A Plea for Honesty

I sat across the desk from a male leader in my church denomination several years ago as I was about to embark on the adventure of seminary studies. At that meeting, I voiced one of my concerns at the outset of the journey--that I would ultimately not find space to use my gifts for ministry within the denomination that I called home.

And I still remember, as clearly as if it were just yesterday, him looking across the desk at me and telling me that there would be no problem with me finding a place to use my gifts within the church as long as my theology was solid. Gender and singleness, he assured me, were not determining factors in how churches in the denomination chose their leaders anymore.

I wasn't sure that he was right, but I badly wanted to trust him.

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I have had a sense of being called by God to serve in pastoral leadership in the Church for more than fifteen years now.

And for many of those years, churches within the denomination have been officially free to call men or women to leadership positions including that of lead pastor. For all of those years, churches have been free to call women to other leadership positions with the exception of the role of lead pastor. That is to say--on paper, there was no barrier to me serving in the way that I felt called.

Many people within the denomination over the years have chosen to quietly affirm my gifts, or their support of women in ministry leadership roles.

And yet, for fifteen years I struggled to find a place to serve, a place in which I felt like I and my gifts were truly welcomed.

And in those fifteen years I gradually came to the conclusion that it must be because my theology was lacking, or because I was misunderstanding the gifts that God had given me, that I was unable to find a place for myself, no matter how hard I worked, or how much I excelled in my coursework, or how diligently I worked to prove my loyalty to the denomination, or how patiently I waited for someone to offer me an opportunity to do what I loved to do.

I could never pinpoint exactly what it was that was wrong with me. I just knew there had to be something--or some things.


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And so, it came as a shock to me when I made the difficult but necessary decision to seek opportunities for ministry within a different denominational setting that virtually immediately my gifts were recognized, welcomed, affirmed, and sought out. That it was not a matter of fifteen years, but less than fifteen weeks before I found a place to belong.

It's a shock to the system, to say the least. Suddenly, I was receiving the external affirmation of my call to ministry from the church that I had been longing for for so long.

It's a shock to the system, to begin to wonder if there isn't actually something wrong with me after all.


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What I really, really want to say is this:

Friends, we are not doing anyone any favours by pretending that there are not systemic barriers facing women in our churches when, unfortunately, at least at some levels of leadership, those barriers are alive and well.

We are actually hurting people when we quietly pretend that these forces are not present, when we fail to name the actual forces at play in our churches.

How I wish that someone had the courage to say to me that I was unlikely to find the place to serve that I was looking for because I was a single woman. It would have been a gift. It would have saved me so much agonizing about what I was doing wrong, or why I couldn't shake the sense of God's call even when I clearly didn't have the affirmation of my gifts by the church.

How I wish that someone had arranged to have a conversation over coffee and actually asked me the question--whether I might consider seeking more welcoming spaces to test my gifts, where I wouldn't have to wonder if it was my giftedness that needed examination, or simply my gender or marital status leading people to certain conclusions before I ever opened my mouth to speak.

It might make us feel better, to ignore the uncomfortable truth that in many (not all!) cases, there is much work to do before women can be truly free to serve as they are gifted in our churches.

But this silence, it's actually hurting people.

So, this is my passionate plea for a new attempt at honesty. If this doesn't mean speaking out at a larger level, could it at least mean having the courage to have a hard conversation with someone one-on-one, to find out what their lived experience is like and to speak truthfully?

Because if we can save one person from thinking she is not good enough, not worthy of full acceptance in the Kingdom of God, not truly beloved by God, it will be worth it a thousand times over.