Writing one of my final essays is very painful.

Good thing Sarah and I just decided to go ahead and book a trip to Cuba. We leave in less than a month.Don’t be alarmed, Sarah and I do stupid things like this all the time.

We’re going to Veradero, Cuba. We had to look at a map, after, to understand exactly what we had gotten ourselves into. Nothing fancy, but hopefully un-sketch enough to keep us safe. (I’m also going to go shopping for a fake engagement ring, to ward off potential suitors. Sarah, of course, already has one of those!) It’s all good.

I’m starting to notice two tendencies, in myself and those around me, in responding to the issue of women in leadership within the church. 1) To think the problem is going to go away, and soon or 2) To acknowledge the problem, but not really give it validity by doing anything to promote change.

I can’t help but believe the church is only being hurt by its exclusion of women, so these responses are falling short for me.

If 50% of potential leadership is not being developed or put to use, I’d say we have a very significant problem on our hands. Brandon quoted Rosemary Radford Reuther at The Embassy on Monday night. She says that the more one becomes a feminist, the harder it is to go to church. I can’t help but agree with this. Maybe women are not only undeveloped as leaders, but maybe once they discover their worth in God’s eyes, they are pushed from the church altogether.

If I had not moved to Waterloo, and been fortunate enough to find a church that is open to addressing tough questions, I don’t think I’d still be going to church. Even taking communion at the church I grew up in is very hard for me. Many times I’ve felt like I shouldn’t even take it. I’d watch the line of men stream in from the back of the sanctuary and sit at the front, preparing to serve. “This is such a boy’s club,” I whisper to Andrew, trying to make him laugh and make light of the situation. But I’m supposed to be focusing on Christ, and forgiving others, and yet I’m so angry and hurt and helpless.

I keep asking myself, what do we look for in a leader? Don’t we look for someone who we can learn from, and listen to? A leader is someone we can look up to, because they challenge us, listen to us, and tell us the truth even when we don’t want to hear it. Most of all, a leader is someone we can respect.

I can’t help but think then, that respect is the fundamental issue in the exclusion of women from church leadership. If women can’t be leaders, are we not saying that women cannot be respected by everyone?

Yes, it’s more subtle than that, but that doesn’t make it less harmful.

I think this addresses the, “Well how big of a problem is this?” attitude. The people that say, “Sure, we need to have more women as leaders, but it’s not essential, since they are able to serve and surely God can work through them. Eventually women will most likely play a more equal role, but this isn’t a primary concern, or a crisis. When it happens that’s good, until then…”

But, if the issue of women in leadership is respect, then we have a crisis. We have a problem of not viewing people the way God sees them. That is serious, is it not?

If the root of the issue is respect, will the disrespect of women simply disappear with a new generation?

I find this hard to believe. If the church is not making a conscious effort to address this, then where will this new found respect come from? I have a hard time imagining it coming from secular society, that gets such a kick out of objectifying women. (Anyone watch a movie lately?)

Fifty percent of men who attended a Promise Keepers stadium event said they had viewed pornography within a week of attending. Fifty-four percent of pastors have viewed porn within the past year. Maybe this is something that the church is merely not challenging in our society, or maybe attitudes in the church are even perpetuating this..I don’t know. (A church that excludes women from teaching and leadership, puts less of an emphasis on their minds, and more of an emphasis on their bodies. Again, what are women doing? Taking care of children and serving coffee…You put the pieces together.)

But with statistics like this floating around, I can’t really believe people who tell me there isn’t a problem with how women are viewed by Christian men.

And maybe not addressing the issue of respect of women in the church, is hurting men just as much as women?

I read a forum about women in the church, and one mother lashed out at another woman (who had claimed that she could be in church leadership). The mother said, “I’m sorry, (name), but my son needs men that are good role models; people he can look up to. I’m sorry, but I wouldn’t want you leading my son’s youth group.”

I wish I could have told that mother what her son really needed was some women who were good role models. Women that he could be taught to look up to and respect, and women who could counteract the cesspool of images and ideas about women that culture is going to throw at him.

Either way, I’m starting to believe that this problem is a self-perpetuating mixture of culture and church problems, and a bit too deeply rooted to go away without being consciously changed. Maybe I’m wrong. That would be nice. Or maybe putting women in leadership won’t solve the problem, maybe that’s just the first step.

Keith and I finished our “chapbook.” Brownie Hawkeye is written, edited and bound. It has exactly 20 stories, and it is my general opinion that it is an extremely hot-looking-little book. (Even if I am saying it myself.)

We took our design to Pandora Press, a little Mennonite printing press in sketch-town Kitchener. Through our various trips up and down King Street, I’ve discovered that downtown Kitchener is a gem. (Where else if there a pawn shop and tattoo parlour at every corner?) I think we drove that route ten times, and there was never a dull moment. I told Keith he needs to take his camera down there, and take some pictures of the shop signs; they are priceless. (The next book?)

It is true that at times, it was our opinion that Brownie Hawkeye would effectively bring our relationship to an end, but all in all, I think we did just fine.

First Part: A general overview on women in the church. It’s wild! It’s all over the place, and covering way too much social, psychological and theological territory. Buckle up.

Second Part: A more focused and personal reflection on why things need to change, and what I plan to do. (Probably a little more interesting, for those of us who already believe that women should play a more significant and equal role in church leadership.)

I’ve been somewhat avoiding writing this blog because I’ve thought a lot about this topic, and feel like I can’t possibly write a blog that summarizes everything I’ve thought about. But I’m going to start. I’m not even sure how useful my thoughts are. (There are many more educated and articulate people out there that can speak on this topic) But what the heck…here it goes.

First of all, I grew up in a church where women were not pastors, or elders, or deacons. They were, and still are, Sunday school teachers, women’s ministry leaders, and secretaries. They also get to sing (& dance?!). If you asked me when I was younger what role women should play in the church, I’d probably have said they couldn’t be pastors, cause men were meant to be leaders.

If you asked why, I’d probably have told you that God made men in such a way that they needed to be in charge. (Also didn’t the bible say women can’t lead…or something like that.) Basically in my young mind, men needed to be in leadership, because they wanted to be in leadership, and that is why they are the leaders. End of story.

But that’s not really the end of the story, because my discomfort with this environment grew exponentially throughout high school, and probably has reached its boiling point this year. Today, I am absolutely convinced without a doubt that women should and need to be involved in every aspect of church life, men should learn from women, women should learn from men. Women need to be leaders because the church needs them.

The following will be a bombardment of thoughts, many of which will need to be expanded upon in later posts.

1) Spiritual gifts–Every time I’ve taken a “spiritual gift assessment” teaching and discernment are my main gifts. This leaves me with a a bit of a problem. I am neither particularly skilled or passionate about: singing, making coffee, administrative work or taking care and teaching children.

Don’t get me wrong! I will willingly serve in any of these capacities. This is not a pride issue, if God wanted me to change diapers and file paper work for the rest of my life I would. I HAVE spent the last four summers in children’s ministry.

However, I am saying that these are not my particular gifting, or passions, and yet in my home church these are the options open to me. I have been told numerous times that women perform in these roles because this is how God has gifted them. Men are gifted in leadership (and using their brains!) and women are good at taking care of children. (I’m not trying to be angry, it’s a joke…but still.)

The point is. If anyone told me that these are my roles in the church because this is how God has gifted me as a woman, I will have no choice but to laugh at them.

When leadership, discernment, teaching, prophecy (and so on) are all spiritual gifts, I can’t see how any woman with these gifts would be able to use them fully in most churches.

I think its hard for someone who isn’t a women to understand this frustration, just as I can hardly understand what a racial minority feels on a daily basis. However, I can say that it is entirely discouraging for women who are gifted in leadership and teaching. When you can’t function in the way God has gifted you, it’s very easy to lose your passion for ministry.

But I’m not going to wait til the church is comfortable with my spiritual gifts. How in good conscious can I not do what God has gifted me to do. I can’t and I won’t wait for people to wake up.

2) The Bible–I don’t want to get into a lengthy theological debate. I’ve never gone to seminary, and I’m sure there are people with the motivation and skills to argue me into any corner. However, I do want to point out that Paul’s writings are very significant in how we view women’s role in the church. He states quite explicitly to certain churches in the New Testament that women should remain silent, and should not teach or have leadership over men. However, without going into extensive details I don’t believe using these few scriptures to back up a thousand years of suppression is justified.

First of all, in other passages Paul seems to contradict himself, and at best, his viewpoint is ambiguous. Deacons and leaders (who are women) are listed in such a way that it is implied that they were Paul’s companions in leadership. These women’s names are listed before their husbands, suggesting that they, and not their husbands, were in leadership positions. (There are many possibilities for why these contradications take place, and I don’t want to go into them all.)

Many churches will say, we cannot know for sure what Paul meant, but the best we can do is follow the Bible. “It’s biblical.” How many time have I heard this. However, in these exact same passages women are informed to cover their heads, not cut or braid their hair, or wear jewellery. These are of course disregarded as, “cultural”, and no longer applicable to our time. But whose choosing the criteria of what is cultural and what is not? Ironically, the churches that would most adamantly claim to be taking a literal, and biblical position on these passages, are kidding themselves.

3) Women and leadership. If women should not be in leadership, does this apply only to spiritual contexts. Is it right for a women to be in charge in a corporate setting? Can she teach and lead men there? If so–why are women only inferior in spiritual leadership? What was God’s rational?

4) Missions. I’m assuming when Jesus told us to go into all the world and make disciples, he was going to include women in that task. Good thing too, since women missionaries have played a crucial role throughout history. But what if no one is willing to go and tell the people in some village in India about Jesus, except for a woman, is that ok? Should she not go?!

Ironically enough, most churches who don’t support female leadership would probably commission a woman to go and teach in some god-forsaken-country. Is a women really capable of being the only spiritual leadership for entire group of people! God could use her?!

I can’t see how this double standard can be construed as anything other than a colonial mindset, and blatant racism. A white women is good enough to lead Africans, but infinitely inferior to white men.

5) Redemptive hermeneutics—A significant part of the Jewish and Christian faith is the idea that God works within history. However, it is clear that even when Jesus was on earth, there are certain social problems that he did not address. The Jews wanted Jesus to restructure a broken and destructive political climate. He didn’t. In this way, I think that in many ways God works with what we give him.

However, as Christians we can be a part of our culture, and redeem culture through our understanding of God’s justice and love. There are many issues in the biblical times that were accepted by Christians—that have now changed. Things have changed; they have changed for the better. An example is slavery. Less than 50 years ago Christians used the Bible to justify slavery. The Bible does not condemn slavery, in fact Paul outlines what appropriate relationships look like between slave and master. Christians thought, well, if the Bible doesn’t have a problem with it, why change.

And yet today, you’d be hard press to find a Christian in Canada who thinks that abolishing slavery was a bad thing. It’s a cultural shift, and I would argue one that God is pleased with. The point is, just because Paul and Jesus didn’t stand on a soap box and scream, “Free the women!”, doesn’t mean that allowing women to function as teachers and leaders, and equals, is not something that would not please God.

6) Man’s domination over women is part of the Genisis curse. Why as Christians, who have experienced the grace of God, would we try and participate in something that is the direct result of sin.

7) Don’t be fooled. Women have been leaders, and continue to be leaders. The early persecutors of Christians in Rome criticized Christianity, calling it the religion of women and children. Evidence suggests that women played a leadership role, and this only began to fade with the institutionalizing of Christianity.

I don’t want to get all “1960s Feminist” on you, but that’s pretty basic stuff. Once position and leadership in the church was associated with political and social power, women began to be excluded.

What is so inspiring are the stories of women throughout history who worked for Christ in obscurity, without support or recognition Didn’t Jesus say, the first shall be last and the last shall be first. Watch out boys! The way things are going…I’m afraid heaven might be a huge feminist dance party.

More to come.

‘In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.’

I wonder who is going to listen?

Morning
I’m sorry. But—
the world was not on fire.
The light was simply the
sun mounting the sky, and
the day shattering open like
a broken glass on the tile floor.
Somehow—that would always be a
disappointment.

Summer
The delicate repulsion of
unforgotten memories and
incubated language.

It tastes like sordid summer
heat, hangs like a damp rag—
or composting grass.

Still—I’m not sorry to remember.

-Maria Vermeer

I’m dying to write a blog about women in the church.
I sat at the restaurant when it was slow and filled a whole napkin full of thoughts. (Unfolded and both sides.)
Unfortunately my research paper on British Print in 1638 is quite neglected, and I must put aside all distractions (besides working 17 hours this weekend!) until that is finished.
But, just so you know…it’s coming!