Melissa Crawford knew she was being called to serve God at an early age. Raised in Seminary, Mississippi, one of her earliest memories is standing on a chair in the kitchen of her family’s home, preaching the word of God. However, she said, other than her young age, there was one other thing keeping her from going to seminary then and there.
“I was told I couldn’t do that because I was a girl,” she said. “I was just standing on a chair in the kitchen, and I was just preaching.”
Although preaching was not possible, Crawford still found ways to serve. The oldest of eight children, she had experience with children, which helped her teach Sunday school as a teenager and work with youth in her church.
After high school, Crawford relocated to Hattiesburg to attend the University of Southern Mississippi. Continuing her service to the church there, she spent four years at USM before graduating with a Bachelor of Science in accounting and accepting a position as a CPA and adjunct professor of accounting at Prince William Community College in Alaska.
She was the first in her family to graduate from college, but Crawford said she still felt the Lord calling her to serve in a church.
“I lived there for a number of years, continuing again to do everything in the church but preach and then in 1996, realizing God was calling me to seminary and that he had called me there when I wad 5-years-old,” she said.
Answering the Lord’s call, Crawford relocated to Texas to attend George W. Truett Seminary, where she obtained a Master of Divinity with languages. Afterward, she took a position as senior pastor at United Methodist Churches in Texas.
It was during that time Crawford found her love of working with children in the church.
“I was privileged to help a pastor who came from Oregon to Texas, and he started a church,” she said. “So, I went out to work with the children.”
The church was small and very rural, Crawford said. From the window of the church, she and the children watched goats being born, which piqued the children’s interest in animals. Crawford, searching for a way for her flock to get involved, reached out to Heifer International, which allowed her to start a program at her church.
“So, we basically had five or six adults and 10 or 12 children,” she said. “About a year and a half later, God provided money that we built a new church, built and paid for on 15 acres of land, and it just grew.”
By that time, Crawford had been called to teach religion at Wiley College, where the Lord called on her once more. This time, she said, the Lord was telling her to leave her Southern Baptist upbringing behind and be a Methodist
“I’d been teaching in central Texas, in the religion department,” she said. “It was just a whole different thing. And so, one day I was just washing the dishes. I can’t remember thinking too much about it. It just seemed like I heard, ‘I didn’t bring you to a Methodist college to stay Baptist.’”
Crawford began to explore the Methodist denomination, examining her own beliefs and praying.
“They wanted me to come in,” she said. “And then, then I was told, ‘You need to be given a charge.’ So, I was teaching full time and a pastor in a church and working on a PhD part time.”
That proved to be a bit too much. When her teaching contract was up for renewal, Crawford announced she would be moving on. Additionally, the debt from her doctorate studies wasn’t something she felt she could take on.
“I hate that I didn’t finish it,” she said. “That’s the only thing I haven’t finished.”
However, shortly after returning to her home state, Crawford was again called on to serve as pastor, this time at two churches.
“I am the pastor at Union and at Lake,” she said, smiling. “I preach there on Sunday mornings at 9 a.m. and a preach here at 11 a.m., and then I try to spend Tuesdays in Lake and go back during the week if there’s times I need to be there.”
Throughout both her careers, Crawford said there have always been those who doubt her ability because of her gender, but she doesn’t let that stop her.
“It wasn’t just in the church. It’s in the corporate world as well,” she said. “I remember one time, I was promoted, and there was a young man I shared an office with. I remember one day him saying, ‘You know, you seem like a nice girl. Why don’t you just stay home and have kids?’”
That “friction,” Crawford said, was always present, but she kept her head down, did her work and followed the Lord. Now, with two churches of her own, she said she counsels young women going into ministry and encourages everyone in her church to follow their calling no matter what.
And, she’s having the time of her life.
“It’s just, it’s great to be back home. I didn’t know what to expect. I’ve been gone so many years and so many different paths of life, but I just love it,” she said. “I was coming in from Jackson the other day and saw all the progress up there with the hospitals in place, and I am so proud of my state. It’s good to be home.”
