Leadership

Kate Wallace Nunneley

Bakersfield, Wellspring Free Methodist Church

Briefly describe your testimony of coming to Christ…

I grew up in an actively Christian family, with grandparents and great grandparents on both sides who followed Jesus. I learned about Jesus from everyone around me growing up. I was raised in faith – raised into the family of God.
My faith really became my own in middle and high school. I had transferred from a public school to a Christian school and quickly learned that this school had a very specific view of the role and place of women. I sat in classrooms as my teachers taught me that men were the primary players in God’s story and that women were merely helpers. I was told women shouldn’t speak or pray out loud in church, but were to follow the leadership of men.
I had never heard such things before and I was rocked. I went home to ask my parents what I was supposed to believe, but my mom wanted me to figure out what I believed for myself, so she gave me books to read about the various views of women in the church and family.
From 8th grade through high school I studied those books, and prayed, and talked with anyone who would talk to me about this. More than anything I wanted to honor God in my life, but as a woman I didn’t know how to do that until I knew what God wanted from me.
I prayed and sought after God, and God came to me. My faith became my own as I felt the love of God poured out for me as a woman.
Throughout my life I have prayed for many things, and I have noticed that God doesn’t always seem to show up in obvious ways. But every single time I doubt the freedom that God has for me as a woman and I pray, God shows up in mighty ways.
This is how I got to know God personally and how my faith became my own.

Briefly describe your understanding of God’s calling on your life…

I never wanted to be a pastor. Even though I spent years of my life advocating for other women to pastor God’s people, I never felt that call myself. I knew women who were pastors and saw how difficult it was for them.
I felt that my place was to advocate for them and to educate others about egalitarian theology. I knew God was leading me to seminary, but I thought it was to help with my work with The Junia Project.
I started seminary around the same time that my husband Leif and I started trying to get pregnant and were finding out that it was going to be a struggle. In my Exegesis of Genesis class one of my assignments was to read all the stories where God helped barren women get pregnant – and that stirred something in me. There I was struggling with my own infertility and immersed in the stories of God seeing and choosing barren women to mother God’s people. In short, God used the stories of barren women to show me that I was another woman called to guide, protect, nurture, and grow God’s people – to mother them in a sense.
My understanding of this call has grown as my ministry at Wellspring has grown. I feel a call to preach and to care for the people in our little church. But my favorite thing to do in service is to administer the sacrament of communion. To remind our congregation every week of the sacrifice Jesus made, and to invite them to partake in the life of Jesus and to grow in him.

How did you come to the Free Methodist Church?

I attended the same church for the majority of my life. It was a non-denominational church and it was a blessing to grow up in it. I went away for my masters program and when I came back my church had changed in a few ways – one of which was in its stance on women in leadership. It was a really difficult thing for me and my family to deal with. I had been asking my pastor to mentor me in ministry and teach me how to preach, but he kept declining. I stayed for two years before I realized that it was unhealthy to stay. I was tired of being angry and I needed a place where I could learn about Jesus without being hurt.

I had already met Leif by then and we were dating. I didn’t know what church to go to, so I asked him what he thought (he was living in Santa Barbara at the time and I was in Azusa). He told me about Foothill FMC. My first Sunday away from my childhood church, I visited Foothill. I was in tears as a woman read scripture from up front and as the congregation prayed together for the world. After the service pastor Dale came up to me and said “You’re Kate. You spoke at the FMx event I went to a while back. Do you want to preach here next Sunday?” I was stunned. I told Pastor Dale that I was not ready to preach anywhere but I was looking for mentorship. He began mentoring me that month and I became a member at Foothill that year. This denomination has celebrated the ways I am gifted and has seen leadership capabilities in me that I didn’t know I had. I have been taken in and poured into and raised up, and I know it was the grace of God that got me here. I love the Free Methodist Church.