About Me

This is My Story:

WHO I AM

My name is Nicole Barnett. I am a 32-year-old wife and mom of three precious kiddos. I am also a district-licensed pastor within the Church of the Nazarene denomination and am currently serving as the Family Ministries at Ravenna Church of the Nazarene in Ravenna, Kentucky.

I am a person who takes interest in a lot of things--from outdoor activities like fishing and hiking to indoor things like baking and sewing. I love art in all of its forms and appreciate music across all genres because I love being able to see into the heart of the artist behind every work.

If you follow the Enneagram types at all, I am a type 8 with a slight 7 wing. I tend to want to advocate for others and stand up for those who struggle with standing by themselves or for themselves at all. Because of this, I am incredibly passionate about things like poverty, gender equality, and racial injustice. In many ways, my passion for these issues was nurtured (albeit unknowingly) by my own life experiences. Confused? Well, let me tell you my story.

CHILDHOOD

I was born into a large family to a single mom. She was single by choice, and I was a very intentional product of a one-night stand. My mother was not mentally stable--having suffered a lot of abuse and neglect in her younger years, she distrusted men and had a chip on her shoulder regarding any authority figure (whether they were pastors, teachers, police officers, or anyone else who may hold power). Because of this distrust, she would do all she could to prevent interactions between her children and their biological fathers. As a result, the only memory I have of my biological father was when he attempted to attend my 4th birthday party and he and my mother had a fight in the doorway of our home.

When I was five years old, I was invited to church by a friend of mine from school. It wasn't anything super spectacular, but the Sunday School teacher had referred to God being our loving Heavenly father--and to a little girl who didn't have any contact with her father, that sounded like a dream come true. I wanted to have that kind of relationship with God so I asked the teacher to help me invite God into my life. When I went home, I shared the news with my mom who was really not all that pleased with the news. She was a non-religious catholic who didn't believe that you could be sure of your salvation, and I was telling her that Jesus loves me and that I'm saved. I am not sure if her reaction was really due to her beliefs or due to her mental illness, but it became abundantly clear that I should just not talk about it to her at all.

My mother's mental instability resulted in the severe neglect of three of my siblings (two of whom died before their first birthday). When my younger sister was found to be "failure to thrive" at one of her well-child checkups, she was taken to a temporary foster home, and my family was finally flagged by the department of children and family services to keep watch. This ended up proving to be a good thing because, although my younger sister was able to come home after a couple of months, it wouldn't be long before something would happen that would not only remove her again but would also result in my older sister and me being placed in foster care as well.

One of my biological brothers started a drug addiction early (he was 13 years old). His use would result in blackouts and violent rampages. Unfortunately for me, one of those rampages was directed toward me one day. After coming out of my bedroom to go play in the playroom, I accidentally stepped on my brother's foot while he was sprawled half-on and half-off the couch sleeping off one of his binges. He woke up in a rage, cornered me, a began to strangle me. I am not sure what would have happened if my married oldest sister hadn't been visiting during that time because she had to pry him off of me before he would let me go. After I finally regained my vision after blacking out and could breathe normally again, I tried to tell my mother what had happened but she profusely denied that her "little boy" would do anything like that. The bruises on my neck said otherwise, and when my teacher saw them the next day, she reported it and the state, once again, got involved and removed me and my two sisters who were still living there from the home and placed us in foster care.

For about a month, my older sister was placed in a foster home in Eugene, Oregon while I was with my younger sister in a small town called Mapleton. I was enrolled in school and started attending church with my new foster mother. After about a month, it became evident that my birth mother was not going to cooperate with the judge's orders for maintaining a safe home for my sisters and me, so they began to look for a permanent situation in which all three of us would be placed together. They found it in a couple at the new church where I was attending. The husband was the music teacher for my school and the wife was a stay-at-home mom who was homeschooling her youngest son at the time (he was a year older than me). My sisters and I moved in, and after a few months, it was decided that my birth mother would have her custody rights revoked entirely and that my sisters and I would be adopted by the new foster family.

The adoption process was long and painful as my younger sister's biological father entered the picture and decided to fight for custody of her. After a long battle, it was decided that she would not be adopted and would be allowed to live with her birth father if she chose to do so, but that, until that time, ,she would remain with us. After that ruling was decided, the adoption was able to be finalized for my older sister and me, and I thought things were going to be good after that.

It wasn't long after the adoption was finalized that I started being told by my adoptive mother that I was "just like Linda" (my birth mother) and, because I would just end up failing just like she did, I should never get married, never have kids, never go to college, etc. Believing that I was just going to fail made me not even want to try so I fell behind in my school work and I would lose myself in fictional books. I starved for the love and affirmation that the main characters would experience on the pages of those novels but I always felt like I fell short of being worthy of that kind of unconditional love. There were even times when I would doubt that God loved me the way scripture said He did, because even the family that chose me seemed to only see failure in me.

When my older sister graduated and went off to college, the physical abuse really started to become more consistent. My adoptive mom would become easily agitated and take out her frustration on me. Between her older son dealing with a drug addiction and the fact that my adoptive father's mother was living with us and was on hospice, she was stressed and I was the only target big enough to handle her "venting" but also young enough to believe I couldn't do anything about it. The few times I did try to tell a trusted adult, they would go and tell my adoptive mother the "lies I had been telling people" and I would be punished even more.

I did dream of going to college and living far away from my adoptive mother, but when I would request information about colleges, she would yell at me and make sure to tell me that I would never succeed so there was no point in even finding out the information. So, at 18 years old and out of High School, I was stuck with no prospects for the future, no job, and completely dependent upon my adoptive parents. I finally was allowed to get my driver's license six months after I turned 18 and was able to borrow my dad's old beater pickup truck to drive around town and run errands for my parents, but when I asked if I could get a job, it was a no-go. I couldn't get a job because I needed a more reliable car for that. I couldn't use one of their vehicles because I didn't have money to pay for gas and insurance. They could tell me when and where I could go because they were paying for the gas and insurance on the beater. I felt stuck.

Right before I turned 19, I started talking to a guy whom my sister knew from church camp. We started dating long-distance as he lived four hours away. He was the first person to ever seem to believe me when I would share what I was experiencing at home, and about a month after my 19th birthday, he drove down to visit me. I finally felt seen and I felt like I could trust him. He was the son of a former pastor in our denomination and he had been through a lot too--I finally felt understood and cared about. A few weeks after his visit, my adoptive parent's youngest son had an accident and became paralyzed from the chest down. He was in the hospital for several months and during that time this guy would come down a visit me and encourage me.

I was able to finally convince my parents that I needed to get a job--specifically in the nursing field, so I could learn to help care for my paralyzed brother and I ended up getting certified as a CNA and getting a job at a nursing home. However, it wasn't long before the signs of abuse started to show at my work. One day I showed up to work with a bruised arm after my mother badly sprained my wrist and had to get more care from the nurses there than the residents of the home. Another day I had a huge bump on my head after my mother had pushed me down and I had hit my head on the edge of the door. I would show up for my shift not having slept for days due to my mom fighting with me and me having to leave to go hang out with friends just to avoid more screaming. My boss finally told me that if I didn't report my mother's abuse, she would--or I at least needed to move away. I was afraid to report my mom because she had always been able to isolate me from my sisters and garner their support whenever she was angry at me, so I knew that if I did anything they would hate me. So I opted to move.

I arranged to move to the town where my boyfriend lived, but as soon as I made the move and closed the door on ever going home again, the abuse started with him too. It started off with sexual manipulation and emotionally scarring comments--and that lasted for over a year. But I finally began looking for an out when I found out I was pregnant. However, before I could leave, the abuse became physical and I ended up miscarrying. He never knew because I never told him, but it was then that I knew that I had to leave. I ended up looking for a nanny job that would get me out of state, and I found one in Colorado.

After moving to take care of two precious boys, I bonded with their parents quickly--the husband especially. He became a trusted figure for me, and he saw the emotional toll my relationship was taking on me. He gave me advice, encouraging me to cut things off with my boyfriend (after moving, I had chickened out of breaking up because I was afraid to end up alone and single for the rest of my life). However, after a few months (and my boyfriend blaming me for a porn addiction that he had been dealing with even before our relationship) I realized that I was better off single for the rest of my life than I would be if I ended up married to the guy so I ended things with him.

After about a month, a good friend from camp reached out to me after seeing that I was single again. We had always talked about her boyfriends in the past and she had always sought my advice (though I never really understood why--because I had really never been allowed to date in high school so what did I know?). Well, she had signed up for a Christian dating site and wanted my input on a couple of guys she was talking to through the site. She bought me a membership and I created a profile. It wasn't long before she really lost interest in the whole thing, but by that point, I had been having fun making friends in the chatroom. I wasn't there to date, I was just there because my membership hadn't expired yet so the pressure was off. There were a couple of guys that I thought were cool, but in the end, I wasn't interested in anything more than friendship with them. That is, until one day. I logged in, entered the chatroom, and suddenly there was this random guy who was hitting me with all sorts of original and hilarious pick-up lines. I didn't take it seriously, but the guy was so entertaining and I was laughing harder than I had in a long time (if ever). Three hours later, I started to think I might be interested--just because he was genuinely funny and seemed really nice.

The next day, he was back but we ended up just chatting about life in general--nothing super deep but nothing super funny either. But I realized that I kind of liked him. We talked every day that week--even making sure to schedule when we would both be online so we could talk. But at the end of the week, he said that he would be gone for the next two weeks. He was part of the National Guard, and he had training and then he was going to be working as a medic for a camp for military kids. He was going to be offline and only had the ability to text people during that time. I wasn't sure he was interested at that point, but I told him my number and said that he could text me if he felt like it. Turns out that is exactly what he had been fishing for. He was just too shy to directly ask for my number.

Those two weeks were just constant texting back and forth. Finally, he ended up calling me and directly asking me to be his girlfriend. I did feel a little weird about the fact that he lived so far away (he was in Indiana and I was still in Colorado) but it also made me feel safer knowing that there was that distance and if things went south, it wasn't going to be a challenge to end it. He made plans to come to visit me in person for the first time a couple of months later but he planned it as a "guys' road trip" with his friends. He figured that if he got to Colorado and we didn't click, he wouldn't be a total waste of a trip--so he had an entire road trip planned and I was "Stop #1."

To say that Jason and I clicked in person would be an understatement. We felt like we had always been together by that point and it was hard for both of us when he had to leave to continue on his road trip. But we made plans for me to go and visit him over Thanksgiving just about a month and a half later. For the next year, it was just us flying back and forth to visit the other (with one trip having us fly out to meet my parents). 9 months after meeting, he proposed--and a year after meeting, we were married. Just shy of a month after our one-year anniversary, we welcomed our older daughter into the world. Two years and a few months later, my son was born--and two years after that, we got our bonus baby girl (not planned, but definitely cherished).

Our marriage, although amazing and a blessing, has not been all sunshine and rainbows. He had to deal with the effects of my past abuse and trauma and I had to learn to not project the sins of others onto him. We've been married 10 years now and we've learned so much. We often look back on the early days of our relationship and talk about how we would have responded to one another if we knew then what we know now--but part of the fun in our relationship was the learning process.

CALL TO MINISTRY

When I was eight years old, my adoptive mother (foster mother at the time) bought me a New Testament Bible on cassette tape. I would listen to it every chance I could and got to the point that, at one point, I could quote any part of the New Testament in the NIV translation word-for-word. But one day as I was listening to it, it felt like more than just listening to the Bible--it felt like God was telling me something. I ran down the stairs to my mom who was in the kitchen and I excitedly told her, "Mom! I am going to be a pastor when I grow up!" Her response was not unusual for a female who feels the call to be a pastor to hear. It was, "Oh honey, God doesn't call women to be pastors." But then she smiled and said, "But you can be a pastor's wife!"

Although she would later tell me that I should never get married because I would end up being a failure as a wife (and mother--among other things), she still groomed me to be a "good pastor's wife." "A good pastor's wife cooks and cleans" so I was taught early how to cook and clean. "A good pastor's wife is not wasteful" so I was taught how to salvage a holey pair of socks and to mend underwear and not to throw it away. "A good pastor's wife plays the piano" so I took five years of piano lessons... all for naught, though. I can't play a single song. The ironic thing about my mother's expectations about a "good pastor's wife" is the fact that the pastor's wife we had did NONE of those things. What she did do was work with the kids at church occasionally--but instead of noticing the things she didn't do, I simply added "children's ministry" to the list of things I needed to do. With every pastor's wife I met, I added to the list of all of the things I needed to do to be "a good pastor's wife" because I couldn't be a pastor--so I would be the best pastor's wife I could possibly be.

I never felt like the call disappeared though. I always felt compelled to share about God, to get excited and share what I had discovered in God's word, to help care for people. I would push the call down, but I never forgot about it. Occasionally, I would attend a church where a woman was in a pastoral role--able to preach and teach from the pulpit and I would ask myself why she was able to do it and I wasn't, but I never challenged what my mom had told me initially. She had quoted a Bible verse and told me her understanding of it, and I didn't think that there could possibly be any other way of understanding that verse--so I ignored that pressure.

It wasn't until I had married Jason and finally voiced to him that I felt like God was calling me that I received any verbal affirmation of that call. But I still fought it. I ignored God's call on my life for a grand total of 18 years before I finally couldn't ignore it any longer. You see, Jason had answered the call to be a pastor when he was 16 years old. Due to some decisions and other life circumstances (it isn't my story to tell), he was still in the process of becoming a pastor when we started our family. When my son was an infant, Jason had to undergo something called "Pastoral Assessment"--this was a process on the Pittsburgh District of the Church of the Nazarene to assess prospective pastors for their strengths and weaknesses so that seasoned ministers can better support and encourage them through the process. It was somewhat grueling--they evaluated everything from your finances, to theology to marriage, etc. Since I was his wife, I was also involved and we both underwent a psychological evaluation, we shared our testimonies and participated in the ministry exercises (because, usually, a pastoral spouse will be involved in some of the activities in ministry as well). The point is to not only see how well a pastor is going to function but to also see how supportive the couple is to one another in a ministry setting.

It was a weekend-long event and five pastoral candidates (four men, and one woman) were there with their spouses--along with numerous other senior pastors from the district (both men and women). However, at one point during the assessment, the spouses were separated for different interviews. The pastoral candidate went with the District Superintendent to be interviewed, and the spouse went with the District Superintendent's wife to be interviewed. I am not really sure what my husband and the DS talked about, but the DS's wife asked me several questions pertaining to my support toward Jason's call. But one question kind of stuck out to me. She asked me, "Do you feel like your call is tied to your husband's call?" And I remember that I started to answer and then I paused and realized something. I told her that I didn't feel like my call was tied to my husband's at all. Not that I didn't support his call, but that if he were to step away from ministry, I would still feel like I needed to serve within the Church. I remember she kind of smirked and nodded as though she expected that answer--and that night I told Jason that I was going to stop ignoring God's call and that, instead, He was going to have to show me scripturally that it was okay to be a woman pastor if He really wanted me to be one.

The next day, one of the woman pastors (actually the one directing the Assessment) pulled me aside and asked me, "You're called to be a pastor, aren't you?" I never would have acknowledged it before then (at least not to anyone other than Jason), but I had told Jason and, more importantly, God that I was going to stop ignoring the call--and God immediately tested that statement. I told her that I did feel like I was, but I also told her that I wasn't sure women could be really be called. She kind of gave me a look--because here I was, saying that to a woman pastor--but I told her that I couldn't deny that she was or that any of the other women were. It was obvious to me the fruit that God was producing through their ministries, but I had spent so much of my life believing that God doesn't call women that it was going to take some work from God to convince me of my call. But I was open to that convincing--for the first time in my life.

Before the day was over, three other pastors AND the District Superintendent asked me about my call--and I told Jason on the way home after the assessment that there was no denying it now. I wasn't sure what my call meant. I wasn't sure if it meant that I would preach or that I would have the title of "pastor" within a church, but that I would allow God to lead me in all of those questions. When I finally got up to courage to tell my senior pastor (all the while bracing for him to respond much in the same way that my mom did) he laughed and responded, "About time you realized it!" But I told him that I still wanted to figure out how I was called before moving forward--and he recommended that I wait until I begin the educational side of the process to apply for my first local minister's license.

Shortly after that, our District Superintendent resigned to take a pastoral position at a church on another district and during my husband's first District License interview, an interim-DS whom we didn't know was one of the interviewers. On top of that, the man was older, and I immediately put up my guard thinking that I should keep quiet about my call to ministry in case he was "too traditional" for women pastors. They asked my husband a couple of questions about his call (after all, it was HIS interview), but then the interim-DS turned toward me and said, "So, I hear that you've answered a call to ministry yourself!" The next twenty minutes were filled with him and the other pastors in the interview encouraging me to take the next step--to take that leap of faith--and trust that God would be faithful in providing me with answers. So, in May of 2017, I received my very first Local minister's license. I started classes In December of 2017 (two weeks after my youngest was born), and began ministering actively after that.

Since I was still unsure of the direction of my call, I decided to major in Christian Education instead of Pastoral Ministries. The major provided most of the same classes as the pastoral ministry major along with five electives (which would allow me to take the missing required classes for ordination should I decide to pursue ordination as an elder). However, after I took the Foundations of Women's Ordination class alongside History and Polity of the Church of the Nazarene, I realized that I needed to be a pastor--to preach, to teach, to provide pastoral care, all of it. God had given me an answer through those classes--showing me in scripture that He called, does call, and continues to call women into all roles of the church.

That does not mean that I have been without pushback since then. Although the denomination I serve in officially affirms women in all areas of the Church (including the senior pastor role), the lack of proper theological education of the members of the churches has led to a lot of local congregations struggling with the idea of a woman in authority (even in an associate role)--And that is why I am here. The entire purpose of this ministry is to provide education for those questioning the idea of women in spiritual authority and support for those women who have answered the call or are wanting to answer the call and need to know that someone understands the struggle.