What About Female Ways of Knowing Scripture?
We attend a typical mainstream evangelical church in a politically conservative part of our province. While our church celebrates women in positions of leadership such as elders, deacons, ministry team leaders, worship leaders, Sunday School teachers, and Bible readers, we rarely open the pulpit to allow women to offer a sermon. It does occur on occasion, when a female missionary is visiting or the moderator of our church leadership team is a woman. However, when it comes to systematically selecting speakers to teach Biblical truths during a thirty minute, one-way exhortation, it is almost always a man. And the probability of our lead pastor being a woman is practically nil.
Now I am not writing this to criticize my church. However, I am writing this to open our eyes to this extremely common practice in our province, especially in churches who are similar to us in denomination.
Women have come a long way since Biblical times, in their access to education and equal opportunities. Women's ways of knowing are becoming relevant -- and needed -- in the corporate world and in governance. Yet, many churches struggle with validating women's ways of knowing scripture.
Often female speakers are relegated to female-only arenas, like mom's groups or ladies Bible studies or women's conferences. And then to hype it up, the women who often preach are crazy, over-the-top in their expression and presentation. Apparently us women are supposed to benefit from such frenzy, glitz, and make-up. Nonetheless, the message that gets conveyed is that men cannot learn from women on a consistent basis in the church. Only men can be trusted to explicate scripture to the congregation where both men and women are present.
Now I know that some of my readers may be raising objection to my words, based on Paul's 1 Timothy 2:11-12 admonition of women not being allowed to teach or have authority over men (check out my previous post on this issue here for some insight into my thinking. Note: I was attending a Methodist church when I penned the post.). However, most churches allow women to have authority in leading men and women into worship. Most churches allow females to teach Sunday School classes to both men and women. I am not sure why most churches still guard the sermon as male-only territory.
Maybe part of the problem is the job description of a typical lead pastor. One of a pastor's main roles is to preach on a Sunday morning. And since most lead pastors are male, most of the sermons will be administered by men.
I wonder what a church would look like if the role of a lead pastor was conceptualized beyond being the sole provider of spiritual insight. If you think about it, a traditional pastor probably benefits the greatest from his (or in some cases, her) Biblical study. He studies scripture, digs into commentaries and Greek/Hebrew dictionaries, and then provides a easily digestible morsel of truth to his listeners in thirty or so minutes. Because he has done much of the work, the pastor benefits the most. We received a summary of his week long study. Just a summary!
What if that pastor's role was to disciple and train others to lead small groups of followers? And in turn, those followers would train others? What if church was more like a school, where we learned together and celebrated corporately maybe twice a month? Would there be more gender equity in the teaching department, if this were the case? Or would there be such a revolt over the change that church attendance would decline? After all, most churches' Adult Sunday School programs have lower attendance than the "catch-all" corporate worship service.
I am starting to go off an a wild tangent...
Let me just set the record straight. I have no problem with listening to a man speak on a Sunday morning. But sometimes I would like to hear a woman speak. Sometimes I would like to know how a woman would dissect what the church in my community deems as the important topic of study for a given chuck of time. I don't want to feel that I have to dig up some video series or attend some abuzz conference to witness a woman get up to the pulpit.
Is that too much to ask?
Maybe part of the problem is the job description of a typical lead pastor. One of a pastor's main roles is to preach on a Sunday morning. And since most lead pastors are male, most of the sermons will be administered by men.
I wonder what a church would look like if the role of a lead pastor was conceptualized beyond being the sole provider of spiritual insight. If you think about it, a traditional pastor probably benefits the greatest from his (or in some cases, her) Biblical study. He studies scripture, digs into commentaries and Greek/Hebrew dictionaries, and then provides a easily digestible morsel of truth to his listeners in thirty or so minutes. Because he has done much of the work, the pastor benefits the most. We received a summary of his week long study. Just a summary!
What if that pastor's role was to disciple and train others to lead small groups of followers? And in turn, those followers would train others? What if church was more like a school, where we learned together and celebrated corporately maybe twice a month? Would there be more gender equity in the teaching department, if this were the case? Or would there be such a revolt over the change that church attendance would decline? After all, most churches' Adult Sunday School programs have lower attendance than the "catch-all" corporate worship service.
I am starting to go off an a wild tangent...
Let me just set the record straight. I have no problem with listening to a man speak on a Sunday morning. But sometimes I would like to hear a woman speak. Sometimes I would like to know how a woman would dissect what the church in my community deems as the important topic of study for a given chuck of time. I don't want to feel that I have to dig up some video series or attend some abuzz conference to witness a woman get up to the pulpit.
Is that too much to ask?