Sandra Oestreich
June 1995 marked my 25th year as a missionary, most of which has been spent traveling or living in Eastern Europe. Recently I observed one of the young Albanian female staff members on our Youth With A Mission (YWAM) Discipleship Training School in Tirana, which led me to reflect on the changes I have experienced and seen for women in ministry in the East. I watched as she sat prayerfully during a ministry time when the staff was praying for students. She went to one of the young male students and began to share something with him, concluding by praying for him. She shared with spiritual authority, aware of her right and responsibility as a staff member to speak to the students' lives as God directed her. What I realized watching her was that she had overcome, consciously or unconsciously, a traditional part of her culture to do that. In Albanian culture, women serve men; they don't work alongside them equally (although they do work very hard), and they certainly don't correct them or offer advice. Our staff woman has a gentle spirit and was not acting in a domineering or aggressive way. She was merely being a servant of God, speaking from Him to the student. And just as amazing to me was that he accepted her ministry.
Is this typical of ministry opportunities for women in Eastern Europe? No. The church in Albania is unique as former Communist countries go. Because of Albania's total ban on any form of religion from 1967 to 1990, there was no church presence and thus no tradition. Apart from two points in their history (1890s and 1930s), there was also no Protestant church in the country. The Catholic and Orthodox Churches counted 30 percent of the population among their adherents until the Communist ban on religion, and the remaining 70 percent were Muslim from 500 years of Ottoman occupation. Thus, when the country opened up to missionaries in 1991 and dozens of Evangelicals moved to Albania to plant new churches, the new Protestant fellowships were made up of new believers, some founded by missionaries who came from backgrounds where women are not encouraged in leadership. Today, four years later, there are many women missionaries in the country, and Albanian and foreign women play an equal part in the development of the church and mission.
This has not been the case in many East European countries where the Protestant movement was founded by people influenced by traditional denominations in Europe or the United States. I lived in Croatia for three and one-half years in the 1970s and remember feeling surprised the first time I attended one Baptist church--there the men and women were sitting on separate sides of the room. In the early 1990s I led a short-term team to Bulgaria where we ministered in a Pentecostal church. Much to my surprise, the pastor asked me to give the sermon in an evening service. That was not the norm in Evangelical churches in Eastern Europe!
I am privileged to work with a mission that has a founding value that people should be allowed to minister whatever giftings God has placed in them, regardless of age, race, or gender. My leaders have often believed in me more than I believed in myself. My being a woman did not prevent them from giving me responsibilities. This is not necessarily the case in all parachurch groups any more than in local churches or denominations. At one point in my missionary career I attended a consultation on behalf of the organization with which I worked. At the same consultation was a leader for whom I had worked in another group. He expressed great surprise that I was also there as a delegate.
I went to Albania concerned about being accepted in a leadership role since the country was heavily influenced by Muslim culture. My first assignment was to co-lead a Discipleship Training School with a veteran male missionary. Would that be acceptable in the male students' eyes? What would students' parents think about a woman co-leader when they visited? (I was careful to wear a skirt or dress whenever I taught a lesson or when we expected visitors.) There appeared to be no problem. I sensed a respect from the students and their parents as well as their pastors (most of whom were foreigners). Perhaps that was because I was a foreigner and older. I could take on a motherly role, which gave me a place of honor.
As pleased as I am that I am able to minister here, I am even more excited about some young women I know who are beginning to use the gifts God has given them. I think of two Albanian women in their early 20s who are full-time workers, leading Bible studies, discipleship groups, and doing evangelism in villages; or of the Russian woman who is a YWAM missionary from a Muslim town and from a traditional Evangelical church. Because she is from a Muslim region of the former Soviet Union and because her Evangelical home church does not envision women in leadership, she has had much to overcome to step out of a doubly restrictive setting to follow the Lord into missions. 
Sandra Oestreich is national coordinator for Youth With A Mission, Albania.
Sandra Oestreich, "Women in East European Ministry," East-West Church & Ministry Report, 3 (Fall 1995), 1-2
