Heart of a Pathfinder
With an invigorating spirit of fellowship, the Network of Women Ministers (NWM) hosted a luncheon for all female ministers and their spouses during General Council 2025. The event offered an opportunity for relational connection, spiritual encouragement, and ministerial inspiration.
Melissa Alfaro, the event’s host, serves as the national chair for the NWM alongside Susan Ross, lead network specialist, Cynthia Gandhi Dobbs, leadership development specialist, and Nichole Schreiber, core ministries specialist.
NWM was founded on four pillars: fostering community, enhancing theological awareness, leadership development, and normalizing women and men working in ministry together. Its mission, as stated on its website, is “to mobilize women to fulfill their ministerial call.”
In her initial greeting, Alfaro shared that her heart for this network was to create pathways for women to obtain credentials, help them discover God’s ministry path for their lives, and to develop them through intentional resources as they grow in their call.
The theme of this year’s luncheon, Heart of a Pathfinder, highlighted women in the AG’s history, celebrating achievements and paths that had been forged for women in ministry today.
Currently, nearly one-third of all credentialed ministers within the Fellowship are women and represent ministry positions including lead pastors, staff pastors, global workers, evangelists, chaplains, church planters, and 106 presbyters, according to Alfaro.
The event featured remarks by General Secretary Donna Barrett, and main speaker Nicole Heidt, the Fellowship’s first female district superintendent.
Heidt stated that she found a family in the AG from a young age, a gift from God due to instability in her childhood home. While at kids camp as a child, Heidt felt called into ministry, graduating from Trinity Bible College several years later. She assumed her call to ministry was to stand by a husband in a supporting role and, after she was married, she accompanied her late husband to his first pastorate.
After becoming a widow at 41, Heidt began to re-examine her call. When the church her husband had led asked her to stay on as lead pastor after his passing, it was initially intimidating, but she took a step of faith into a call that was being reignited.
“I was scared to death that first Sunday,” she recalled. “But as I started preaching, I felt like I was leaning back into God’s presence and everything in my heart felt that I was made to do this.”
From her role as senior pastor, Heidt was elected to the Wyoming Ministry Network as the secretary-treasurer, and in spring of 2025 was voted in as the district’s superintendent. Although she admitted there were those who acted and spoke in opposition to her leadership roles, causing her to doubt her divine call at times, she held tight to the truth that she had not been called by them, or by any other man or woman, but she had been called by God.
She concluded by encouraging women in the room to be culture carriers, not culture repairers. “We can’t repair things that have gone wrong, and God isn’t calling us to go back to repair things, but instead we are called to move forward and carry the culture of the Kingdom with us.” She also urged all women in ministry to remember that “we are called to be co-laborers, not competitors. Just as God made Adam and Eve to be in partnership, so we are to be in partnership with other ministers, male or female.”
Alfaro wrapped up the event by reflecting on past female ministers who were pioneers within the Assemblies of God including Lillian Trasher who opened and operated the largest orphanage in Egypt at the age of 74, and Dionicia Feliciano, the first Latina ordained by the Assemblies of God. She illustrated how these women served as pathfinders for others who would come after them, nourishing the soil for more accessible paths with each passing generation.
“We want to continue to chart paths for women who are answering their call,” Alfaro said of the network’s vision moving forward.
