
Becca: They are my champions and they are my greatest supporters.
Amanda: That’s fantastic.
Becca: Love them.
Amanda: Well, the way you answered that question probably answers my next question, which is, having grown up in the church, having been married to a pastor raising my own kids for many, many years as pastors’ kids, I have seen so many missionary kids and pastors’ kids need at least a break, at least a break from the mission field, maybe even from the church to sort of rest from some of that hardship and that pressure before they could come back into the community. And yet I don’t see that in your résumé at all. Talk to me about how growing up and seeing how difficult it is. When did you say, “Yeah, but I’m going to do the same thing?”
Becca: Yeah, that’s a good question. I think, as all pastors’ kids, we do… I’m going to say this generally and some pastor’s kid is going to be like, “That’s not me.” But generally, I think we tend to want to run away from anything our parents did. And maybe that’s just typical for children in general.
Amanda: Right.
Becca: But it was never on my mind, “I’m going to do what my mom and dad do.” And there was a journey that was twisty a little bit as I left high school and started college at SPU, where I was really wrestling and struggling with my faith and just decided I’m an atheist and walked that wrestling road for a few years. And then on a fateful night and a stormy night in Chicago, I opened the book of Job and the Lord hit my heart deeply in that and I came back to faith. So there was a little bit of that. But I think because I had such a healthy experience with parents who were healthy spiritual examples in my life, there was never this “turn away from it all and forget that.” So that’s part of the seeds that were planted there. But I’m wrestling with this whole question of when did I feel a call to be a pastor, and I think it’s different than when did I feel a call to be in ministry.
“And there was a journey that was twisty a little bit as I left high school and started college at SPU, where I was really wrestling and struggling with my faith and just decided I’m an atheist and walked that wrestling road for a few years. And then on a fateful night and a stormy night in Chicago, I opened the book of Job and the Lord hit my heart deeply in that and I came back to faith.”
Amanda: Sure, yeah.
Becca: So when I started at SPU, it was really Professor Kerry Dearborn — I don’t know if anyone remembers her, but she was a most amazing professor and she was the first person to show me biblically that God affirms women in all levels of leadership, and she was the first person to speak into my life and say, “Becca, I think you have a call on your life to ministry.” At that time, I was getting a degree in philosophy because, you know, (laughs) it’s really lucrative.
Amanda: (laughs) Can make a lot of money with a philosophy degree.
Becca: And I think I just liked the professor. And then I was like, “This is not going to work for me,” so then I had moved to psychology, and then we got into neuroscience and I don’t do numbers and stuff, so that wasn’t working. So then when Professor Dearborn said this, immediately my senior year turned and began my degree in Theology.
Amanda: Oh, wow. Okay.
Becca: So then I finished it all in a lot of credits in a year and a half and went to Daystar University in Kenya for part of those. But anyway, in all of the studies of theology, my heart just started becoming more on fire, like, “I love this. I love this. I love this.” And then when I graduated, my dad said, “Why don’t you just take one class at Fuller and see how it goes?” And so I did right here, you know, by Zeke’s Pizza at the little campus here, and that first class I took I left just like, “This is it.” I loved everything about it. So that was a call to ministry, and I was thinking maybe the academic route or something, but I had a preaching class and during that preaching class, I preached my first sermon, and I felt an immense weight of the Spirit on me, and I wept openly in that class right after I preached. And it was affirmed in the class that this is a gift that God has given me. And I wept because the mantle felt heavy, and it is heavy. It’s beautiful, but it’s bringing the word of God, and that’s a sobering thing.
“[B]ut I had a preaching class and during that preaching class, I preached my first sermon, and I felt an immense weight of the Spirit on me, and I wept openly in that class right after I preached. And it was affirmed in the class that this is a gift that God has given me. And I wept because the mantle felt heavy, and it is heavy. It’s beautiful, but it’s bringing the word of God, and that’s a sobering thing.”
So that’s when I thought this is a pastorate route now. So I entered into ministry and in churches, and early in my early 20s, I experienced a great trauma that then deterred me away from being in a pastoral situation or on church staff at all for 15 years. During those years, though, I still felt the faithfulness to the call and I was preaching and writing and teaching and doing retreats, so all the peripheral things outside of church staff, right? And then, as God would have it, eventually I was invited to be on staff at the church that I was attending, and it was then that the Lord brought me into this amazing, deep journey of disclosure and healing and releasing me from the silence and the bondage I was in. And it was during this time of deliverance in ministry that I received again, I would say even more clearer, the confirmation on my heart that God was calling me to be a pastor.
So it’s been a little twisty of a journey, but then as I was pastoring at Cedar Creek, I loved everything. I was like, “I’ll do it all. I’ll do worship and teaching and baptisms and funerals and weddings and counseling,” and there wasn’t anything about working there that I didn’t love being a part of. It was just another affirmation. So long answer to your question.
Amanda: Well, and aren’t they all, right? None of us have a journey that’s just a straight line from point A to point B, and even if it looks like that from the outside, it’s very rarely the case internally, right?
Becca: Exactly, yeah.
Amanda: And yet when we feel like we’re off the path is when we pick up these random skills and experiences that always seem to come around and be exactly what we need, that we didn’t know we needed to get where we need to go.
Becca: Yeah.
Amanda: And I think we all experience the world that way, but it’s just hard to see when you’re in it and you can’t see your goal as a bright, shining thing right in front of you.
Becca: Right, yeah.
Amanda: I read an article that you wrote recently called “Taking Up Space.” I loved the article so much. Can we talk about that article for a minute?
Becca: Yeah, we sure can.
Amanda: Tell us first, what’s the idea of the article?
Becca: Well, it came about my friend Loren works for The Anchor Gathering, and this is a place — I’m just going to plug it a little bit here, but it’s a program that provides a safe place and harbor for women of all ages to gather and hear about faith and be encouraged to find friendship. I came back from class and I told Loren about this experience that I had during my ordination class, and she’s like, “Oh my gosh, you have to write this for the blog.” So that’s how it came about.
It came about where I’m in my ordination classes — so this summer, Lord willing, will be when I’m ordained, but there’s a few more classes I have to take. So I was at this class, and my professor invited a team of women pastors and leaders in the Covenant to come and share their struggles and triumphs and the journey in this vocational field. And in the conclusion of the class, Reverend Mary Chong leaned into the mic and deliberately, slowly said, as a woman, she said, “Do not apologize for your presence. Do not be afraid to take up space.” And something happened when these words came that just had this instantaneous emotional reaction in my heart, and I just started crying. I’m trying to hide my tears at the table. And I’m still trying to unwrap what it was, but I wrote the blog about my reflections on it and I just think these words, “Don’t be afraid to take up space” and “stop apologizing for your presence” are words that many women can relate to, right?
Amanda: Yes. Yes.
Becca: And as I just talked about, my road was long and twisty, and so I had absorbed messages of deceit about my identity and my belonging, especially in this field. And through that pain, I’d been threatened to this place of silence, and I firmly believed, I firmly believed that I could never work as a pastor or in a church. So when the Lord released me from that and showed me the lie and I started walking forward in this ordination process, it’s been one of the greatest victories and triumphs of my life. Every step I take towards ordination is one where I am battling the lie that “you don’t belong here.”
Amanda: That is such a universal thing. I think it’s very universal for women cross-culturally, and unfortunately I want to say especially within the church. And I don’t just mean the Christian church.
Becca: Yeah, sure.
Amanda: Even if you’re not within the church, I read a book recently that was just about the business world, and one of the things it said is notice how often you, as a woman, use qualifiers that the men don’t use.
Becca: Like…
Amanda: Like, “I don’t know, I’m new here, but…”
Becca: Oh, yeah.
Amanda: “This is just an idea, but…”
Becca: Yeah.
Amanda: “This may be nothing…” And then you wonder, why don’t the men listen to your idea? Why does the man next to you say the same thing that you said and everyone listens? Because he just said it.
Becca: Yeah.
Amanda: You gave seven qualifiers why it’s not going to work. He just said the idea. That’s just, I cannot let it go because I read that, like, four months ago, and every time I open my mouth, it feels like, I have to stop myself from using the qualifiers.
Becca: Yeah. Absolutely.
Amanda: And it’s like, why are we apologizing for our taking up space, for us being a human in this world?
Becca: Right. We’re apologizing for our thoughts, for our input, for our ideas.
Amanda: Right.
Becca: And there was another book that came out — you might know who it was who wrote about how women just tend to apologize in general. “I’m sorry” is the first thing out of our mouth. I write an email back and I say, “I’m sorry this is three days late.” And I think in her book she was teaching us how to redo that and say, “Thank you for your patience.”
Amanda: Right. Right.
Becca: And then just get to the point, right?
Amanda: Yeah, and I say sorry even when it’s their fault.
Becca: (laughs) Sorry, yes.
Amanda: Right? I’m like, “I’m so sorry, but I think you’re confused.”
Becca: Yes.
Amanda: Why am I sorry that they’re confused? I didn’t do anything to make them confused. (laughs)
Becca: Right, right. Yeah, and I think the damage of that is that we reinforce the message about our diminishing value in these spaces. It doesn’t help, of course, I think, that in church circles often we still hear “no,” even from safe places. Even from egalitarian churches, we still hear this message subtly that you don’t belong here. I was preaching at a church, and afterward a gentleman came up to me and he said, “I really liked your presentation.”
Amanda: Not sermon.
Becca: Right.
Amanda: Presentation.
Becca: Absolutely. And then another church where I was introduced as Miss Becca.
Amanda: (laughs)
Becca: So, again, beautiful places.
Amanda: Sorry, it’s not funny but it’s funny.
Becca: I know. It is. It is. I would laugh too because I’m like, “Oh, what are we doing?” But I think it’s these small examples, but they’re still these little messages that continue to say, “You don’t belong here.” That’s why it’s just such a battle to continue to claim the truth that God has given us to say, “I have called you, affirmed you, gifted you, and set you apart for this purpose. Now go.” So yeah.
Amanda: I used to preach fairly regularly within our church, and even though I’d been up in front many, many times, like you said, presentations. Anything that’s not a Sunday morning sermon, I knew I could do that and felt totally comfortable. But I just thought, “But I don’t ‘preach.’” I’m doing air quotes right now, for our listeners. I don’t “preach.” And one time many years ago, it was one of those moments where you feel like it’s audible, like you heard God say it.
Becca: Yeah, yeah.
Amanda: And I was like, “But I don’t preach,” in my own head. And God was like, “Can you do a TED Talk? Can you do a TED Talk on a Sunday morning?” And I’m like, “Yeah, I can do that.” It’s like, “Then say yes.” And from that moment, I just…
Becca: That’s so good.
Amanda: It’s just like I had to adjust. I couldn’t get over the hurdle that had been built so high in my own mind.
Becca: Yeah.
Amanda: And then God was like, “Well, reframe it then. We just won’t call it preaching then.”
Becca: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Amanda: And that just released me, and I was like, “Great. I’m going to go do myself a TED Talk on Sunday morning and I’m going to feel really good about it.”
Becca: (laughs) That’s awesome. And then you did it and found yourself preaching. This is what you did.
Amanda: And I did, exactly.
Becca: Yeah, yeah.
Amanda: And, of course, that is exactly what I was doing. I just, again, had to wipe that word away because it had been so imprinted on me that that’s not what I was allowed to do.
Becca: You can’t do that, right, right. Yeah, man, I would say on the flip side, I want to give a positive example of male leadership and allyship that does create safe, safe places. I would say at Cedar Creek, my pastor, Kenton, the lead pastor, he would schedule me to preach, and that wasn’t my primary role. It was a lot of discipleship and all the other things that were happening on Sunday morning. But when he did ask me, it wasn’t just a pulpit fill. So he’s sending a clear message, like, “I value your voice here.” And so he would give me the good Sundays, right? You know what I mean by good Sundays.
Amanda: I do. It’s not when he’s on vacation in the summer and anybody’ll do.
Becca: Right. Or it’s not, like, the one that’s the Sunday after Christmas or New Year’s or Super Bowl Sunday where no one’s going to be there.
Amanda: Nobody’s going to be there anyway. Yeah.
Becca: Right, yeah. And then every time, he introduced me. Even though this is my church and they’ve known me for how many years, he would introduce me as pastor and preacher and called and gifted and anointed by God to give the word. And then he’d sit down in the front row, get out his pencil and his paper and his Bible and sit there and take notes. So, I mean, he’s sending this message of, “She belongs here by God, and I am now sitting at her feet and I am learning from her.” And I just think that our allies could learn from that of how to continue to honor and raise up. Even if we’ve done this hard work and you’re a major egalitarian church, still do that, because that continues to send the message that this is God’s choice.
Amanda: Right, right. And it might take some time to tear down the walls that have been built up in her own mind and self, right?
Becca: Exactly. That’s true.
Amanda: I had to be asked more than once.
Becca: I bet.
Amanda: Because it took time to tear down that wall. And maybe the pastor I was working with at the time didn’t build that wall. It doesn’t matter.
Becca: Doesn’t matter.
Amanda: It still took some time to tear that down.
Becca: Right. It’s from your history that you’re bringing in.
Amanda: Yes. Yeah.
Becca: Yeah, that’s a great point.
Amanda: Speaking of history, you refer to yourself as a wounded healer, a label I can totally relate to. What does that mean to you?
Becca: I read the book Wounded Healer by Henri Nouwen, and that’s when I first absorbed that phrase and it really resonated with me. I think, to put it simply, for me it means allowing God to use my story for his redemptive purposes. Simply sharing my life as the Spirit leads in such a way that invites others into a healing journey. So for example, in my preaching, I always ask myself, how is this message heard from those on the underside of power? How is this message landing on the ears of survivors or victims, the hurt, the brokenhearted, the wounded? I tend to bring my story into my messages, but in such a way that is really general, right? And accessible to anyone who has been through anything, a deep brokenness in their life.
So for example, I preached a sermon on church unity and the value of harmonious intimate Christian fellowship that we see in the early church in Acts. But I can’t preach on that without naming and mentioning what happens when it’s not.
Amanda: Because you know there are people sitting and listening to you that have been chewed up by trying to do that.
Becca: Exactly. Right. So they’re sitting there hearing this. “Oh, this is what the church is supposed to be,” and they did exactly the opposite. That is even a deeper wound because you go into church expecting and hoping that they would be operating in this way, and so it’s a deeper damage done. So I name that and I then I tell a little bit about how I had to heal from damage done in the church community and that I’m still in process, but just the redemption that God has done in my life. So by doing so, again, back to Wounded Healer, I think it opens a door for people to feel safe to come and talk with me afterward and they share their trauma or their stories and their struggles. One person… I was telling her where I was in my journey and she said, “How long ago was it when you disclosed things?” And I gave her the answer, and she looked at me. She goes, “Oh, so there’s hope for me.” So that was really cool for me to see we’re in different places in our journey, and she could see, “Okay, she’s here now and maybe God will bring that strength in me also along the path.” So yeah.
Amanda: Well, authenticity is so important, and I think more and more these days we realize just how important it is, because I feel like when I was a kid, the idea of a pastor was they’re supposed to be perfect and that’s why I can learn from them. Which, of course they’re not, which means you have to hide things, which means you’re lying. But it also is the opposite of what we need. We need someone who’s made just as many mistakes as we have, but they’re just on the other side.
Becca: Yes, yes.
Amanda: It’s like you were saying, you’re just further ahead in the race than I am.
Becca: Yes, right.
Amanda: That’s what I need.
Becca: Right.
Amanda: Right? I need someone who’s been where I am and has made it through.
Becca: Yeah, yeah. And not afraid to share that, like you said, authentically. To say, “This is hard. It’s hard and it’s messy and it’s vulnerable.” I still, in my spiritual direction times with my spiritual director, still come back to two things I’ve got to work on. Does God love me? And am I safe and do I belong in the church community? Especially now. Can I belong as a pastor? And every time we come back to, “Yes, God loves you. And yes, He will be with you in the church community, and yes, you are called to it.” Now, it might not always be pain-free, but the answer is yes to both. But just it’s a journey I still have to work on, and so I share that too. I mean, I’m not done. (laughs)
“I still, in my spiritual direction times with my spiritual director, still come back to two things I’ve got to work on. Does God love me? And am I safe and do I belong in the church community? Especially now. Can I belong as a pastor? And every time we come back to, ‘Yes, God loves you. And yes, He will be with you in the church community, and yes, you are called to it.’ Now, it might not always be pain-free, but the answer is yes to both. But just it’s a journey I still have to work on, and so I share that too. I mean, I’m not done.”
Amanda: Right. Right. And I think that everything can be summed up in three things along with what you just said. Are you loved? Are you safe? Are you seen?
Becca: Ooh, that’s so good.
Amanda: It’s like those are the three things every human being needs. And we are never perfect. We never have a 10 out of 10 on all three ever.
Becca: No. No.
Amanda: You know, if we have two out of three, we are killing it.
Becca: Killing it, yes. (laughs)
Amanda: We are killing it. And so no matter where you are and when you make progress, things shift, and all of a sudden that changes again. The only way we grow is to push into new places, and then suddenly one or two or all three come into question, right?
Becca: Right, right.
Amanda: And so as a pastor, as a leader, as a counselor, if we can show everybody that, “Yeah, I’ve struggled with those. I’m struggling with those right now. This morning I couldn’t get out of bed because I wasn’t sure about one of those three things.”
Becca: Right, right, yeah.
Amanda: That that’s how they feel too.
Becca: Absolutely. Opens up that place for conversation and growth and, yeah, that’s good.
Amanda: Yes. Yes.
Becca: I love Brennan Manning. I want to offer this. It’s a beautiful word. He says, “In a futile attempt to erase our past, we deprive the community of our healing gifts. If we conceal our wounds out of fear and shame, our inner darkness can neither be illuminated nor become a light for others. And when we dare to live as forgiven men and women, we join the wounded healers and draw closer to Jesus.” Isn’t that beautiful?
Amanda: Wow, that’s gorgeous. I love that.
Becca: Yeah, it’s a gift to bring our whole selves to the table and the conversation.
Amanda: Yes. Absolutely.
Becca: Yeah, yeah.
Amanda: You know, I just have to, I can’t end my conversation with you without bringing up a sermon that you had just preached when we first met and talked about you coming on the show, because I think it speaks to that underlying stuff, that people are building the walls that are getting in the way of all the women without knowing that they’re doing it. Let’s talk about that sermon, about the female characters in the Bible and how they’re so often misrepresented, mislabeled, their stories made very simple and black and white. Can you give us a couple examples that you talked about?
Becca: Oh my goodness. Okay, how much time do we have?
Amanda: We could probably talk about that, right?
Becca: (laughs)
Amanda: That could be a whole ’nother, maybe we’ll have you back and we’ll talk the whole time about that, but give us a couple of examples.
Becca: Some highlights here. Okay. Let’s do this. Okay, I’m going to say Rahab first. There’s a whole sermon about that, but she’s always known as Rahab the…
Amanda: Prostitute.
Becca: Boom, right. So Rahab the prostitute, that’s how we talk about her. But we don’t talk about David the adulterer or rapist or murderer, right? He’s David, man after God’s own heart. We don’t talk about Joseph the deceiver or Peter the denier, how about that one? But we keep Rahab’s label. We don’t highlight and focus enough on how faithful and devoted and courageous and believing she was.
Amanda: How about the hero?
Becca: The hero. She saved them.
Amanda: She saved a lot of people.
Becca: Yes, she did, right? Rahab the hero, and Rahab the great-great-great-great-great grandmother of Jesus. So it’s just not fair, and I think that we can do better because, again, we’re sending a message when we continue to keep this label on this woman. And then a whole ’nother time we need to talk about she probably wasn’t a prostitute by choice at all.
Amanda: Right.
Becca: Right? What agency or power did women have in that day? What systems of oppression and injustice happened to bring her to this place?
Amanda: Right. Right.
Becca: But Bathsheba’s really the one that is my favorite, and this sermon has gone out a few times in different churches and on links that I share with people, and I just continue to see God bringing amazing fruit out of this sermon, and I just am so thankful to God. What do we usually call Bathsheba, that she was also a …
Amanda: Temptress.
Becca: Temptress, right, seducer.
Amanda: Yeah, it was her fault David fell.
Becca: Totally, and if you Google pictures of Bathsheba, you see this seductress, you know, seducer-looking person. But here’s my points on this. We’ll do it so fast, okay?
Amanda: (laughs)
Becca: David wasn’t where he was supposed to be. He was supposed to be at war. He’s roaming the roof. He’s bored. She wasn’t bathing on the roof. That’s the part that I tell people and they’re like, “What?”
Amanda: Yeah, because it’s in the song. (sings) “I saw her bathing on the roof.”
Becca: There’s a whole song. (sings) “Bathing on the roof.” Yeah. (laughs)
Amanda: (laughs)
Becca: Faith was weak but he needed proof. She wasn’t even on the roof. Now everyone’s going to listen to this podcast. They’re going to go back and be like, “What?”
Amanda: Like, “Wait a second. Get my Bible.”
Becca: Yeah. So she was taking a religious ceremonial bathing ritual to cleanse herself after her menstruation time, and this is typically done in one specific place, the community mikveh. What she was doing was a holy act of devotion to God. And then he asks about her. He finds out she’s married. Then he sends to go get her like you go get milk, you know.
Amanda: Right.
Becca: And they get her and we know that she has no agency. If the king sends for her, she has to say yes or she could lose her life. I mean, we know this from the story of Esther and Vashti, and this is the power differential. He takes her. He sleeps with her, and that should be enough for people to recognize what happened, what actually happened. But in case it isn’t, Nathan later confronts David and he likens Bathsheba to a stolen, slaughtered lamb. So what is it? What happened? It’s not adultery. No.
Amanda: Um, she was kidnapped.
Becca: She was kidnapped and then she was raped.
Amanda: Yeah.
Becca: So this ought to wake us up from our slumber, and if we continue to present Bathsheba as a seducer, we continue to place survivors and victims in the prison bar of silence forever. Like, we are sending this message that she is to blame for what happened to her as opposed to putting the blame squarely on David. So I just would say it’s time that we restore these women to their rightful places, and this is just a message that we continue to need to preach from the pulpit because they are misused, and in doing so we’re blaming sexual abuse victims as agents of their own trauma.
Amanda: And that the stain will never leave you.
Becca: And it will never leave you, right. This is who you are forever. That’s a good point. It’s beautiful. Yeah. So I just say it’s so, so, so important that we get this right. We need to listen to the text and then let the voices of survivors lead us and bring out their, what’s the song say, their broken hallelujahs to the world.
Amanda: Yeah, yeah.
Becca: Because we have a lot to learn.
Amanda: Because if we can’t see them as someone who even has a possibility of being healed and clean, how will they ever see themselves as healed and clean?
Becca: Exactly. Exactly. Exactly.
Amanda: Well, God bless you, Becca. You are doing the Lord’s work. That is for sure.
Becca: Yeah, yeah.
Amanda: So you’re about to get ordained?
Becca: Yeah.
Amanda: So exciting.
Becca: Yeah.
Amanda: Which, as we’ve heard, is not just a big step — it’s a big step for anyone — but kind of a big full-circle moment for you in your wounded healer journey.
Becca: Yeah.
Amanda Stubbert: What’s next for you? Is there a big dream on the horizon? Maybe there’s not. Maybe we don’t know yet.
Becca: Isn’t that the question? I’m like a jack of all trades. I just love doing all the things, so I am waiting for the Holy Spirit to bring this perfect point of convergence of these things, right? And right now my focus is launching my children, especially my daughter, so it’s hard for me to dream. It’s like I know where I need to be right now and I’m very blessed and happy to be in student ministries, but that’s not the primary call of my heart. I think I’m going to say this out loud in public and it’s going to blow up my life, but I dream about church planting. (laughs)
Amanda: Wow.
Becca: I do. I’m always thinking what would I do? What would it look like? How could it be a third place? How could it be a watering well? How could it be a board game/pub/bookstore/art gallery and turn it into church somehow that gives back to the community?
Amanda: Yeah, yeah.
Becca: So I think about that. I think that would be way longer down the line, but maybe… People ask me, “Do you want to be a lead pastor?” And maybe I need to listen to my own words here, but oftentimes I think, “Oh, no, I couldn’t. I could never.”
Amanda: I think what you don’t want to be is the kind of lead pastor you’ve seen in the past.
Becca: Thank you.
Amanda: I think what you want to be is a lead pastor defined as you and God define it.
Becca: Thank you. I think that’s exactly it, because I have this picture of what that is. I’m like, “That’s not how I would pastor.”
Amanda: Right. And nobody said you have to.
Becca: No one has to say I do that that way.
Amanda: Yeah, nobody said you have to do it like that.
Becca: So yeah, so maybe or maybe just playing second chair is great because then you get to do all the things while someone else takes care of the issues and the conflict and the finances. (laughs) But yeah, so it is a question and I’m just waiting to see what will unfold.
Amanda: Okay, well, don’t lose my number because I’ll be there at your opening Sunday. I want to be there.
Becca: Okay, perfect. Sounds good. Awesome.
Amanda: Okay, well, I’m going to wrap us up with our famous last question we ask all of our guests.
Becca: Oh, yeah, okay.
Amanda: If you could have everyone in Seattle do one thing differently tomorrow that’s going to make the world a better place, what would you have us all do?
Becca: Oh my goodness. Well, recently just up on Queen Anne, I heard an interesting person on a bike circling the neighborhood with one message he had for Queen Anne. When he woke up that morning, he must have thought about this one message he had. And as he circled the block over and over again, he said, “Spiders. In your home. Think about it. Spiders. In your home. Think about it.” (laughs)
Amanda: (laughs)
Becca: So, like, he woke up and had one message for the world, and that’s what it was. So, I mean, I think about it. I don’t want to think about it. Spiders in my home. So let me think about that. It’s probably not that one.
Amanda: No, not spiders in your home.
Becca: Think about it. (laughs)
Amanda: Now I’m going to go home and think about that. (laughs)
Becca: With a megaphone and everything. It was the best.
Amanda: Oh my gosh, that is hilarious.
Becca: Oh, gosh. I guess … It’s so simple, Amanda, but do one thing different that would make the world a better place would probably just be kind. See if we can be kinder. See people, like really see people.
Amanda: Try and peel off the label that we have put or other people have put on them and see what’s underneath.
Becca: Yeah. Yep. Be kind and be kind to yourself. I think my biggest enemy is myself in my head, right?
Amanda: Right, right.
Becca: And then we take that toxicity with us, those thoughts that we have. So kindness would be wonderful.
Amanda: Yeah, awesome. Kindness even to the spiders.
Becca: Even to the spiders in your home. Think about it.
Amanda: In your home. In our home. We’ll think about it.
Becca: (laughs)
Amanda: Oh my gosh. I’m going to think about that for a while. Oh, Becca, thank you so much. I have so enjoyed our conversation and I’m not kidding, I want you to come back and we’ll talk about the women in the Bible.
Becca: Let’s do it. That would be really great. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
