In All Things Love

Serving as a chaplain at St. Mary’s Medical Center in Langhorne, Pennsylvania, a Catholic hospital, Mikayla Sauerbrey stopped by the room of an older woman who struggles with memory loss. “She was alone and lonely, and I asked her if she would like me to stay awhile,” says Sauerbrey. “She said she would love that, so I sat with her and just held her hand for a while. Sometimes people just need you to be there. The ministry of presence was so evident in that situation and a good reminder that it’s not necessarily the words you bring. Maybe just your calm presence can be the thing that some people need in that moment.”

Sauerbrey is in her final year in the master of divinity program at Moravian Theological Seminary and is a candidate for ordination in the Northern Province of the Moravian Church. Her journey is supported by the Lenora Treder Scholarship Fund and John & Helen Scarcella Scholarship Fund.

The clinical pastoral education placement at St. Mary’s was a requirement of her ordination. The internship was an 11-week full-time intensive experience during the summer of 2022. For her clinical work, she served two units. The first was an acute care unit where patients would stay several days. They might be suffering with COVID, drug or alcohol withdrawal, cancer, memory issues, the aftermath of major surgeries, and so forth. Sauerbrey also made visits on a unit that handled patients who’d be released in a day or two.

“I viewed my role as someone who can listen who is not your medical caretaker,” says Sauerbrey. “Some patients were very open to that and welcomed me into their room and spilled everything that’s going on, and others did not want to meet with me, and that was okay. I always stopped at the door and asked if I could come in. I wanted to respect that the room was their space. When they would invite me in and open up, that’s where I received a lot of joy, even though some of it was heartbreaking. Just getting the opportunity to sit with them amidst the chaos was very special and something I felt very privileged to do.”

As much as Sauerbrey loved visiting patients during the summer, “it wasn’t as life-giving to me as when I am in my current parish where I am a student pastor,” she says. “It’s very rare to see patients more than once or twice, and you never know what happens. You visit on Monday, maybe again on Wednesday, and when you come back Friday, they’re gone. Being a pastor, I get to walk alongside you so much longer.”

The calling to pastorship has been with Sauerbrey from the beginning. She fell in love with the church as a young girl in elementary school. Her dad volunteered at their church a couple of times a month, and Sauerbrey would get up very early to go with him just to be in the church, listen to practice, and talk with the pastor. At age 11, congregants could volunteer in the children’s ministry. “I was holding babies and doing anything I could do,” she says.

“The church was everything to me. It was me getting everyone up on Sunday mornings. I loved being there— the environment, the people, teaching Sunday school—and I was very spiritually engaged. Even though my personal views and understanding have drastically

Challenging the Limits on Women Pastors

Mikayla Sauerbrey, a candidate for ordination in her final year in the master of divinity program at Moravian, was meant to be a pastor from a very young age. Still, she wrestled with two pathways before making a firm commitment to the ministry. She loved the Baptist church of her youth, but it does not ordain women. The only position allowed women is director of the children’s program.

“I loved working with kids, and I studied children’s ministry at Crown College in Minnesota,” says Sauerbrey. But conversations with a few of her professors and the pastor of a local Moravian church challenged her thinking. “They called out changed since that age, church was very important to me, and I felt so connected to God. I felt this is where I belong.”

Today, Sauerbrey has a part-time internship as a student pastor at the Emmaus Moravian Church, in Emmaus, Pennsylvania, serving alongside Pastor Brian Dixon. “They’re a church that has a long history in the Lehigh Valley. This year marks 275 years of being a congregation. It’s a church full of wonderful, welcoming individuals.” Sauerbrey preaches, leads Sunday school classes, and visits congregants who are shut in at home or in the hospital, and she is working on the confirmation curriculum for this coming year. “I am so grateful to serve alongside Brian and this whole church that wants me to be the pastor I am meant to be.”

And who is that pastor? “I want to walk alongside you. I want to be there for the baptisms, confirmations, and weddings, for the highs and lows, and be a spiritual resource for you. When the world is falling apart, I want to be someone safe for you to turn to. And that, in more recent years, is so important to me in my pastoral identity. So many of my friends are in the category of ‘nones and dones.’ Nones are people who have no religion. Dones are people who’ve had religion and are done. Most of my friends are dones, but they’ve also told me, ‘I’ll listen to you preach, and if I feel like I need a prayer for something, even if I don’t know if I believe in prayer anymore, you are the person I’m coming to.’

“A lot of us have similar upbringings and have church hurt, whether that’s me—who was told by my church of origin that I, a woman, couldn’t go into the ministry—or my queer friends, who were told who they are is wrong. I want to be a pastor for people who still have a desire for spirituality and connection to Christian faith but feel so harmed by it.

“So that makes me a pastor for those who are questioning, doubting, reluctantly still believing. Many people my age have a desire for spirituality but don’t feel safe going to certain places, and for very good reasons. I can be the pastor that they needed growing up or they need now; someone who welcomes questions and doubts and is not at all scared if you don’t believe today or tomorrow. I am still here for you.” my leadership, which was terrifying and exciting.” Sauerbrey wrestled with whether to go the route of children’s ministry or pursue a pastoral vocation. “Ministry was always there,” she says. “I realized I was always going to be caring for people and walking beside them, and that helped make the decision.” That decision ultimately led her to the Moravian Church, which welcomes women into the ministry.

To learn how you can light the way for our students’ future, visit moravian.edu/lightingtheway.

The world at large, however, still sees ministry as a man’s domain, something Sauerbrey quickly learned in her summer internship as a chaplain at St. Mary’s Medical Center in Langhorne, Pennsylvania. “Even though I wore a badge that read ‘Chaplain,’ I was not seen as one right away because I am a young woman. Staff and patients treated me like a social worker from the get-go. I would get questions like ‘Have you found a bed for this patient?’ and ‘Did you reach out to the insurance company?’ ”

Of course, many of the patients were Catholic, another faith tradition that does not allow women to serve as priests. “They automatically think of the chaplain as an older man wearing the collar,” says Sauerbrey.

“It was a learning hump that I didn’t anticipate. I found myself wrestling with my identity, telling myself, ‘I am a spiritual leader even though I don’t look like one.’ ” Sauerbrey accepted it and adjusted to it. Over time, it got better with the hospital staff, and many patients welcomed her to their rooms.