How Mothering Can Inform the Mission of the Church
Mothers know lots of things—how to get a stain out of your favourite sweater, what to add for a tasty chicken broth, and where that school form is that needs to be returned tomorrow!
But mothers also know something about God through their mothering experience. And if we, as the church and as church leaders, want to know God in all of God’s fullness and glory, then we ought to lean in and listen intently as mothers reflect on who God is and how God acts. This will help us to know how to best participate with God in God’s mission for the world.
One thing mothers know is that God is intimately involved in the creation and sustaining of life. Pregnancy is such a strange female embodied experience. Even though we may understand conception, pregnancy, and childbirth from a biological perspective, it is quite another thing to experience a human being growing inside your body, seeing your belly swell to an outrageous size, and feeling little feet kick under your skin. While it’s a strange physical experience, women also describe it in spiritual terms, as a “supernatural experience” and a chance to “truly be in partnership with God.”
Daphne described pregnancy like this:
This strange intersection
That I have this invitation for participation in something divine
That the Creator is creating and bringing into being this human
But somehow I get to participate
During pregnancy, mothers know that something is happening, but they cannot see or control the creation process. In fact, pregnancy is cloaked in mystery as women don’t fully understand all that is happening within them, even though it is their body. Women rightly suspect that there must be another something, Someone who is a part of this! As people of Christian faith, we know that this is God. Pregnancy can be seen as this generous invitation to participate with God in the creation of new life. Bella described pregnancy as though she was “doing something together, me and the Lord.”
In the early days of new human life, sometimes women even wonder if they’re mistaken. Perhaps there isn’t new life growing as there is seemingly little evidence, except nausea. Then there’s a long stretch of waiting, wondering if this baby will ever come. Mothers know that the delivery of new life takes time and there’s nothing they can do to speed up the process. And then this little stranger is introduced to the world in quite a dramatic way—another strange experience for a woman! There is discomfort and pain involved as new life is born. It can be a bit scary. But mothers know that this is part of the process.
So what does this have to do with the mission of the church?
Mothers know three things about God that are helpful for the church to understand. First, pregnancy and childbirth remind women that our physical world is divinely enchanted and that God is near. Even though secularism is on the rise and we are tempted towards pragmatism, mothering reminds us that there are divine clues that point to Someone who is beyond us. Sage from British Columbia described mothering as “an invitation to enchantment” while Penny from Ontario said that mothering gave her “a sneak peek” into something more. This is the truth—God is near.
Second, pregnant women know that we simply do not have the power to bring new life into being on our own. God is the bearer-of-Life and invites us to come alongside what He is doing. We cannot force what we think redemption and salvation should look like in our churches and neighborhoods into existence. This is something only God can do.
Third, divine participation likely includes periods of waiting, uncertainty, and suffering. Divine participation requires submission and patience. Genevieve from Alberta talked about learning how to release control of any perceived sense of power she may have had about her children and who they would become. She says, “I remember very clearly God saying to me in my head—the same Holy Spirit that is in you, is in them.” To her, it was a reminder that she cannot manage the Spirit.
One of the practical implications of a maternal missiology is that the church needs wild confidence in the Spirit of God. That we act as if God is outrageously near and very much alive. Like mothers, we trust that there is Someone beyond us who loves this world dearly and will go to great lengths to save and to redeem.
The question becomes—how do we step aside and work alongside God as God bears new life in our particular church and community? Maybe pregnant women and mothers can help us know how to do this well.
*Note: This article is based on my doctoral research project “Sacred Storytelling: Knowing God through the Practice of Mothering” (2024), which included 23 interviews with Canadian Christian women who were mothers of natural born or adopted children. All names have been anonymized for confidentiality purposes.
Dr. Elizabeth Millar
Post Doctoral Research Fellow, Canadian Institute for Empirical Church Research at Wycliffe College, University of Toronto
