Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 19:4 (Autumn 2005)
Article: Finding Our Identity: Women’s Commissioning Service Presentation
Author: DesAnne J. Hippe

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PP 19:4 (Autumn 2005) p. 5

Finding Our Identity:
Women’s Commissioning Service Presentation

DesAnne J. Hippe

Bethel Seminary, June 14, 2005

DESANNE HIPPE earned her doctorate from Marquette University in Theology and Society, an interdisciplinary specialization where she was able to focus her work in systematics, ethics, and philosophy. In addition to this focus, her interdisciplinary work in theology is informed by her Master’s degree in Church Social Work and her time spent as a psychiatric social worker serving severely mentally ill adults. Dr. Hippe has taught theology for Marquette University, Trinity International University, and Bethel Seminary, and now resides in Waukesha, WI with her husband and daughter.

Women of the graduating class of 2005, it is both an honor and a joy to be able to join your family, your friends, and other members of the seminary community in celebrating this last leg of your seminary journey with you. You have worked hard to arrive here, and, as you leave, you take with you a wealth of skills, wisdom, and insight as you go forth as ministers of the gospel. As one of the many faculty who has invested so much into seeing you succeed in your journey, I cannot resist taking this opportunity to ask you to be sure to take just one more theological insight with you as you leave. The one insight that I would like for you to take with you is this: A sure understanding of who you are.

Scripture is very clear about who you are. To put it quite simply, you are someone whose identity is found in Christ. Through the power of the Holy Spirit,

• You are a person who is being fully transformed into the image of Christ;
• You are a woman who is fully capable of imaging Christ in this world;
• You are a minister who is fully called to image Christ in this world.1

While this may seem like a straight-forward theological truth, clearly found in Scripture, through listening to your stories in the short time that I have been at this institution, I have been terribly grieved to hear that this truth is something with which many of you have had to struggle to claim as your own. And, as I have learned from you, this struggle is not without good reason. One of the reasons why you have had to struggle is because you are in a world that has competing claims about who you are and who you are supposed to be—claims that fail to engage the wondrous mystery of the incarnation.

We live in a world that is very good at classifying and segregating people by how they look. We know all too well that, unfortunately, people are often put in certain categories according to something over which they have little or no control: the way i...

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