Half The Church

Within my first 8 years of vocational ministry….

I was sent to graduate school. The church paid for all of it.

I was pursued by senior leaders who wanted to develop my leadership skills. 

I was invited into decision-making meetings, over and over again.

I was given opportunity after opportunity to speak early on in my ministry role.

I was given the opportunity to travel to conferences, to vision trips, educational experiences and retreats.

I was invited into key networking meetings, where I learned best practices, and was introduced to those with financial capacity.

And I didn’t acknowledge much of it, until my wife and I started to find ourselves in conflict after conflict, revolving around the opportunities she did not receive, the privileges I did, and my inability to see most of it.

As Andy Crouch once said, “How many times have I been put at the front of the line without even knowing there was a line? How many times have I walked through a door that opened, invisibly and silently, for me, but slammed shut for others? How many lines have I cut in a life of privilege?”

The privilege and power I had went largely unnoticed, until one of the people I love most, my wife, started to show me where she didn’t have it and why. She began to lovingly ask me whether or not the opportunities I was taking, without challenge to the current ministry systems, were simply perpetuating the distance between men in ministry and the other half of the church.

Currently, there are so many who are concerned about “why the American Church may not be thriving”.

Let me suggest that the American church will continue to struggle, until the entirety of the church is fully empowered.

Throughout my 20 years of connecting with churches around the country, I have found a few different categories of churches and their levels of empowerment (or lack thereof) when it comes to women in ministry.

1) The Complementarian Church- These churches have processed through things theologically, coming to a strong and clear hermeneutic that minimizes the authority women can have within the organizational church, which shapes much of Christianity around the world. They may use prettier language as they describe complementarianism to others in order to lessen the blow. Yet at its heart, this is one of the major implications for women within a complementarian church. They often do not get to use the leadership gifts they may feel that they posses.

2) Soft Complementarian Churches- These are often (not always) the churches that are coming from a complementarian denomination or tribe, but have been challenged in one way, shape or form. It could be something as simple as learning about a  new hermeneutic when reading scholars, or something as personal as the lead pastor having a daughter who is a force of a human being and possess serious leadership gifts. Regardless, it is likely that something has challenged their previous thinking, and so now the church “allows” women to hold certain roles that their complementarian roots would not normally allow.  They use the term “soft”, which ironically can feel even more demeaning to women. One woman who pastors a local congregation referred to the soft complementarian stance saying “great, I hope that word makes them feel better as they softly and subtly marginalize my God-given gifts”.

3) Churches that are stated Egalitarian, but functionally Complementarian- These are the churches that have a stated egalitarian theology, meaning that women can lead at any level, and yet their systems, structure, and even HR practices still do not allow for women to lead at every level. These are the churches where tokenism is often found, and where though women “can” lead, they often are not. They are not primary communicators, they are not sitting on leadership teams, and they are not making key decisions. There may be one or two women in the room, but they are two out of twenty, and thus the organizational culture is still functionally Complementarian.

4) New Testament Churches practicing mutuality- These are the churches that acknowledge cultural power dynamics. They are the communities that ruthlessly interrogate organizational culture, organizational systems, and the values and language that are embedded into the whole community. They are filled with men who are pursuing empathy, refusing to take up the space that women with the gift of leadership can fill. And they are filled with women, who are cheering their brothers on. These churches are holding open space to learn about embodied practices that help spur on mutuality and full empowerment. There is an underlying assumption that we will continue to ensure our organizational culture, systems, structures, and language, lower barriers for those who have not held cultural or historical power within the church. They are churches who will not do the above perfectly, but in the pursuit of Jesus-like equality and justice are committed to the work as central to the great commission and great commandment.

Friends, we find ourselves in a cultural moment where the temptation to power is high, which means the attention to power dynamics within institutions is imperative. We live in a moment where leadership abuse has discredited much of the American Church. What we do with the power that we hold matters. How we organize to empower those that have not culturally or historically held power matters. 

Most churches in the west are at least 65% women, and yet less than 11% of significant leadership roles within the western church are filled by them.

If we want the American Church to thrive, the entirety of it is going to need to be empowered.

For more go to 

Halfthechurch.net : A community of churches and leaders aligning egalitarian theology with praxis to increase the amount of women leading within the church.

Mosaiccollective.church : Starting new churches led by emotionally healthy women and global majority leaders.