In this episode, Niki Rice interviews Gina about her journey as a mother, a woman in ministry, and then on her journey with mothering the messy church through love and humility.
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Listen below to follow along starting at 21:50
Receiving Identity from The Father
Niki:
Wow. That’s incredible. Just hearing a couple things that you said, it really sounds like you’ve been on this long journey of being fathered by God in different ways. So I think one thing that I’d love for you to talk about is being a mother. Could you talk about being a mother while being in ministry, and what God has taught you as a father about parenting, and about what that looks like together?
Gina:
There was a lot of complexity in my story. My mom was so full of self hatred. There were parts of my story that I didn’t know the truth of, until after she died. She wanted to marry my dad, and my dad didn’t want to marry her. So she got pregnant to try to get him to marry her, and he said, “No.”
I didn’t know this, any of this. So when I was little, I was told that they had been married and divorced. She even legally changed her name to his name to perpetuate that ruse. So they dated on and off when I was young, so I never had stability.
It was like, sometimes we were with dad, we’d hang out with dad and be a family then we wouldn’t be a family, then we would be a family, then we wouldn’t be a family, then she’d be mad at him and would use me against him. So there was a lot of this weird turmoil.
And then when I was 12, about the same time I came to church for the first time. That was when my mom decided I was old enough to know that they were never married to begin with. That rocked me because I thought I was unwanted, I was a mistake, I was all these things, right? At this time babies out of wedlock aren’t as big of a deal, but then it was like, “I’m a bastard.”
I am illegitimate. So then you fast forward to my encounter with the Lord at 15, and then going 18 years old, going on this mission trip, I’m kind of being formed. I encounter the Lord in Psalm 139 for the first time, “You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I’m fearfully and wonderfully made.”
I couldn’t handle that verse. I was like, “I don’t understand. This can’t be true. I was a mistake. I’m the product of a simple, horrible, not kind relationship. How on earth could this be God’s will?” So the Lord had me on this journey, and Psalm 139 became my life verse.
It was the Lord going, “This is true. Whether you understand it, whether you believe it, whether you receive it or not, this is true of you. This is what I’m speaking over you.” So that began this journey of learning what redemption is, learning what the love of my father, what my heavenly father pursuing me is.
It’s a journey, right? So the beauty is that God’s love and His kindness, we’re on that process of transformation, that we all are on from that moment of receiving Jesus in our lives. In His love,
that process of transformation is a process of healing. It’s a process of restoration, and it’s a process of redemption.
God, from those earliest moments, was slowly inviting me to be his daughter. I already was His daughter, but my ability to actually receive it, my ability to understand it, and then eventually my ability to live it, those were things that took time. Those were things that the Lord had to be gentle with.
Parenting with God
Gina:
Those were things that I would kind of get, and then I kind of wouldn’t, and I would kind of get it. So as it pertains to being a mom, it was very hard. I just lived with, “Am I going to be able to even get pregnant?” I don’t know why I questioned that, but there was this, “I don’t deserve to be able to do that.” for some reason.
“Or is my baby gonna be okay? Am I going to be able to have a healthy baby?” And then, “Oh gosh, I don’t know how to be a mom. How am I gonna be a mom?” I know what not to do. How do I know what to do? Having to trust and believe that God is going to make up for what I lack.
My kids already had a better start. Their parents were married and loved each other and loved God and loved them. Like, “Okay, we’re already doing way better.” There was a lot of having to deconstruct and loosen my fingers and my grip of the things that I was fearful of, and really surrender my kids to him.
Because the other thing too, I didn’t grow up in a Christian home. Like I met Him, and He’s mine. I have an intimate relationship with Jesus. I would look at my kids and go, “I can’t do that for you.” Christian devotionals and talking with your kids about God is great, and all of that will instill some things, but those are cultural repetitive things. None of that can create intimacy with God, Father, Son and Spirit.
Still to this day, I’m having to surrender and actually lay my kids on the altar and go, “Lord, they’re yours. I can’t manufacture anything. I can’t protect them. I can’t guard them. I have to trust you with them. I have to trust that your relentless loving pursuit of them is as significant as it was the pursuit you’ve made of me. I can’t control it and I need to trust it.
Women in Ministry?
Niki:
So you’ve gone on this journey with God, a lot of things going into your story, but I would love for you just to share, like maybe even the last 10 years of being a woman in ministry during times, where the world is literally bursting at the seams. What’s it been like being a leader in the church, and being a woman in ministry? And from that, what’s been your perspective on the church?
Gina:
To give you some context for me as a leader in ministry, I want to go back a little bit. So, like I said, I grew up in a Calvary Chapel world at a huge church in San Diego. I came back from that mission trip, and I became a part of the worship ministry and was part of the worship team. God was doing amazing things. This was all in an environment where women can’t be leaders except for in the women’s ministry.
So much so, that even in the worship team, I could never lead worship for a whole service by myself. You weren’t allowed to be a worship leader. So I could be a part of a worship team, I could lead a song, but the whole era of like the Stephanie Gretzinger and the Jen Johnson, all that stuff, that wasn’t a thing at that time.
I grew up in that, and that was just the world. So I did lead in women’s ministry. There’s a lot of natural leadership gifts in me, and not that I had any aspiration to be any kind of a leader, but I would stumble into as much leadership as was allowed. I never pursued it. I would just kind of end up there.
If there would even have been a possibility that I could go to seminary or I could go to whatever, I probably would’ve. But that wasn’t even the context we were in. So when we moved to Orange County, we were at another Calvary Chapel, and then again the Lord put me in leadership in women’s ministry, I started teaching in women’s ministry. And we end up in another church, again, I just stumble into random leadership positions.
Eventually it gets to the point where you start getting utilized for your leadership, but not officially allowed to lead. So it’s a very strange world to live in. Again, I wasn’t aspiring to be a leader on staff. I want to lead this ministry or be a pastor or whatever, but I am naturally kind of a pastor and a leader in all these things.
So I end up in a way functioning by default in those things. So it can be very confusing, it can be very hard. Then my theology, you know, I was kind of like, “Yeah, women aren’t supposed to be pastors.” You know, of course not. But then you start living in environments and serving and kind of going, “That doesn’t entirely make sense. Is that really true?”
So I had to really wrestle in myself like, “Lord, I don’t want to be disobedient. The last thing I want to do is be disobedient to you. I don’t want to be outside of your will or functioning outside of the realm of where you’re moving. Then I’m in this generation that’s moving towards, “No, I guess it is okay for a woman to lead leadership”.
So then you start having some permission to lead and there’s fruit there. And then God is moving in really powerful ways. Now suddenly there’s an authority that you have. But it is funny that you’re going, “Huh? Just five years ago I was not allowed to do that.” you know?
Like in San Diego, there was a pastor who would come into the women’s ministry when I was leading worship and was so moved he wanted to bring that to Sunday morning. It was literally like they had to meet with the elders. They had a huge leadership meeting.
“Can we do this? Is it okay? How do we do it? What do we say? Is it biblical? Is it not? Are we going to be disobedient? Then the more they approved it, because my husband was going to be on stage with me playing bass, so technically I’d have covering, but then they felt like they had to get up and give an announcement.
It was, “Gina’s going to lead, but her husband’s here and we’re here.”I was a young, insecure, and terrified. So when you’re raised in that, it’s a really weird situation and you are increasingly being raised up. So then this new church I was in on the one hand didn’t necessarily affirm female pastors, but they invited women into more leadership.
So suddenly I go from, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no.” To then, “Hey, would you do this? Hey, would you do that? Hey, we need you lead that.” Then all this affirmation, but still this kind of unspoken, strange, “Yes and no.” So it can be confusing to go from one environment to another, but it was still not a female leadership affirming environment.
Yet it was in this place that God started really kind of calling out gifts in me and giving me authority with people. He was giving me authority with leadership, giving me authority with the congregation. I think the dangerous thing is that when you aren’t able to actually have the authority and function in that. Then your leadership is used and then you’re kind of put off to the side.
Loving the Messy Bride of Christ
Gina:
So you can build resentment, you can build bitterness. So I was on a long journey with the Lord where I had to constantly repent. I had to constantly fall on my face before Him because I would start getting hurt or I’d get offended. Or I would start building a case and then the Lord would humble me and go, “No, Gina, just trust me.”
He kept me there for a really long time. That was really hard. It’s like, “Why am I here?” Like, I have so many friends who are often in other places where they’re being encouraged and built up and equipped. And I keep being in this place that is causing all of this pain. But there was a purpose in that and nothing is wasted for the Lord.
I walked through so many church transitions and I saw people get mistreated and others treated well. I saw leadership that is just doing the best they can and then get blamed for things. I’ve seen splits and all of this stuff.
It has given me so much empathy, so much understanding, so much perspective, and the ability to have grace for people, the ability to give people the benefit of the doubt, to recognize the frailty and the messiness and the brokenness of the bride of Christ – but still love her and still be very passionate about who she is and what she’s becoming.
The Lord finally called me out of that environment. Then through the last like five years, my dad’s been healing a lot of things, but also birthing a lot of things and growing a lot of things that wouldn’t be here had I not had that soil not been tilled in all of this and worked in all of this.
The Lord has now positioned me in places where I’m having influence and authority in things that I never would’ve imagined, and I never would’ve thought of. I never in a million years would’ve thought that I would teach a message on a Sunday morning at a church, like that was not possible.
My husband and I will have a conversation like, “Am I supposed to be doing this?” and he will say, “Yeah, I think you’re supposed to be doing this. This is what the Lord has.” Like we get on our faces before the Lord and go, “ Lord, we don’t want to be outside of Your will. We don’t be outside of Your purposes, Your plan, Your design, and we want to be obedient to you. We want to be yielded to you.” So I don’t take it lightly when I have any kind of influence or platform. It’s very weighty.
Check out the rest of this conversation: Purified and Unified & Pursued by The Trinity
Check out the Dwell Meditations
