By Karissa Delamont
Growing up in the Alliance, I had heard the name Miriam Charter. Single missionary serving in Romania back before the iron curtain fell. But it wasn’t until I had Dr. Miriam Charter as my professor for a World Religions course that legend morphed into reality, and a sweet friendship unfolded between Miriam and me that has now traced over 10 years.
For those of you who don’t know Miriam, let me quickly introduce her:
Miriam was born in China to missionary parents. At the age of two her parents fled China and relocated to Three Hills, Alberta where Miriam grew up. Miriam is one of 6 siblings. At the young age of 7 she sensed a call of God on her life, specifically to missions. After completing university, Miriam was sent out by the Alliance as an international worker, where she spent a decade serving the underground church in communist Romania. There, she implemented a seminary for women fashioned after the 2 Timothy 2:2 model of discipleship. Miriam completed a PhD in Education and after a brief stint in Russia, landed as a professor at Canadian Theological Seminary in Toronto and later moved to Chicago to lead a PhD program at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. In 2013 Miriam moved back to Calgary to teach at Ambrose University College until she retired in 2016.
Miriam’s heart beats for missions, for the nations, and for the next generation. She is an impressive woman. It made zero sense to go into communist Romania, especially as a young single woman which, in most settings, would disqualify her from being able to lead or teach. It was lonely and risky. And yet, there are crazy stories of God showing up. Miriam pivoted to train the pastor’s wives. She started with a group of 10 core women and by the 25th anniversary, it is estimated about 2,000 women were fully trained through this program. Fast forward to 2004, where things come full circle and the Romanian church sends one of these women to Toronto to help train the Canadian-Romanian church to start women’s ministries. How beautiful. How powerful.
It’s largely because of Miriam that I went into missions myself. Back in 2013, Miriam and I met almost weekly at the most European Café we could find in Calgary, The Ladybug Cafe. It was Miriam who, when I was trying to figure out next steps, challenged me to go out with the Alliance under the Global Ministry Apprenticeship Program. I wasn’t too thrilled about the prospect at the time. Miriam challenged me, “If you want to learn, you have to commit to the process of learning.” It was Miriam who championed me in the licensing and fundraising and allowing God to “push me out of the nest” of my own comforts. I left for Germany in 2015. Miriam faithfully prayed for me. In 2018 I had the joy of having her come visit me and the ministry I was helping lead. For the next 6 years, Miriam journeyed with me in the ups and downs. We talked about the reality of fears and hardships. About singleness. About how we were experiencing God. We shared the realities of being a woman in ministry and in leadership and its unique challenges and privileges. She has been a leading voice in my life telling me to not give up.
I have had the joy of getting to know Miriam up close. Hear her journey, her stories, her joys, and pains, and struggles. Share my own. Be inspired, challenged, comforted. Many of these meetups over the years have ended in our hands clasped together as we prayed. Often there were tears.
Who Miriam is has shaped me. She deeply loves the Alliance, and the Church. She has emulated a healthy dependency on the Church to step up and be the Body of Christ. Miriam has been faithful to go and do what God said. Whether it made sense or not. And she continues to do so.
When I think of Miriam I think of tenacity and perseverance. Yet I have always been struck by the combination of both fierceness as well as vulnerability. It is not without fear that Miriam followed the hand of God. And isn’t that just so with most of us? Our wrestles with our own sense of insecurities, limitations, doubts... and yet I have been blown away by the stories Miriam shares, of how God has taken care of her. He opened impossible doors.
“But God I am a woman.” “But God I am single.” “But God I’m not brave.” “But God I don’t have…” fill in the blank. In Miriam I see someone who has felt all these real things, and yet carries the joy of a life saying, “Yes God, I will go where you lead.” It is a life well lived and she carries testimony of seeing God show up, again and again, to take her small “yes” to create ripple effects beyond what she knows. And sometimes that influence is as little as clasping hands over a table and praying with a friend, or as large as a movement affecting thousands of lives. So, dear reader, may you too be encouraged to give your “yes” to God’s invitations to you, despite what you think may disqualify you. You never know the ripple effect.
The stories of Miriam’s adventures can be found in her book “ReGeneration; Stories of Resilient Faith in Communist Romania”
