The Accidental Trailblazer

Wednesday December 13 2017

Thomas Baldwin meets the Rev Rola Sleiman, the first female ordained minister in the Middle East

Rola Sleiman is an accidental trailblazer.

She didn’t ask to be the first female Christian minister to be ordained in the Middle East. But God had other ideas, which came to fruition with Rola’s ordination in February this year.

“God has a plan and if it is God’s will it is going to happen,” says the 42-year-old minister of a Presbyterian church in her hometown of Tripoli, in northern Lebanon. While she admits she had her doubts the night before, she says: “The feeling of peace and joy I felt during the ordination cannot be explained. To me this was the assurance that it really was the will of God.”

Rola’s path to this point has been far from smooth, but characterised by a stubbornness, a strong conviction in her calling and a refusal to give up in the face of any obstacle.

The daughter of a Lebanese mother and Syrian father, who grew up during the Lebanese civil war, she came to faith in her teens. At 17 she applied to be adopted by the National Evangelical Synod of Syria and Lebanon to study theology, but was refused. “It was one of the biggest shocks of my life,” she says.

However, her father agreed to pay her university fees anyway.

“So I went, and I studied, and I went to all the camps and all the services; and after a year and a half the general secretary of the Synod came and said: ‘We feel you are really serious about this. Can you write a letter again?’.

“I said: ‘I wrote once and I got an answer. I’m not going to write again’.”

Despite that, she was called to the next meeting of the synod, and told that she would be adopted.

She graduated in 1997 and four years later she was asked by her own church and her old school in Tripoli whether she would go there, as a Christian educator. She had other options, but she says she felt a strong calling to return home.

At this point, there was still no question of being ordained, despite there being nothing in the church’s rules against it.

“To me, I was a Christian educator, and I was fine taking some part in the preaching.

I didn’t want the spotlight on me.”

However, she found herself in the spotlight anyway, after the church’s pastor left for North America.

“Every week, one of the elders would come to me and say ‘you have studied theology, can you preach this Sunday?’ And I would say ‘okay’, and I’d prepare and preach, and then next Sunday it would be ‘can you do it?’ again.”

This went on until 2008, when the church needed to provide a representative for the Synod administrative committee. That would normally be the pastor, but Rola had not been formally appointed.

“A colleague said: ‘if she was appointed, would she be on the committee?’ They said ‘yes’, but in their mind this wouldn’t happen. So he went back to the church in Tripoli and said ‘would you hold a meeting and ask for her?’ And they said yes, and it was a 100% vote.”

After that, she served as the appointed pastor, but still not ordained, until last year, when the elders at her church wrote a letter to synod asking for her ordination. “I didn't push them to take the decision,” she says. “I was a bit cautious that this step might bring a lot of criticism because the whole issue was new.”

She needn’t have worried: her ordination was approved by 23 votes out of 24.

While she says she hasn’t had any opposition at all in her own church, she acknowledges there is opposition to her appointment from other churches in the region. “For sure, it happens and will happen. I respect different opinions,” she says.

She found herself in the spotlight again, in Scotland this time, in May, when she was initially refused a British visa to travel to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. Although the Home Office was persuaded to reverse its decision, Rola was ultimately prevented from travelling at the airport in Beirut. However, she did make it to Scotland for the Women in the World Church conference in September, hosted by the Church’s World Mission Council.

She said: “The experience was a great one, I was in touch with many influential people, great ministers, powerful women from every part of the world. It was days I will never forget in my life. I was so respected and appreciated.

“The role of the Church of Scotland is extremely important, as a supporting church, as a church which has been ordaining women for years now, so they can share and encourage other churches concerning this specific side of ministry.”

She says she hopes for the day when the church worldwide looks at the spiritual talents of a person rather than their gender.

“The role of women is very important in the life of the church, as it was important and influential to Jesus and the history of the church. The church can’t improve and grow without the role and ministry of women.”

This is an abridged version of a feature in December's Life and Work. Buy here.