Imagine advocating for a place where women and lgbtiqa+ people preach and lead most Sundays. A place where seminary students seek to learn from wise pastors. Where every age person from youngest to eldest has a place and a role in the ministry, education, and worship of the congregation.
You donโt need to relegate this vision to your imagination. Churches with this profile exist already. More churches are striving to get there, and still more are making needed changes. Some are small. The change is new. Some churches are large. Others are decades or centuries old. Some are predominantly white, or Black and womanist, or multi-ethic. Financial stability is a hallmark for some. Others are struggling to make ends meet.
What we know is that churches with fully inclusive leadership exist now. They are also the future of the church. And today, they remain in the minority.
To exist as future stories happening now, these churches must swim upstream in a culture of sexism and patriarchy. The cultural reality means inclusive and glass-ceiling breaking churches and leaders worked long and hard to make these churches who they are.
Advocacy does not equal perfection
None of the churches Iโm thinking about are perfect or without their issues. They are, after all, made up of humans. But they are real. They started or transformed with love, courage, joy, and purposeful strategies. These churches are changing the culture and advocating for women week-in and week-out with worship, education, justice work, and presence in their local towns, cities, denominations, and affinity groups.
Maybe you serve or worship in one of these faith communities of the future? What would you tell us know about how your community got moving in that new direction? How do you sustain the changes into a way of life?
Maybe you have never seen such a community of faith? Well, I want you to know today: they exist. And you can take courage and hope that change is possible.
Where does change begin?
In looking at communities that have made the changes to embrace the leadership of women and queer people and children, we can wonder about how those changes came to pass. Let’s ask several questions and learn from them.
How did the change start?
There is no single formula. Often, however, relationships become the way that the Spirit breathes new life into congregations and expands the idea of who can belong and who can lead. In my own story, my call to ministry and seminary became a way that more people in my congregation changed their minds. Not just me, but also a few other girls who grew up in our congregation became messengers of the Spiritโs new work. People had to ask themselves, if the Spirit is calling Eileen and Cheryl and others, can God really be against women in ministry?
Communities of faith sees new possibilities when the Spirit calls daughters, wives, sisters, and children of all genders and orientations to ministry and many kinds of leadership. Love and kinship bonds win the hearts of the community. They see anew how the Spirit is challenging old ideas and making space for new leaders.
How does change go beyond single callings or ordinations?
Again, no single pathway. However, when relational and spiritual values disconnect with the structures of the church community, it is an opportunity for realignment.
In my current congregation we began to ask in the early 2000s: How do our values of being a โcaring community of equality and graceโ fail to match up with our structures, programs, staffing, and finances?ย This line of questions led us to call two women as our pastors in a co-pastor model of leadership..
Ask questions like these:
- In what ways does our theology mis/match our programs and church structure? What are the disconnects?
- Where can we find more congruence and alignment between what we say we believe and what we are doing on the ground?
- What is the ministry of this congregation in this time?
- How does our financial plan for ministry (often called a budget) bring our spiritual values to life?
What kind of courage is needed?
Courage takes many forms. The courage needed to make church change can feel in short supply. My experience tells me courage is usually right there hovering beneath the surface in peopleโs hearts. But accessing it requires a willingness to risk doing what is right for something better.
The kind of courage Iโve witnessed related to changing church leadership and structure in many congregations looks like taking risk and responsibility. It looks like asking big questions, tolerating some anxiety in the system, and waiting patiently while the answers surface. Courage looks like being willing to try what you know is right before all the details are worked out. It looks like trusting the Spiritโs leading and knowing some folks will go and others will arrive when change actually happens.
Many congregations have already taken these steps. They did not wait for Mr. Smithย to go to the nursing home before launching. And they did not put all the parts of the new plan into the bylaws first. They could not guarantee the biggest donor or Mrs. Jones would not depart. The Spirit of God is bigger than all of this. Process matters, but without courage and a willingness to risk, church processing can turn into purรฉe, and mash up the collective will to change.
Process matters, but without courage and a willingness to risk, church processing can turn into purรฉe, and mash up the collective will to change.
If your congregation would like to do more to support the thriving of women, children, and queer people in a world that still keeps all of them on the margins of power and possibility, then trust the relational call of the Holy Spirit, ask big questions, and lean into courage for making change.
“What Is This?
Problems and Promises of Authorityย “
A sermon preached for the Baptist Women in Ministry
month of Advocacy January 28, Providence Church, Daniel Island, SC
More questions for better advocacy
Here are practical steps you can take to lead your church toward a future that supports the thriving of all people. These are questions I asked (or implied) at the end of my sermon. I invite you to use them to spark your own questions in your ministry context.
- Which church structures carry patriarchal values implicitly – outside our conscious knowing?
- How can we examine and interrogate them?
- What aspects of our property, sound system, physical buildings, policies, and procedures maintain structures of power that benefit men, white people, adults, physically able-bodied, and straight people?
- How can we reduce the harm in these structures a little or a lot?
- What courage do we need to see clearly and take a risk for what is right and good?
- What steps can we take toward a maternity policy, pay equity, a sound system that appreciates and benefits the voices of women and children?
- How can we embraceย and prioritize ministry as aย spiritual practice?
Additional Resources
This article from 2016 highlights how churches can be in very different places on the road to advocacy for women yet they still need to need to intentional about women’s preaching.
BWIM executive director, Dr. Meredith Stone wrote this post about advocacy for women in ministry a year ago. Every point in it remains ON POINT.
How are you and your congregation advocating for women’s equity and inclusion? Whatever you are doing, Thank you! And keep it going!
- lgbtiqa+ is shorthand for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, inquiring/intersex, queer/questioning, asexual, and more identities than we can reduce into a single definition. Also the word queer is used as an umbrella for
