Traditionally, women are seldom in ministry, but in the 21st century women are challenging stereotypes while preaching the gospel. I have been blessed enough to have a home church that encourages and supports women actively contributing to spreading the gospel. My home church, the Community Christian Yellow Box, has many incredible, intelligent, and impactful women working for them. One person in particular, Sabrina Feliciano. She is a female liaison, finance admin, and catalyst for programs in ministry at The Box. Although Sabrina Feliciano is young, she has made an incredible impact on students and the future for women in Ministry.
Sabrina is a senior at Moody Bible College studying to complete her bachelors in biblical studies with an emphasis in leadership, with hopes of starting seminary school in months to come. Sabrina will tell anyone that asks that she did not want to go to a Christian college, that she did not want to go into ministry, but God had a better plan already in place for her, and she could never be more thankful that she is in student ministry now. She was helping her Aunt move houses when she encountered God’s initial push for her to be in ministry:
“I was helping my aunt move out of her house when I was a junior in high school, and a family friend, that I viewed as more of a Grandmother figure in my life, came up and started asking questions about the future. This woman was a stereotypical church grandmother that you would see in movies. So, when she asked me about college I knew the only way to get her to stop asking was if told her I was going to Moody Bible College. A year and a half later she died of breast cancer, and I truly believe she had a hand in me ending up at Moody. So I applied even though I didn’t want to go to a Christian school. I received an email acceptance two and half weeks before letters of acceptance with grant, and scholarship information were being sent out. After I was accepted I was confused, and worried about my future, so I turned to God for answers. I was praying and asking God what to do with my life and I told him ‘I will go to Moody if you provide the means for me to do so.’ I then went my first three years at Moody bible college debt free.”
Sabrina Feliciano’s encounter with God in such an apparent and rewarding way has led her to the desire and the ability to help make a path for women in ministry. Sabrina shared that often “when people see women in ministry they assume they are part of children’s ministry, or they sing.” While both of these roles are extremely important and impactful aspects of ministry, there is an obvious lack of females as lead teaching pastors. The bible often expresses women to be working at the side of men; aiding men in their leadership roles. However, Adam was made of Eve, and we are all God’s children.
The desire from women to be lead pastors, and in major leadership roles in a church is evident, and has always been there. Sabrina, like many other women, are now stepping up and fighting for the positons in the church that would typically be awarded to men. Women are fighting to change the trajectory of what women’s expected roles in the church are. Sabrina, working with ministry often encounters young girls who have hopes of being active leaders in a church one day. “When one of my girls tell me they want to be pastors and in roles that men are traditionally in, I want to be able to show them that they can do that.”
My home church, and the church that Sabrina Feliciano works for, Community Christian Yellow Box has been blessed with many strong, faith driven, and hardworking women on their staff. Developing women into leadership roles in a church is completely uncharted territory, but according to Sabrina “they are actively working to encourage, support, and grow women in theses leadership roles.” Because the Yellow Box church has supported the leaders and members of the church to grow and strive in their faith, Sabrina was gifted with the opportunity to disciple in young girls’ lives. Sabrina, and all the incredible women at the Yellow Box church, have especially impacted my life and my relationship with God. Sabrina, disciplining, and being with me through every step of my life’s journey since we met, has helped me see what God has done in her life, and what God can do in my life. All the women at the Box church have shown me how to be a strong, hardworking, woman leading my life by faith and using that to pour the love of Jesus into other people. Because of Sabrina’s testimony, because of how she has lived her life, she has begun to help paint a path for not only women fighting for leadership roles in a church, but for women fighting for any recognition in a male dominated field.
