Gender in the Evangelical Community: Concern #2
My second concern:
Egalitarian in creed but not in practice.
Evangelical Christian denominations can broadly be divided into two categories on gender in church hierarchy: those who believe and teach that women can serve as overseers (pastors and elders), who prefer to be called egalitarians, and those which teach that the office of overseer is exclusively reserved for men, who prefer to be called complementarians. This post only concerns egalitarian churches.
Christians for Biblical Equality, the main activist organization for evangelical egalitarianism, has a list of denominations which ordain women on its web site. Of these, I have personal experience attending the Church of the Nazarene, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), and the Assemblies of God. This is what I recall of the local church leadership for those three church homes:
Puyallup Church of the Nazarene ~ I attended from 1992 through 1998. All of the youth pastors and adult pastors were men. This was especially significant because we switched senior pastors once and cycled through four different youth pastors while I was there, all men. You can see on their current staff page that the only ministries which are directed by women in any sense are the children’s ministry and the “mature adults” ministry; otherwise women are serving primarily as assistants to the male staff.
There is a master’s thesis from 1996 on the official Church of the Nazarene web site documenting how, over the last century, the Nazarene Church has seen a decrease in the percentage of women among the ordained clergy in addition to a decrease in the number of ordained women actually serving as pastors. According to the author, Richard W. Houseal, Jr., “by 1995 women represented just 6.7% of the total credentialed [Nazarene] ministers. The types of roles they fulfilled had also changed. In 1930 31.1% were either pastors or evangelists. By 1995 that percentage had dropped to just 12.6%; 87.4% were in ‘other’ types of assignments.” (p. 60)
I don’t have any solid current data on the status of ordained women in the Nazarene church, but I have read complaints elsewhere of local leadership railroading women into traditional roles.
Sumner Presbyterian (PCUSA) ~ I attended this church from 1998 to 2002, returning to it when I came home from BYU during the summers of 2001 and 2002. The senior pastor, youth pastor, and assistant youth director were all men when I began attending. Around 2002, the youth pastor moved on to other things and the assistant youth director became the youth director—I’m pretty sure he isn’t formally ordained as a pastor, but functionally he is one. Since then the assistant youth director has been a woman; my own cousin was the assistant youth director for a while. To my knowledge the lay pastor has been a man since I began attending.
The church always had numerous women serving as elders and deacons, and sometime in the 2000s they added a woman as an executive pastor. You can view the current staff list, including all of the elders and deacons, on the official web site. Though men have usually held the top leadership positions, I’ve always thought Sumner Presbyterian does a pretty good job practicing egalitarian principles. However, it’s important to note that PCUSA is considered a mainline denomination, not an evangelical one, though Sumner Presbyterian itself was very much evangelical.
Rock Canyon Assembly of God ~ I attended RCAoG from 2001 through 2006. When I first began attending, the church had three pastors: Dean Jackson of “A Peacemaker in Provo” fame, a music pastor and a youth pastor, all men. Dean’s wife, Marlys, was not formally ordained, but she was very prominent and active in local congregation leadership and taught the Sunday school class I usually attended. We later lost our other pastors and just had Marlys and Dean for a while. It was usually Pastor Dean giving the sermons on Sunday, though women did regularly give shorter messages and testimonies, lead worship, and perform special musical numbers. When we did have guest speakers giving the sermon, it was as likely to be a woman as a man, and we definitely had women on the executive board.
If you look at the current staff page for the congregation, you’ll see that it lists “pastors” by husband and wife. I don’t know how many of these people are formally ordained; I do know that they were all very active in the local church leadership. Pastor Dean often re-iterated that the Assemblies of God allow both men and women to serve as ministers.
While I think RCAoG did a pretty good job of incorporating both men and women in leadership for the size of its congregation, elsewhere I have heard complaints about the AoG in the same vein as that of the Nazarene Church: most of the denomination’s pastors, youth pastors, and music pastors are men with women running the women’s ministries and children’s ministries. I’ve been searching the web sites for Assemblies of God in the Chicago area and so far this is what I’ve found:
New Hope Christian Fellowship in Mundelein – No staff information on web site; senior pastor is a man.
Living Waters Assembly of God in Grayslake – Senior pastor, associate pastor, and youth pastor are all men. Women are leading most of the children’s programs, though there is one man involved in the children’s ministry and I do think it’s good to see both men and women doing that.
Calvary Harvest Church in Gurnee – Senior pastor and “pastor of ministries” (seems to be the youth pastor among other things) are men, counseling ministry leader is a man. Children’s ministry leader is also a man—again, it is good to see men as well as women involved in children’s ministries.
Temple Shalom Yisrael in Rolling Hills – No staff information on web site; senior pastor is a man.
Northwest Assembly of God in Mount Prospect – Senior pastor, assistant pastor and student ministries pastor are all men. There is a woman listed as the children’s pastor; while I think it’s great that she’s considered a pastor and not just a director or lead, and I’m in favor of giving women honorific titles for overseeing women’s and children’s ministries, I’m doubtful that the job is any different than a traditional children’s ministry.
Calvary Christian Church in Lake Villa, IL – Senior pastor is a man, associate pastor is a woman, married couple listed as children’s pastors.
Those are all of the English-speaking Assembly of God churches within 15 miles of our future home in Illinois which have web sites. It’s entirely possible that some of the churches which lacked staff pages have women serving in other overseer positions. However, for the churches surveyed, one church has a female associate pastor and two have women serving in children’s ministries who are considered pastors. That’s one woman doing a job she wouldn’t be allowed to do in a complementarian church and two women with honorific titles they probably wouldn’t get in a complementarian church performing a job they would be allowed to do. That there are some men serving in the children’s ministries is nice, but not an impossibility in a complementarian church where men have no restrictions put on them. Most of these churches aren’t running their staffs any different from complementarian churches in regards to gender roles.
Please note that I am not at all denigrating these churches, these men and women, or their ministries. I’m only observing a phenomenon which I believe the Assemblies of God and the egalitarian evangelical community need to address.
UPDATE 8/7/2009: The Assemblies of God must read my blog, because they just elected their first woman to the executive. Good for you, AoG.
The Stained Glass Ceiling
The New York Times published an interesting article in 2006: “Clergywomen Find Hard Path to Bigger Pulpit.” Some of the points from that article:
- As of the printing of the article, women made up 51% of seminary students. It should be noted that this doesn’t meant that 51% of people seeking to head congregations as pastors are women; most seminaries have non-pastoral tracks which attract women such as counseling MAs.
- In mainline Protestant churches, women make up 20% of lead or solo pastors.
- Women make up only 3% of pastors at the top of the pay scale, i.e. pastors of bigger congregations.
- Only 1% of the pastors of all conservative Protestant congregations are women.
- Only 3% of African-American congregations are led by women.
The article goes on to explain:
“When a senior pastor is consulted about whom he would like to succeed him, there aren’t any women on those lists,” the minister said. “The good-old-boy network starts there.”Experts on women in the clergy said that while the leaders of mainline denominations support women in the ministry, not enough is done to back their rise.One small but important step male pastors can take, these experts said, is to get congregations to hear women preach. For example, those pastors can ask women to be guest preachers or have them fill in when they go on vacation.
Bottom line: egalitarian denominations need to be doing more than just putting a position paper on their web sites saying they would ordain women in theory.
Conclusion
I’ve become extremely wary of the “egalitarian in creed but not in practice” position. When I move to Chicago, I am intent on finding a church which actually lets women do everything, and this probably means finding a church which has a woman serving as the pastor of a ministry that is traditionally entrusted to men. She does not have to be the senior pastor per se, but I would at least like to at least find a church which has a woman as an associate pastor, assistant pastor, or youth pastor. I’ll let everyone know how that search goes.
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