Episode 3 | August 11, 2025
Tara Beth Leach, pioneering female pastor, recounts her calling, opposition, and perseverance. From historic pulpits to painful smear campaigns, she navigates sexism, criticism, and hope. In conversation with Nikki Toyama-Szeto, she offers a redemptive vision of the church rooted in Jesus’s enduring belief in his people and the mission of God.
Ep. 3 | Tara Beth on Women, Leadership, and God’s Mission
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I think Jesus believed in us then. And I think he still believes in us today.
Pastor and author Tara Beth Leach shares the story of her remarkable, turbulent tenure as the first female lead pastor of Pasadena First Church of the Nazarene (aka, PazNaz). In conversation with Nikki Toyama-Szeto, Tara Beth recounts her early call to ministry, navigating the complexities of breaking boundaries as the first female preacher or lead pastor in various congregational settings, enduring smear campaigns and deeply personal criticism, and shepherding a congregation through seasons of pain and hope.
I think Jesus believed in us then. And I think he still believes in us today.
She reflects on the sustaining grace she found through therapy, spiritual direction, supportive peers, and the vision of Jesus for the church—a vision she still clings to despite the hardships of social media attacks and attempts to undermine her ministry.
From redemptive ministry moments to the difficult decision to step away and return home to care for her family, Tara Beth’s story testifies to resilience, calling, and the belief that Jesus still believes in the church. This is a story of faith, perseverance, and a vision for a “beautiful mess” made whole in God’s love.
Tara Beth Leach is an evangelical pastor and author of Emboldened: A Vision for Empowering Women in Ministry and Radiant Church: Restoring the Credibility of Our Witness. Since 2023, she has served as senior pastor of Good Shepherd Church in Naperville, Illinois. Her ministry has spanned local churches, national speaking, and advocacy for women in leadership.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto is Executive Director of Christians for Social Action and host of Credible Witness. She leads conversations at the intersection of faith, justice, and public life, drawing on decades of ministry experience in global and domestic contexts.
“I think Jesus believed in us then. And I think he still believes in us today. And so there’s still something about that vision that I keep clinging to and going back to and feels that same burning that I had as a teenager to tell the world about Jesus. There’s still that fire in me because I believe in that vision that Jesus gives us for who the bride of Christ can be and this beautiful mess.”
“It was soul crushing. It nearly knocked my legs out from underneath me. It wasn’t long after that I called my husband home. I was nearly having a panic attack. And I called my husband and I was sobbing on the bed and I said, babe, just get me outta here. Just get me outta this place. And then I would get a good cry and I would come out of it and I’d say, okay, no, like pull it together, Tara Beth. God’s gonna turn this around. God brought you here. God’s gonna turn this around. We’ve just gotta keep going. Just keep putting one foot in front of the next.”
“It was as though one day I saw the world in black and white, and the next day I saw the world in color. And I was thrilled to be one voice to tell the world about Jesus. In fact, I was so excited about, I wanted to stand on the rooftops and also right away. That was a confusing thing for me because I had never seen a woman do that. My imagination was lagging behind, and so there was a fire in my bones. I wanted to stand on the rooftops with a megaphone and tell everyone, Jesus has changed my life, hear the good news.”
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Credible Witness is brought to you by the Rethinking Church Initiative.
Tara Beth Leach: I have often been either the only female voice, only female pastor, or the first, and so because of that, I am put into places where congregations are processing this afresh.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: In 2016, Tara Beth Leach became the first woman to Pastor Pasadena Church of the Nazarene PasNaz.
Tara Beth Leach: First Church of the Nazarene of Pasadena.
It’s the second oldest church in our denomination. The flagship church in the denomination was a church to be a forerunner of ideas and innovation and pastors, you know, were listened to from around the globe. It was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream. They were looking for a pastor who was a nurturer, uh, who was a shepherd.
When I was listening to them and what they were looking for, I thought. That, that actually sounds like me.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Her family moved from Chicago to Los Angeles for the job,
Tara Beth Leach: a happy staff pastor in the western suburbs of Chicago, and somehow my name ended up on a list and they called me and they said, Tara Beth, would Jew consider coming and being our lead pastor?
When I asked her, I said, what, what church is this? And they said, well, it’s,
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: it took my breath away. And just a week after she was installed as senior pastor, one third of the church went missing.
Tara Beth Leach: So my very first Sunday, that installation Sunday, where there was just such a hopefulness of trajectory, it was wonderful and it was good.
One week later, we showed up and a third of the congregation was missing. 600 people are missing from the congregation. I remember standing in the office with one of the women from our accounting department who had a lot of deep connections in the church and her remarking. To me, it feels as though the bottom has dropped out of this place.
And that was really disorienting at first because we didn’t understand. I, I think many thought that what our worst fears were like something like that happening wouldn’t actually happen, but it did.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: This is a story about the power of a calling in the face of doubt. And a pastor’s un flagging hope in the church and hope in Jesus’s love and belief in the church.
I’m Nikki Toyama-Szeto and this is Credible Witness, a collection of stories and wisdom from faithful people wrestling with and bearing witness to the credibility of Christian life today. Each episode is an invitation to listen generously and courageously to one person, navigating social tension and moral complexity, negotiating doubts, struggles and fears, overcoming obstacles, and pursuing justice and living out the convictions of their faith.
And every voice reminds us that the church is called to be. A credible witness to Christ, a living reality of hope, justice, truth and love.
In this episode with Tara Beth Leach, she tells us her story of faith and leadership. She shares about the pain, doubt, and struggle that came from intense scrutiny, harmful and unjust criticism, and in some cases outright sexism After she took the job, she talks about the challenges of public ministry and how gender and other assumptions people have can play an outsized role in something that feels deeply personal and sometimes private in a beautiful vision of hope for giving love and freedom to simply be herself.
She reflects on the calling to Christian ministry today as an alignment with the mission of God for redemption, and she articulates and expresses her hopes. For how the church can navigate today’s cultural landscape. When I first met Tara Beth, I was surprised by her warmth and welcome. For years, I had been casually collecting leadership stories.
How did you start on this journey? Did you always know you were a leader? But I was caught off guard when I met Tara Beth, was this the person standing in front of me? The history making pastor and author. I had heard so much about being with her is easy, and that was a surprise. She has leadership presence, but she holds it in a way that says, welcome.
This is a good spot to sit over here. It felt so different from the other Leader chats I had done. No shields up, no pre-written answers, not. That passion monologuing that sometimes happens. Instead, sitting with Tara Beth felt like talking with a character in a movie who dropped some mysterious piece of wisdom where the main character spends their whole life discovering its truth.
That’s what she felt like. Someone whose guidance was seasoned, mature, and deep.
Tara Beth Leach, thanks so much for joining us in this conversation. I’m thrilled to be here. Tara Beth Leach is an evangelical pastor and author of several books, including Emboldened, A Vision For Empowering Women in Ministry and Radiant Church, restoring the Credibility of our Witness. Since 2023, she served as the senior pastor of Good Shepherd Church in Naperville, Illinois.
Can you tell us a little bit about the community in which your faith was formed?
Tara Beth Leach: Yeah, I grew up in a family of cultural Christians. You know, we went to church on holidays, on Christmas and Easter. I was, I was baptized into a Christian community and confirmed, and when I was a teenager, I got involved with the Ministry of Youth for Christ Campus Life Program.
And it was there that I began to hear about Jesus in ways that I never had before and I. Actually really started to fall in love with Jesus. When I was reading my Bible, I was reading through the Gospel of Luke, and one night I was overcome and got on my knees next to my bed and just began to weep over my Bible.
And I just, the only words that I could say were, thank you Jesus. Thank you Jesus. Wow. Thank you Jesus. Yeah. And it was a couple of months after that that I had a, another very dramatic. Call to ministry
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: as a teenager, not long after coming to Faith in Christ, Tara beth felt a profound and clear call to ministry, which is to say the deep and piercing sense of vocation that was clear and strong.
It’s one thing for a young person, let alone someone so young in the faith to experience a big calling, but all the more, she had never seen a woman in ministry. She had no idea what that could possibly mean. All she knew was this gospel story so powerful. The world had come alive, and she was going to tell the world about Jesus.
Tara Beth Leach: I was 16 years old. I had no idea what it meant. To be called into ministry. What I did know is I wanted to tell the world about Jesus. Jesus had radically changed my life for the better. I mean, it was as though one day I saw the world in black and white, and the next day I saw the world in color and I was thrilled to be one voice to tell the world about Jesus.
In fact, I was so excited about, I wanted to stand on the rooftops and also right away. That was a confusing thing for me because I had never seen a woman do that. My imagination was lagging behind, and so there was a fire in my bones. I wanted to. Stand on the rooftops with a megaphone and tell everyone, Jesus has changed my life, hear the good news.
And at the same time, I had never so my imagination just, it just couldn’t see that as a reality. And in fact, a very well meaning youth pastor told me that I would make a great. Pastor’s wife. Oh, is that right? Um, and that if I wanted to be in ministry, that would probably be the best route. Otherwise, children’s ministry or youth.
Yes. But I could never be a pastor.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: So your imagination was also reinforced mm-hmm. By your community. That’s right. Sort of saying, Hey, this is what this invitation Right. Could look like lived out Right. For you, but your, your journey took a different path. And it took a path eventually to a senior pastor role.
What shifted? What changed?
Tara Beth Leach: Yeah. You know, after living with that dissonance for several years of one sense, knowing that I have these gifts inside of me, that I felt like if I didn’t steward them, if I didn’t use them, I was going to explode. And on the other end, you know, just a real confusion between, you know, a biblical theological view for women and also an imagination issue over time.
By the time I graduated with a degree in youth ministry from Olive Nazarene University, I began to develop a more. Biblical theological framework for the role of women in the Bible and in ministry at all levels of leadership. And so after graduating, I jumped right in to ministry, eventually went to seminary at Northern Theological Seminary and, and that first decade of ministry, a little over a decade.
It was full of very, very exciting moments as a young, young minister, moments where I was getting some of my first opportunities to preach. Preach before, you know, congregations, moments where people were coming alongside of me and tapping me on the shoulder and saying, I see this in you, Tara Beth. We need more of that.
We need more of your voice. Moments where I was invited to tables where I had dreamed my whole life to be at one day. Incredible moments. And I also started to get taste of the reality of the evangelical context and landscape for women. Mm-hmm. You know, in those early years I definitely experienced a lot of hurt, uh, from well-meaning folks who just genuinely wanted to follow the Bible, I think.
And so it was just a place that I had to navigate of constantly being questioned. About my place in ministry being, uh, my, my authority being questioned, my title being questioned, um, my role as a wife being questioned. You know, I mean conversations like how, how does it work for you to pastor your husband when you are to submit to his authority?
Mm-hmm. Or what are you going to do when you have children? How will you, pastor and, and mother? Um, and then even some more just hurtful things, you know, that a female pastor is, that’s, that’s not even a thing. Mm-hmm. That’s not even a. A biblical thing mm-hmm. To people walking out while I’m preaching to receiving letters.
But all of those things, I think in the grand scheme I had it, it, those who supported me and who were for me far outweighed some of those hardships in the early years.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: I see. So you’re in this dynamic place, serving in a local church. And it sounds like there’s something of a, a ministry maturing that’s happening.
Yes. Uh, there’s some challenges. Yes. Some questions. Right. Sounds like maybe you were kind of a, a front runner, uh, in terms of as a woman pastor, in that context,
Tara Beth Leach: I have often been either the only female voice, only female pastor, or the first. And so because of that, I am put into places where congregations are processing this afresh.
Oh, so you,
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: you have more than once been in the place where? You are the first female pastor
Tara Beth Leach: or the first female preacher, or the only female preacher on the preaching team, or, yes, the first female pastor. Only once, however, had I been the first female lead pastor,
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Tara Beth has a spiritual and moral imagination for the church that’s bolstered by the scriptures and a biblical framework for women in ministry. 2016 to 2020 was a tumultuous time in America to think about public life in the United States. During those years, the chaos and the communication breakdown, a reckoning around race and police violence, an astounding erosion of trust.
This was not an easy time to guide a flock, but Tara Beth’s vision and hope during this time was to nurture and shepherd a community that she was coming to love dearly.
And can you tell us a little bit about how that invitation came to you? This invitation to be the first female lead pastor,
Tara Beth Leach: it was a dream. It was a dream. I had just graduated from Northern Theological Seminary. I was newly ordained after a very, very long know 15 year credentialing process and. The church called me out of the blue.
I was, I was a happy staff pastor in the western suburbs of Chicago, and somehow my name ended up on a list and they called me and they said, Tara Bess, would you consider coming and being our lead pastor? And when I asked why, I said, what, what church is this? And they said, well, it’s pna. It took my breath away.
See, what you need to know is PNA is, has an incredible history within our denomination. And, and PAs NZ stands for what? First Church of the Nazarene. Of Pasadena. Okay. It’s the second oldest church in our denomination, um, by others. It had been called, you know, the flagship church. And the denomination was a church in which many watched to be, as, you know, a forerunner of ideas and innovation and pastors, you know, were listened to from around the globe.
And so when they called me, honestly Nikki, my first thought was. They have a mistake or, and the token female that they want on the list. I mean that, those were just my early thoughts and of course I, you know, because it was kind of too wonderful to believe it was too wonderful. Why would they be calling a 34-year-old female that had never been a lead pastor before?
It just seemed too wild to me. And at the same time we were so honored and we thought, you know, let’s, let’s, my husband and I, when I say we, we, we, we prayed about it and we began a very long discernment process with the church, and it seemed like it was just. Too good to be true. It was a dream. I mean, first of all, we were leaving dreary Chicagoland.
We were leaving shoveling snow to the mountains of Pasadena, to the beaches of California, to the palm trees and into all the just beautiful life out here. Mm-hmm. And then also. To a congregation, a larger congregation within our denomination that never before had called a female. For so many of us, it felt like a moment, and it did.
It felt like a moment. I will never forget the day that I was installed as their pastor. Our family. We stood before the congregation, Nikki, I, I obsessed about what I was going to wear, about what I was going to preach about. Mm-hmm. Uh, for weeks I agonized over and I ne, you know, I still remember I was standing there.
I bought a black suit because I was so scared. Uhhuh, I’d never been a lead pastor before. Uh, and I thought, okay, I’ve gotta go real conservative here. Uhhuh gotta do a black suit, black skirt. You know, I put my boys in their little vests, Uhhuh. Uh, that’s right. And we, we gotta look the parts. Yes. We gotta look the part.
Yes. And I cut my hair. Even because I thought if my hair is too long, yes, I’m not gonna be taken seriously. And we stood there and it was a moment, there was such, there was national excitement. A church within our denomination that was larger had never before done this. And not many other large churches had done this before.
But even more than that for me. This was a moment because I got to shepherd a church that I was falling in love with. Wow. And I was thrilled to be one pastor to steward those moments, that church, to be a church on mission. We would often talk about. And you know, I always say, you know, I never went into ministry to talk about women in ministry.
Right? That’s not my mission. My passion is the church. My passion is the mission of God. I happen to be a woman, and I, I, I bring that with me and I, I talk about women because I think that a woman in ministry. Because I think that it matters, you know, as Carolyn Cusas James often remark, she says that when women are held back in the church, the church limps along.
And so, so I, you know, I bring up the gender piece also because it’s, it kind of, there’s a lot of ripple effects that that came after that moment, but just. In the beginning, those dayss, it was incredible.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: In 1853, Antoinette Brown Blackwell became one of the first women in America to be ordained in a major Protestant denomination. When she became the minister at the Congregational Church in South Butler, New York, she was a suffragist. An abolitionist, an itinerant preacher, and a public intellectual, but I doubt you’ve ever heard of her.
In the same year that she was ordained, she was barred from speaking at the World Temperance Convention solely on the grounds of her gender, and subsequently, her time in the pastorate was brief. But I think about women like her and the spiritual impact of. Quiet lives of faithfulness and hope and commitment to leadership.
Even when they try to shut you up, even when they disinvite you and depose you, you can continue in the calling you’ve received. I mean, it sounds like it was monumental for you personally. Yes. But it also was monumental for a larger community. That’s right. There was something that this meant That’s right.
That, that was happening. Can you tell me a little bit about what was the ministry invitation? Mm-hmm. As you went through this long discernment process with the church before you kind of started in the job. Yeah. What did you understand the the ministry invitation or the opportunity to be? Yeah. What was happening in that moment?
What did the church need and why did they choose you?
Tara Beth Leach: Yeah, they were looking for a shepherd, you know, so they had a legacy of a lot of really, really brilliant preachers and teachers. And one of the things that the board said to me is they were looking for a pastor who was a nurturer, who was a shepherd.
And I, and then when I would, when I was listening to them and what they were looking for, I thought. That that sound, that actually sounds like me. Oh, they’re describing you. Yeah. It felt like, I mean, just this nurturing and, you know, I view posturing through the lens of mothering because I am a mom. Mm-hmm.
And so that informs my way of thinking about pastoring. And so off, it’s, it’s not been uncommon where I’ve looked at a church and thought to myself, they need a mom. This church seemed like they were ready for a mother. And, and so, so much. And you know, we talked also though about how the readiness of the church for a mother, and I think that many of us counted the cost.
I also think that I bulldozed through some of the red flags early on. So for example, the board that called me was not unanimous. Okay. There were concerns within the board. There was some confusion on the biblical framework for this. There was also those outside of the church who held power within the denomination who got involved and leaked information.
Then what happened is, is it was, it came from a one particular powerful person within the denomination who was. Who was meddling in some ways with the congregation and was discrediting the process, and a lot of it had to do with gender. So
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: you even being a candidate? Mm-hmm. Not necess, not necessarily even being offered.
Right. The role which eventually you were offered.
Tara Beth Leach: Yes.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: But it was the fact that your name was in the
Tara Beth Leach: mix. That the fact that my name was in the mix and that I was a young woman. Mm-hmm. And that I was a mom. Yes. And so what that did is that because of that particular voice had a lot of power, it emboldened.
A lot of the people who did not believe women, women could be in ministry. And you know, sometimes they, you know, they, it, it would be, well, this is not biblical. Mm-hmm. And then sometimes it would be more insidious than that. Mm-hmm. It would be, she’s a young mom. How could she ever be a pastor if you know she’s caring for children?
And that was probably one of the biggest reasons why folks were pushing back on my coming in. And so, and even still, we, you know, we counted the cost and I think I was really naive. But so you
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: knew, I knew in this long discernment process, you knew some folks had these kinds of questions. I
Tara Beth Leach: knew that some folks had these kinds of questions, but there was also just this beautiful flock there that I was also falling in love with.
Ah, yes too. And I was really naive. Again, I’m 34 years old and I think I, I saw what a lot of pastors sometimes fall on the trap of thinking when we’re young and naive is well. When I get though, they’ll just love me and it’ll be okay. And in some ways that was true and in some ways I was also very wrong.
What happened when you showed up? Yeah, so my very first Sunday, that installation Sunday where there was just such a hopefulness of trajectory. Mm-hmm. Uh, it was wonderful and it was good. One week later we showed up and a third of the congregation was missing. A third of the congregation. A third of the congregation was that mean was missing.
How, how big 600 people, 600 people are missing, 600 people are missing from the congregation. I remember standing in the office with one of the women from our accounting department who had been there for a couple of decades. Um, she had a lot of deep connections in the church and her remarking to me. It feels as though the bottom has dropped out of this place.
And that was really disorienting at first because we didn’t understand. I think, I think those who were hopeful about the new sense of trajectory, I think many thought that what our worst fears were like something like that happening wouldn’t actually happen. But it did, and it happened on the
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: second week
Tara Beth Leach: It happened.
It happened fast, but I don’t know that we were able to fully articulate what was happening on the second week. Okay. It took several months for us to like get ahold of the numbers and get ahold of the giving, and get ahold of the engagement, and also make making sense of some of the intensity of feedback from angry people that we were getting, that were taking to social media.
In very public ways that we were really beginning to process, oh, this might be more challenging than what we counted coming in.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: I asked Tara Beth to share some of the feedback and complaints that surrounded this controversy. Bear in mind that as these messages came in, she was just continuing along week to week, Sunday to Sunday, serving and caring for the congregation, preaching regularly doing her job.
Tara Beth Leach: So it started with just murmurings on, and again, it was a very social media loud congregation and I don’t know if it was the time or if that was this particular church. And so, and we know that. Oftentimes that the percentage of those who take to social media are not representative of the whole church.
So I, I can’t underscore enough just how many good and wonderful godly people there are in this church. And also there was some very loud voices. And so they would, you know, take to social media would just, you know, random. You know, posts here and there. That eventually led to a very, very strong, open letter that was attacking the board.
This was, it really came to a head at the two year mark, the denomination in which I serve at the two year mark. The board votes, uh, a vote of affirmation to say, yes, we wanna keep on going. Oh, well, uh, many in the congregation at that point, were hoping that the board would vote. No confidence for me. Um, and I, when I say many, I mean, I say, you know, a percentage who, that, that those 600 people, they didn’t just leave.
They left and they held out hoping that I would go and they would be able to come back. And so they were working very hard behind the scenes to undermine a lot of the ministry. And eventually it became calculated. And so, as I mentioned it, the first, you know, major moment that we saw was a open letter that actually came out while I was on vacation with my family.
I was in Yellowstone with my family and. You know, this was the two year mark and we were finally resting. We had no cell service, and we were out in nature. And we stopped at one of the, you know, nature centers there and the gift stops gift stores. And I got into wifi for a moment. Mm-hmm. And all of a sudden my phone was just, you know, going crazy and text messages, um, direct messages, Facebook messages, are you okay?
How are you doing? And we, you know, we support you. We’re here for you. And I had no idea what they were talking about. And so I, and my cell service was going so slow, so it was hard for me to grab what they were talking about. And I finally came across the open letter that was getting a lot of traction and engagement, and I started to read through this very, very long open letter to the board and to.
About how the, the board made an unbiblical decision, uh, by hiring a woman. Not only that, the church attendance is down, and so the church has lost its favor. Because they’ve called a woman. Mm-hmm. Uh, there was a comment in there that I had, I had once talked, joked in a sermon about my cooking skills. I’m a terrible cook and my husband is a great one.
Praise the Lord. And I made a joke about, you know, I can hardly boil water. Well, they used this in this open letter that she has said. Uh, that she can hardly boil water and care for her children at home. What makes us think that she could be a senior pastor? Wow. So everything became
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: free game to. Use against you.
Tara Beth Leach: Yes. And that what that did is, you know, I think in 2016 we were experiencing just a, a cultural shift in general about, you know, I think across America it was reflective, I think, of what was happening to, to people really just being emboldened to use our voice for harm. And so this, this just kind of became a breeding ground for the dissenters.
And then you also have that the folks were, it was, they, they would say things like, well, we, we believe, you know, that women can be a ministry, but, and the buts were things like, well, it’s just really hard for me to listen to your voice, the pitch of your voice. Hurts our ears. Wow. And that was something that I heard often, that it was the wrong pitch and that it was painful uhhuh to listen to me preach Uhhuh, uh, to my clothes Sunday after Sunday.
There were more comments oftentimes about my clothes. Than there were about the sermon. And I’ll never forget there was, there was, clothes were distracting. Yes, yes. Clothes were distracting or not professional enough. There was one gentleman that made his his mission to figure out how to help Tara Beth dress like a 40-year-old CEO.
Is that right? And so he approached a very close friend of mine, began working through her. Mm-hmm. Began talking about my clothes and asked if there would that, if it would be possible for him to take me to Nordstrom, for him to get me a makeover. That particular Sunday that he had talked to her, I remember I was wearing red heels, red stilettos, and he went on and how inappropriate it was and unbecoming it was for a pastor to be wearing heels.
Um, there was another gentleman when I first got there, there was a lot of conversation about my hair. I would get emails from folks, uh, from people, please get your hair under control while preaching. Wow. And there was, uh, one gentleman who, um, tried to, uh, his well meaning to be a little bit more thoughtful about his approach and wrote me a very, very long email.
I had reached out to his brother who was an image consultant and went on and on about my hair and gave the analogy of, you know, think about, this was 2016 Olympics. He said, think about gymnast. They are deducted points when their hair is unkept, and so if you want people to listen to you, we’ve gotta get your hair under control.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Had you ever received this sort of comments? I mean, these are, as I think about your seminary preparation and your 15 years long ordination process. These kinds of comments are catching me a little bit off guard.
Tara Beth Leach: Yeah, it caught me off guard. I had experienced heat before. Yes, in ministry. I had never experienced anything like this.
And here’s, you know, here’s where some of my reflections on that. I think that many evangelical churches that are affirming of women in ministry. Or egalitarian. I think that they can, they’re open to women to a degree, to a point. Mm-hmm. And very few have stepped into the office of senior pastor. Right.
And very few, especially in larger churches, um, with history, flagship churches, flagship churches. And I think that. The office of the senior pastor is what began to cause a little bit more scrutiny. Oh, uh, yes. I, I don’t know. You know, I’ve never heard those comments As an associate pastor or as a teaching pastor.
I don’t know if this was specific to this church. It’s hard to, to fully make sense of what happened, but it’s hard to wonder of, you know, a lot of the things that I went through at that, I, I don’t think I would’ve heard those things if I were a man. I don’t think that we would’ve experienced what we experienced if I were a man and, you know, I just, packing up really for a moment.
Yes, for a touching moment when I. I saw that letter, that open letter. We got into wifi, and I finally came across a letter, and this was in the middle of my family vacation. And that’s when I realized this, this feels like spiritual warfare. I mean, say what you want, but because every single one of these hard moments happened while we were on vacation.
Is that right? And I, I read the letter and I, I, I didn’t want my children to see me upset. So I went and I sat on a rock behind some trees and I just began to weep. Yes. And my five-year-old son at the time came and sat next to me on The Rock and he saw me crying and I was so mortified. I didn’t want my children to grow up thinking that the church could cause this kind of hurt.
Mm-hmm. So I wanted to protect them. Mm-hmm. But that sweet boy Noah came and sat next to me and he just put his hand on my knee and he just sat there next to his mama. While she cried, and it’s wild to me that another significant moment happened while we finally just had this incredible opportunity to take our children onto Disney Cruise.
When we finally got back into self service, I sit down at a restaurant and I start looking through emails and texts, and I catch wind of a new campaign that began called Save PN. A campaign. A campaign, yeah. Um, an organized campaign from people called Save pna, and the premise of it was save PNA from the woman.
The church has lost her favor. The once jewel of the denomination, the once flagship is not what it once was because they have disobeyed and called a woman. And now we’re looking and we see that the finances are, are, you know, declining attendance is declining. And, uh, we need to, you know, save pastimes.
And they sent letters out to denominational leaders. Wow. To pastors Nationally. Yes. There was a website, um, there was an email address. There was an Instagram and a Facebook account. There were memes made of me. They would take, they would catch pictures off the live stream and of contorted, pictures of me preaching.
Um, with mocking statements underneath. This is a very
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: organized, this a
Tara Beth Leach: very
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: organized, multi-channel campaign. That’s right. That directly linked the demise of pnas That’s right. To your particular leadership. That’s right. I can’t help but imagine how surreal and stunning that moment in Yosemite must have been for Tara Beth.
The disconnect and dissonance of all that beauty and rest and Sabbath, marred by a public smear campaign to remove you from your position and take away your job. The tenderness of a child who is moved to stand with you in sorrow and the aggressiveness of adults who violently want you to go away, the image leaves quite an impression.
What did that feel like? I mean, ’cause you had had such a beautiful discernment process and an extraordinary and spacious invitation for you to exercise leadership that had felt affirmed in other places. What did that mean to see that campaign?
Tara Beth Leach: It was soul crushing. It was soul crushing. It nearly knocked my legs out from underneath me.
It wasn’t long after that I called my husband home. I was nearly having a panic attack. And I called my husband and I was sobbing on the bed and I said, babe, just get me outta here. Oh, well just get me outta this place. And then I would get a good cry and I would come out of it and I’d say, okay, no, like pull it together, Tara path.
God’s gonna turn this around. God brought you here. God’s gonna turn this around. We’ve just gotta keep going. Just keep putting one. Foot in front of the next, because there were so many glimmers of hope. Mm-hmm. This, you know, there was so many good parts of the congregation. There was, there was often I called the faithful remnant that was there because they loved the church that that was there because they wanted to be part of something bigger than themselves that was there because they wanted to be caught up in the mission of God, and, and we saw those glimmers of hope.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Mm-hmm.
Tara Beth Leach: And so I kept clinging to those and so it’s, it’s, it’s, it was years of, of many things being true at once, of seeing the goodness of God, and also experiencing some of the biggest doubts in my calling of my entire life. Wow. What, what was one of those glimmers
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: of hope that would fuel you?
Tara Beth Leach: So we had been going through a really long discernment process as a church as to what were some of those missional justice oriented things that we were going to put a stake in the ground on that we were gonna say, this is what we wanna be part of.
And our, our congregation had a growing immigrant population. And immigration was something that we were navigating and in about 2018. Uh, we got in contact with an organization called Urban Strategies. Mm-hmm. And Urban Strategies was an organization that worked with the government. It was, it was a Christian organization that worked with the government to, to.
To take children under their wing who are crossing the border alone, uh, without a parent or guardian. Okay. So children often from birth all the way to 18, and the government was essentially saying to Irvin strategies, yes, we’ll let you bring these children to a church, and the church then can foster these children.
And the church then can create wraparound services there and come alongside of these children for daycare. And so there was a few of us that had discerned, like, we think this could be something that we could do here, that this, this could be a moment for our congregation. And so we began a year long process, discernment process with the board of, of, you know, coming up with the funding and making a way for this and the church.
It was just incredible. They renovated the entire basement and it turned into a daycare for these children and we, we had a, a meeting, an informational meeting for families to come and say, yes, we wanna foster these kids. And I thought, wouldn’t it be great if a dozen people come. And say, yes, we want to come alongside of these babies.
And it was standing room only at that meeting.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Wow.
Tara Beth Leach: And that was the goodness and the beauty of the church that I saw that said, yes, we want to care for these children. We want these children to experience the love of Christ until they are reunited with their family member. And those were the climbers of hope.
That I saw
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: when I hear this part of Tara Beth’s story, I can’t help but remember when Jesus laments over Jerusalem in Luke 13, in the face of Herod’s efforts to kill him. Jesus describes Herod. As a fox and himself as a mother hen, you need to take her loved ones under her wing. The beauty of Jesus’s grounding his care for us and likening it to a mother is uplifting and dignifying and empowering.
Can you tell me a little bit about how is it that you sort of sustained your faith and your hope in the church? How is it that you sort of sustained your calling in the midst of what feels like pretty aggressive opposition?
Tara Beth Leach: Well, there’s, there’s a. A lot of layers to that. You know, we could go into family history and, and some of my loyalty issues that I have, that I’m constantly working out and, um, uh, there’s just been so many streams of grace that have come to me along the way.
So there’s the, the, the means of grace of therapy. There’s the means of grace, of spiritual direction. There’s the means of grace, of a community, of women in ministry who I could call and reach out. To and say, am I crazy? And I would say, no, you are absolutely not crazy. Your experience is real. It’s okay to be angry.
It’s okay to be hurt. And so never once have I felt totally alone. And also there’s something just so much deeper. I go back to, you know, a lot of people ask me, why? Why have you stayed? Why do you still believe in the church? Why do you still have such a hopefulness in the church? And I go back often to Jesus in that, you know, Jesus preached this incredible vision of who the people of God can be in the Sermon in the Mount.
And it’s, I mean, it’s radically countercultural. It’s a far reality from what we see the people of God today. Yes. You know, and then also we see the prayer of Jesus in the garden when he, you know, was. At first asking the cup of suffering to be passed from him. And then he goes on to pray for the church that we would be one, and that the world would see us, um, through our unity.
And never once did Jesus pray well, but in 2020 it’s all gonna go to hell in a hand basket or in 2016, forget about that. It’s not possible. But I believe that Jesus pressed into that vision having some idea. That we’re always gonna be in this already, but not yet space. Having some idea that the payings of childbirth are going to be a, a reality for decades, maybe centuries to come.
And so my conclusion then is I, I think Jesus believed in us then and I, I think he still believes in us today. And so there’s still something about that vision that I keep clinging to and going back to and feel such a, that same burning that I had as a teenager to tell the world about Jesus.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Mm-hmm.
Tara Beth Leach: There’s still that in me because I’ve been, that Jesus gives us for who the bride of Christ can be. This beautiful. And I’ve not been alone in walking that dream. Um, God has given lot of really strong people that have held me.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: So what now? Tara Beth shared about the process of leaving PazNaz another moment of clarity where she felt a new kind of freedom and a weight lifted. A freedom to let things be and move forward in her journey. Tara Beth, how does that
Tara Beth Leach: story end with pnas? Well, God is a god of redemption, and it was a journey that began in 2020 when in, uh, February my dad was diagnosed with stage four stomach cancer.
My mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Uh, that later turned into frontal temporal dementia. They were 63 at the time, and I found myself during the pandemic, pastoring through this mess, flying back and forth every other week to care for my dad and my mom. I would, I would fly to, from LAX to midway driving an hour south, pick up my dad, drive him four hours for treatment, drive him four hours back, hop on a plane and fly back and.
August of 2020. You know, by this point I’m experiencing what every pastor in America is experiencing of all that, all that 2020 brings to ministry. Yes. Um, you know, and I’m, I’m sitting next to my dad. He had just gone through a major surgery and the doctors brought him out and they said, there’s actually, it’s worse than what we thought.
There’s nothing we can do. Your dad has a very short time to live. And I’m sitting there next to him and I look over at my email and I see an email come in questioning whether or not PNA was Marxist because we had been talking about race and you know, really hard things. And I remember thinking, what am I doing?
What am I doing right now? And I felt as though I was wrapped in a bungee cord and I couldn’t. Breathe. And on one side of the bungee cord was the church that I wanted to stay for 35 more years and pastor to the end. And on the other side was my parents who were in the most dire situation possible. And I remember thinking, I can’t breathe ease.
And in the moment I just heard the spirit say, you can go. And it was so confusing to me ’cause I thought, wait. I thought I was supposed to stay. I’m emboldened. I’m, I, you know, we’re gonna turn this around. We’re gonna, you know, we’re gonna see revival happen. What do you mean? I can go? And also, it was such freedom.
It was such freedom. Just it was, it was a release of, of feeling just this strong call to go back and honor my mother and father in this season that they were in. And I was welcome back as a staff pastor at a church that cared for me and nurtured me for two and a half years while I cared for my dad. I had the 10 holiest months with my dad.
I also had two and a half years to process the pain, to make sense of it, to heal and to come to a place again where, you know, when I came back I thought, I don’t care if I’m ever a lead pastor again. Wow. And that long again to mother, a church began to grow within me and there was this church in Naperville, Illinois that gave me my first opportunities to preach That sent me to seminary that I was on staff with for a long time.
It was my first time and, and just preaching in spaces that just seemed like, how can I do this well? They came knocking on my door and said, Hey, Tara, Beth, would you consider coming and being our lead pastor? Wow. And it has been this incredible redemptive experience because this is a church since I left a decade ago.
This is a church which I had preached at many times. My children were baptized there. They were the people that visited me when my children were born in the hospital, brought me those meals. And they invited me back to preach Many times, some of my closest friends were there, and so now this is a church that isn’t just calling a female pastor.
They’re calling Tara Beth, someone they know and love and I know and love them, and it just feels so redemptive.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: It would be easy to lose faith in the church after an experience like this. But Tara Beth has been outspoken in her stability and patience with Christianity. She loves God. God loves the church, so she loves the church. I wanted to know from this perspective, from the other side of this ordeal. What keeps her grounded in face and grounded in her vocation As a pastor for Tara Beth, she turns to the radically counter-cultural perspective of Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount and the hope of an already not yet.
What do you think it is that God is revealing about the church in this moment, and what do you think is our invitation to live that out?
Tara Beth Leach: Yeah, I, I believe that we need to be a people that look to that future vision of the kingdom of God that we see in Revelation, but also that not yet vision that we see, you know, where it kind of flips power structures up on its head and Jesus invites us to a.
A whole totally new power dynamic and reality of women and men alongside of one another. People with different socioeconomic statuses at the same table, different, different ethnicities and backgrounds and stories. And I think more than ever, the church needs to press into that reality, um, and not just wait.
And what I mean by that is I think sometimes we, we think, well, you know, someday that’ll be resolved, that when we are resurrect. Did and we’re standing before God and the new Jerusalem and the new Heaven and new Earth, all of those power dynamics will be, you know, be done away with. And so we just, you know, need to function in these, these power structures that are familiar to us, and I believe that.
The church more than ever has got depressed into that because there’s, there’s already a groundswell. I am observing something that I have never seen in my lifetime, and I know I’m young. I’m only 41, but I am observing this groundswell of incredibly gifted young women that are going to seminary with gifts to preach, teach, and lead, and.
I believe that the church has more than ever got to prepare herself for these women to make spaces for them because they are coming and they have gifts and they love Jesus and they love the church.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Pastor Tara Beth Leach. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me.
After experiencing Tara Beth’s story more intense and more relatable than I had imagined, I wondered and knew at this kind-hearted leader in front of me would I have been able to respond to the questions perhaps kindly meant, but insulting at the same time with such grace. For someone who was so committed to the church, a true shepherd that loved her flock.
Going through hard things tends to make people harder. Going through hard things publicly tends to make people guarded. There’s a fatigue that can come from being the first or the only woman in a room, but here was someone who went through that. And had the experience only deepen her friendship with God.
The sense I had is that Tara Beth didn’t need to guard herself from these deeply personal attacks, that this was a person who led from a place in the very center of God’s hand. It’s that Jesus believes in us that she said, I
Tara Beth Leach: think Jesus believed in us Then. And I, I think he still believes in us today, and so there’s still something about that vision that I keep clinging to and going back to and feels that same burning that I had as a teenager to tell the world about Jesus.
There’s still that fire in me. Because I believe in that vision that Jesus gives us for who the bride of Christ can be and this beautiful mess.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Her hope in the church is a hope that she’s borrowing from Jesus’ hope. In that moment, I was reoriented that Jesus believes in us. Jesus believes in the church.
And I realize that these questions are not about how people are rethinking church, but it’s about the new and old things that Jesus is doing through his church, this church that he loves, this church that he believes in. This church, this beautiful mess, credible witness is brought to you by the Rethinking Church Initiative.
Produced and edited by Mark Labberton, Sarey Martin Concepcion, and Evan Rosa. And I’m your host, Nikki Toyama-Szeto. Thanks to Fuller Seminary, Christians for Social Action, and Brenda Salter McNeil for sharing her book title with our podcast. Special thanks. To all of our conversation partners in the Rethinking Church Initiative and Network, both public and private, and above all, thank you for your own courageous listening and your own credible witness to the gospel.
For more information, visit crediblewitness us.