It was a June day in 1968 when Miriam V. Lundgren knelt before the altar at St. Peter's United Methodist Church in Ocean City. She felt the weight of hands on her head, as the bishop ordained her to preach in the Southern New Jersey Methodist Conference.

Lundgren was all at once a mother of two, a wife, a nurse and a minister - the first female minister in the conference.

"The bishop's last words to me before the ordination service were, `Miriam, if you fail it will be because you are a woman,'" Lundgren wrote in her self-published autobiography. "As the first woman to be ordained, you carry the responsibility for the future of women clergy in the Southern New Jersey Conference."

"Everybody was against it," recalled Lundgren, her bare feet propped on her coffee table. "Women didn't preach."

There was Bible-thumping. There were headlines. There were pointed questions from congregants. But Lundgren went on to pastor six churches in her native South Jersey.

And, of course, the Evesham resident said, female pastors no longer make the headlines. "There are lots of women today," she said.

Though Lundgren is now retired at age 79, she is still preaching the word of God, if not in the pulpit then in print. She paid Vantage Press to publish her autobiography, Then Sings My Soul: An Autobiography of My Places.

Throughout the 306-page book, Lundgren tells how God worked in her life as she grew up in the Depression. Her father closed his business and sold his machinery for scrap metal, so his family could eat.

In eighth grade, she was told (wrongly) that she had a low-average IQ and wouldn't be able to attend college. She went anyway, using money from a scholarship, a waitress job and her father's savings.

There are stories about her nursing years, stories about her church years and stories about her beloved South Jersey and the shore.

Her life's motto is "Where God guides, he provides," a theme that has sustained her through poverty, discrimination and the loss of her husband.

Janet Buchan, 68, read the book as soon as it came out. The Mount Laurel resident is a member of a prayer group that Lundgren attends. Buchan found the book " inspiring."

"I enjoyed it immensely," she said. "I was overwhelmed with what she was able to accomplish."

The book tracked God's work in Lundgren's life but it was also a love story about her husband, Bill, Buchan said. "It's very moving," she said.

Lundgren wrote the book over four years in her " atrocious" longhand and sent it to her 88-year-old aunt to type on a computer. She spent the next four years trying to get it published, at last paying for it herself as an offering to God. It is her personal testament of his grace and power. "It's God's story," she said. "I'm hoping people will find Jesus Christ. That's my prayer."

More information

`Then Sings My Soul: An Autobiography of My Places,' by Miriam V. Lundgren, is available at some local Christian bookstores and can be ordered through Vantage Press by calling (212) 736-1767.

Lundgren will speak at a woman's conference at the Medford United Methodist Church Oct. 19. Call (609) 654-8111.

Reach Kim Mulford at (856) 845-6521 or kmulford@ courierpostonline.com