The Road Taken: A Woman’s Life In and Out of the Pulpit

Davidson recounts her 35-year journey as a United Methodist minister in Texas by weaving together the deeply personal, such as the dissolution of her marriage and her grief over a daughter’s battle with anorexia, and the mundane professional realities of ministerial life, such as committees and fund-raising. She writes honestly and confronts head-on the self-doubt, insecurity, and uncertainty that often plague a minister’s life. She highlights the hardships and blatant sexism she faced as a woman in the Methodist Church, and the struggles and joys of serving as a pastor in an inner city Dallas church. “There is at the heart of the ministry a web of paradoxes,” she writes: “a career which is the source of so much conflicted feeling and even anger is also the source of a great deal of personal growth and a sense—at least part of the time—of being in the right place.” The book sometimes reads a little too much like a simple chronological account and suffers from excessive detail in some sections. Still, Davidson offers a glimpse into the life of a female minister that many involved in or considering ministry will find interesting and inspirational. (BookLife)