By Lindsey Williams
Writing Specialist
“We are so excited to welcome Braelyn to our staff,” said Tammy Anderson, executive director-treasurer of Women’s Ministries and Woman’s Missionary Union (WMU) of the Mississippi Baptist Convention. “Braelyn’s primary focus will be Women’s Enrichment Ministry, Women’s Evangelism and Women’s Missions. She comes to us from Oklahoma by way of the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary (NOBTS), where she received her degree in Women’s Ministry. In addition to her love for the Lord, she brings a servant heart and teachable spirit to her new role as our Women’s Consultant.”
From a small town in southwest Oklahoma, Braelyn Weaver was raised in a Christian household half a mile away from her church, which she considered a second home. As the only girl in her age group, Weaver made it her mission to be smarter than all the boys in Sunday school. Her determination to answer every question soon became a desire to ask her own.
At age 6, Weaver wondered why everyone seemed sad when her great-grandmother passed away from cancer. She understood that when someone loved the Lord, they joined Him in heaven, and her confusion led her to ask her parents many questions. For the first time, the “Sunday school answers” began to reach her personally.
After her parents tucked her into bed one night, she began to feel that “cliché tug” on her heart. At 7 years old, Weaver prayed to receive Jesus as her Savior.
“Like a responsible child,” she proudly reported back to her parents, who had her clarify her understanding of the decision before celebrating with her.
“Sometimes people think a testimony like that is boring,” Weaver reflected, “because it’s not this big moment of change in your life that everyone can see. But I think it is wonderful because Jesus has been walking with me since I was young. I’ve been learning what it looks like to be a disciple since I was a kid. It’s really beautiful to grow up with Jesus.”
Following her salvation, Weaver paid close attention to how her parents faithfully served in the church. In seventh grade, she and other teenagers were invited to serve during Vacation Bible School. Weaver decided that rocking a baby while enjoying snacks didn’t sound so bad. The more she assisted in the nursery and children’s church rotation, the more she recognized God’s leading.
As she got older, the age range of kids she served grew with her. At the beginning of high school, she began leading small groups for girls, encouraged by her youth pastor.
The dreaded day arrived in her junior year when adults began to ask the question: “What do you want to do with your life?” Weaver considered pediatric nursing or teaching but concluded she had neither the stomach for the former nor the superhuman willpower for the latter. Every option seemed to come with a reason it wasn’t right for her.
With only a few months until graduation, Weaver had to admit she didn’t know. Each time she was asked the big question, she joked, “I’m praying about it, so you pray about it too, and if the Lord tells you first, then you let me know!”
Little did she know, through her experience at Super Summer that year, God would give a second “cliché tug” on her heart. One night, the speaker urged the young men in the room to clearly hear: “The Lord calls women to ministry and, as the church, we should encourage, equip, and empower them to do the things the Lord calls them to do.”
Although the speaker had directed the message at young men, Weaver sat in confusion.
“I was just so caught off guard,” she recalled. “My only context of seeing women serve in the church had been volunteer teaching and nursery duty and things like that. I thought to myself, ‘Those are obviously really great and necessary and important, but why can I not get his words out of my head? That’s not what the Lord is calling me to do.’”
The next week, she attended an even larger camp at Falls Creek Conference Centers in Davis, Oklahoma, where the same message—delivered by a different speaker—struck her again. This time, she recognized it as the Lord’s calling.
“I had disobeyed the Lord before, very outright, when my youth group at church went to Latvia on a mission trip,” Weaver said. “I was a homebody and decided that trip was not for me. My brother asked me if I had prayed about it, and I said, ‘No, because I know what the Lord’s answer is going to be, and I am not going.’ I acted like I knew myself better than He knows me. So I didn’t go.
“That whole year, the Lord was really kind and patient with me, and I was just faced with this question over and over again in my quiet times, Bible studies and small groups: What if I said yes every time He prompted me? What would my life look like?
“People in Latvia didn’t miss out on the Gospel because I wasn’t there, because the Lord is sovereign and He was going to do what He planned to do. But what in my life and in my heart would be different if I was obedient every time? So at Falls Creek, I gave my yes to the Lord.”
After her initial disobedience, before the summer of her senior year, Weaver did go on mission to Latvia—twice. One day during the trip, as she journaled their endeavors, she asked herself, “Why was I so scared?” Reflecting on the trips, she realized she could trust the Lord with her “yes,” every time, even without knowing the outcome.
“I didn’t know what it would look like to be called to ministry, but I told the Lord He had my yes, whatever it meant,” Weaver said.
Following that night, she told her youth pastor what had happened. He replied, “I’ve been waiting for you to figure that out.”
“I asked him to tell me if the Lord told him first, and he didn’t!” Weaver laughed.
That night, Weaver called her then-boyfriend, Wyatt, whom she had known since pre-K and dated since 10th grade. They had plans to attend different colleges, and now that she had this calling, she wasn’t sure what their future would look like.
“I told him, ‘Okay, I’m called to ministry, so here’s your out if you want to break up. I understand,’” she said.
Wyatt, however, replied, “Why would I do that?” and he “stuck with” her through their separate college journeys and her seminary years at NOBTS. They married and began their life after “yes” together.
Weaver holds a Master of Divinity in ministry to women from NOBTS and a Bachelor of Arts in Christian ministry with an emphasis in women’s ministry and a minor in biblical studies from Oklahoma Baptist University. The road to full-time ministry wasn’t immediately clear, but she trusted the Lord as she worked in various roles—whether as head barista evangelizing customers at a coffee café, an agency director with Farmers Insurance or an admissions assistant at NOBTS.
In November of last year, Andrew Harper, Mississippi Baptist Convention Board (MBCB) adult ministry consultant and friend of Weaver’s, reached out about the open women’s consultant position. Weaver and her husband read through the job description together.
“My heart is for discipleship,” Weaver said. “That women of all ages would know and love the Lord and His Word. So when I read this job description, I told Wyatt, ‘If I could put my dream on a paper, it would be this.’”
Weaver was hesitant to hope. Wyatt was still in physical therapy school until the following May, and she doubted they would hire someone who couldn’t start right away. Wyatt offered to let her move to Mississippi without him, but Weaver didn’t want to be apart that long.
“I told myself, ‘If they have the facts, they can prayerfully make the decision. We’ll see if this is what the Lord has for me.’”
Weaver has been working at the MBCB since mid-June and is loving it.
“We have a really cool opportunity here with Women’s Ministry and WMU in one department,” Weaver said. “We are encouraging and equipping women to both be disciples of Jesus and make disciples of Jesus by emphasizing loving the Lord with all your heart and soul and mind and strength and loving your neighbor as yourself. I am so excited about what that will look like and how we can serve and encourage churches.”
She and Wyatt are relocating to Mississippi with their dog, Nola, and are excited to see how God continues to use her “yes.”
