Posted Date: June 25, 2008

Retired Teacher, Inspired Preacher Is Published

By Rosaland Tyler
Associate Editor
New Journal and Guide

   What should a successful scholar and professor do at the end of a successful career?
    Dr. Helen Bessent Byrd, who retired after 30 plus years from Norfolk State University in 2004, has published one of her sermons in a new book-- Those Preaching Women: A Multicultural Collection. This after graduating from seminary at age 64 last spring.
   “Life has been good,” said Byrd, during a recent phone conversation from Atlanta, where she is involved in another writing-project. “At first I believed it was not the right time for a woman to go into the ministry. The struggle lasted a long time.”
   Parts of the struggle to reinvent her career and herself are in the new book. Her selection is titled Image or Reality. Although it focuses on how many ancient people failed to see that David was God’s choice for king, the same applies to modern-day situations that are murky and undefined.
   “We have a tendency to get lost in our conditioned outlook rather than addressing the reality,” Byrd explained. “We tend to draw conclusions and try to make things that are not there rather than face up to what’s real.
“Through faith, we are able to understand these circumstances in which we find ourselves. But we cannot engage in denial. That’s my point.”
    Clearly Byrd is not the type to engage too long in denial. As a recent graduate of Union Theological Seminary, a Presbyterian school in Richmond, she is looking for new opportunities.
    But what drives her to keep going at this point?

She’s published scholarly papers, secured grants, and has excelled in the field of education for over three decades.
“I’ve said ‘wait, wait, wait’ long enough to God,” she explained. “I would not want to close my eyes without having given myself fully to God’s work.
She has also served on a Presbyterian mission board for the past 35 years. At the time she was an education professor at Norfolk State University.
“I told my father I thought maybe God was calling me to preach. He said, ‘I declare! I always wanted one of my children to be a minister--but I didn’t think it’d be my daughter,” Byrd said. “At the time I just took that as a no.”
But as more and more women enter the pulpit, Byrd said she decided to end the struggle by enrolling in seminary after retiring. On the other side of a hectic life as a student who attended classes five days a week for three years, then commuted home to Hampton Roads on the weekend, she is in that place where reality is no longer fuzzy and vague.
“It was very hard,” she said, especially Hebrew classes. “But I enjoyed being in school, the academic environment and the opportunity to be in quiet and prayer for the week. The only reality then was the school in Richmond.”
The new book, Those Preaching Women, reflects diverse view from other female preachers who describe assorted realities. While previous editions were dedicated to sermons of African American women in various denominations and ministries, this book includes women who are Cuban, Native American, European American, Puerto Rican, South Korean, South Vietnamese, and West Indian.
Their messages focus on hope, justice, relationships, and peace. Published by Judson Press, the book is available online at judsonpress.com.
Another Norfolkian, Veronica Martin Thomas, is also featured in the new book of sermons from authors who are not afraid to put their life experiences into words, one reviewer wrote. “These sermons are inspiring, soul-searching and written by dynamic preachers.”

 

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