Pastor as Midwife

Whether we are bio moms or not, we can assume we cannot give birth to something new. Shawna Songer Gaines changes our perspective.

Elisa

Pastor as Midwife

By Shawna Songer Gaines

I was thirty-seven weeks pregnant when our church went through a major crisis. The director of the church’s preschool got upset (mostly at me), quit, and walked off campus in the middle of the day, taking one of the teachers with her and leaving a school of seventy children without the leadership they needed. If handled badly, this could have sunk the preschool and put the church on the hook for too many liability issues to count. My seminary class in Church Leadership and Administration did not cover this.

We jumped into crisis management, made sure all the classes had the appropriate number of licensed teachers, called an emergency meeting of the school board, communicated with parents to inform them and reassure them that their children were in good hands, coordinated with the church board and church staff, supported the teachers, and tried to remember to breathe.

My husband/copastor/coparent had been out of town while I was handling the church crisis and caring for our eighteen-month-old. He returned that night just as I put our son to bed. I lowered my aching, enormous body into bed, and just as we were about to turn out the lights I said, “I think my water broke.”

The midwives would later speculate that the stress of the crisis may have led to the early labor. The early labor led to a complicated delivery. My body was not ready for the task at hand, but like so much of pastoral ministry, ready or not, here it comes.

For forty-one hours, I labored with my husband and two incredible, fierce midwives. This little birthing community helped me listen to my body and push through great pain and distress when my natural inclination was to seek comfort at all costs. Together we assumed different postures, positions, breathing techniques, all aimed at bringing new life into the world through a painful and bloody birth.

During those hours of labor with our daughter, I struggled to trust that my body and my spirit were capable of bringing this child into the world. It was taking so long. It hurt so bad. There were moments when I cried out, “I don’t think I can do this!” But the midwives knew I could. They had spent a lifetime at the side of women crying out in pain, and they bore witness as God worked the miracle of new creation again and again. When they told me, “Shawna, you were created for this,” I believed them.

The church was also in a metaphorical birth process. The crisis moment, which created enough stress to send my body into early labor, also created a situation in which we were forced to abandon old structures and systems, to take on new postures and endure some significant pain before we saw new life.

The collision of these two different kinds of births—my body responding to both—led me to ponder, like Mary, the way in which new creation breaks into the world. If new creation enters through wombs, labor, groaning, what might that mean for the role of the pastor, assisting the people of God in welcoming God’s salvific work in the church and the world?

Each and every birth is a miracle that leaves the world forever changed.

After the birth of our daughter, my life and the way I pastored transformed. The metaphor of midwifery has shaped the way I embody this sacred calling.

I sometimes scoff at Paul using this metaphor of labor in Romans 8 :22-25. He takes the abstract concept of God’s new creation, which is already arriving but not fully present, and compares it to the process of childbirth in which the waiting, pain, and suffering is productive, generative, and filled with a hopeful reality of new life.

What does a single man know about childbirth? But perhaps Paul is echoing a story he knows well. In the exodus story, the people of God are in bondage, much like all creation, in the land of Egypt. Their baby boys, the new life and future hope of Israel, are under threat. They need rescuing. At some point the Hebrew people might need a shepherd, but right now they need a deliverer. Not the one who kills an Egyptian and tries to run from his calling but the ones who would deliver even this deliverer.

The story of Shiphrah and Puah, the Hebrew midwives in Exodus 1, is one of my favorites. The Hebrew people are crying out to God for rescue while these midwives are tending to the mothers who are crying out in the pain of birth, helping them deliver babies that have already been claimed by death. There is agonizing hopefulness in the story of the midwives. There is an agonizing hopefulness in participating in the mission of God in this world. Because, as Paul reminds us, we are groaning while we wait.

Adapted from The Pastor as Midwife by Shawna Songer Gaines. Copyright (c) 2026 by Shawna Songer Gaines. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press. www.ivpress.com

Shawna Songer Gaines (D.Min. Lipscomb University) is lead pastor at Trevecca Community Church in Nashville, TN. She has 15 years of experience in congregational ministry and is a welcomed speaker for worship gatherings and church leadership conferences. Her latest book is The Pastor as Midwife. She is also the author of the Bible study series, Breathe: Sacred Space for Women, and co-author of A Seat at the Table: A Generation Reimagining Its Place in the Church and Kings and Presidents: Politics in the Kingdom of God. Shawna and her husband, Tim, and their two children reside in Nashville, TN, with their dog, Phoenix, and axolotl, Anemone.