Women can lead; culture must adjust to it
We have all heard the news how this
month the Southern Baptists told women they were not as good as
men and that they should not serve as pastors. OK, those were not the exact words in the
resolution, but the bottom line was that women could not lead
congregations. Of course, that means men will continue to make
most of the decisions in the Southern Baptist Convention and women
will be patronized by a good many church leaders. I will never forget the breakthrough on
the womens issue in a congregation I served many years ago.
I was leading a committee that would nominate people to serve
on the church board. We were looking for leaders and not followers
heroes who could lead the congregation in new directions.
It was an all-male committee. Gentlemen, I said. I believe
its time for this congregation to nominate a woman to serve
as vice president of the church. Of course, I reminded them,
that would mean the female vice president would become president
of the congregation in one year. They sat stiff and straight, all former
leaders of the congregation, tried and true churchmen who had
survived hot issues and cool responses. Finally, one man decided
to speak. Pastor, he said I think
you fail to see the big picture here. We are nominating people
who can lead this congregation into the future. The people we
choose will be running a real church here. We are not playing
church pretending to be leaders like the women do
in the ladies organizations. All the other men on the committee mumbled
their approval. The meeting continued, and only men were nominated
to serve in offices. Of course, I repeated that request every
year until a woman was finally nominated. She won the election,
eventually became president of the congregation and served with
distinction. So, the challenge is not to rid the church
of males who cant appreciate a womans management style.
Rather, if you want to open the church to womens leadership,
you have to change the culture. And that takes time. We all know that many denominations are
currently refusing to ordain women. There are even some denominations
that see women as the greatest enemy of the Gospel. You have perhaps noticed that some Baptist
denominations, such as the American Baptist Church, ordain women
and allow them to serve as pastors. And most mainline denominations, such as
the United Methodists, the Presbyterians, Episcopalians and Lutherans,
do the same. Of course a couple of Lutheran denominations,
the Wisconsin Synod and the Missouri Synod, refuse to ordain women.
And the entrenched leadership in those denominations can see their
power and authority slipping away if women ever start putting
on the pastoral robes. You may have also noticed that women are
not ordained in the Catholic Church. Only unmarried men can be
Catholic priests, and as a result, some parishes have been shut
down because of a severe shortage of priests. What is all this fear of women based upon?
Do you think there is some kind of scientific basis for keeping
women out of the halls of power? No, nothing that logical is at
work here. Rather, the men in power simply say that women are
not capable of handling power. Or they say that God has mandated
that a womans role is different from a mans role.
A man is destined to lead while a woman is challenged to follow. The amazing thing is, nobody, not even women,
challenges those assumptions in the conservative Christian denominations.
You will hear very few Missouri Synod Lutheran women, for instance,
challenge the male leadership of the church. And if they do, their
worth and value to the church is automatically diminished. All the policies designed to keep women
out of positions of power are based on old opinions and ancient
ideas about womanhood. For instance, that women were meant to
be males, but they failed to develop properly in the womb. Or
that women contain too much liquid and are therefore liars. Of
course, these assertions make no sense, but that is not the issue. Here is the issue: The culture must be changed.
And to do that, men and women together must challenge the false
assumptions that keep any person from being all that God intended.
Clark D. Morphew
Posted For June 29, 2000