In this week’s What If… series I write about the issue of women and the pul­pit. In the world of Chris­t­ian cul­ture, most churches are male-​​centered in lead­er­ship and preach­ing. What if that changed? What if women were in the pul­pit, too, lead­ing and teach­ing in con­gre­ga­tions the world over? Let’s talk about that!

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The first time I heard a woman give a mes­sage from behind a pul­pit I had been a Chris­t­ian for about three years. Up to that time, I had only heard men preach and had only seen men pas­tor. Of course I had seen women min­is­ter in women’s min­istries and Sun­day school, the side min­istries if I may call it that. But I never saw a woman along side the men in church­wide pub­lic lead­er­ship or teach­ing. I had to leave Amer­ica – and the church – before I did.

I had moved to Hong Kong to serve Jesus in Youth With a Mis­sion. My train­ing school was meant to be co-​​led by a hus­band and wife team. The hus­band became quite sick and was bedrid­den dur­ing most of our train­ing. His wife led us, all on her own, week after week. She shared many times and exer­cised spir­i­tual lead­er­ship and author­ity with no observ­able hin­drance. I was in awe. I had never seen a woman lead like this. I didn’t think too much about it, and thought of her as a YWAM leader. She was not a pas­tor so this helped me accept her lead­er­ship. I was an evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian young woman and accept­ing a woman as pas­tor would have been like try­ing to let a grade school kid drive my car. It just didn’t seem right or proper or even safe.

From that time on my world got rocked over and over again as I saw many women with tremen­dous lead­er­ship and pas­toral gift­ing. They were not debat­ing their call. They were doing it. One such woman was leg­endary Jackie Pullinger, a British mis­sion­ary who had landed in Hong Kong in the six­ties and attained a high level pro­file. She had man­aged to pen­e­trate one of South­east Asia’s most dan­ger­ous urban areas:  The Walled City. A law­less, gang-​​ridden part of Hong Kong that was exempt from local author­i­ties due to a tech­ni­cal­ity in land usage. Jackie estab­lished a min­istry there and began to help pro­vide rehab hous­ing for heroin addicts who were des­per­ate for Jesus to heal them.

She writes in her book, Chas­ing the Dragon, that she dis­cov­ered that women work­ers were more effec­tive than men work­ers. The agi­tated addict with­draw­ing from heroin could become vio­lent and were known to hit male work­ers. But they would restrain them­selves from strik­ing out at female work­ers. This is how many women became not only rehab min­is­ters but also spir­i­tual min­is­ters in the work Jackie did around Hong Kong. There was no male/​female divide in who the Holy Spirit would empower to serve and save the lost.…or preach the word or dis­ci­ple the addict. The work of God was free, unhin­dered by social con­structs that many have corseted the Bible with.

It gets me think­ing. What if women the world over were free to preach and min­is­ter like the women in Jackie’s min­istry were? What if women were free to move in and out of the pul­pit with­out a No Girls Allowed gate bar­ring them?

Here’s an excerpt from my book Unla­dy­like: Resist­ing the Injus­tice of Inequal­ity in the Church:

I once prayed with a young woman who had secretly felt a deep call to the pas­torate, but she had no men­tal frame­work to accom­mo­date such a desire. Peo­ple she loved and respected had taught her that girls do not grow up to be pas­tors. Not with overt ser­mons in her mod­er­ate church, but by the nature of the face of her church — exclu­sive male lead­er­ship and Bible teach­ing her entire life that exalted male power, as well as the glar­ing omis­sion of women teach­ing from the Sun­day pul­pit — these were the unspo­ken yet pow­er­ful mes­sages she soaked into her lit­tle girl heart over and over again, so that by the time ado­les­cence came and with it the inspi­ra­tion to teach and preach, she had nowhere to go with her sense of call­ing, except the rails of shame and guilt for hav­ing such a desire.

The polite oppres­sion of her iden­tity as female was a velvet-​​lined cell that offered her com­fort if she remained in the sta­tus quo of tra­di­tion­al­ism. What she did not know was that lib­er­a­tion into her full human­ity and fem­i­nine power was not anti-​​biblical nor anti-​​God, and not even anti-​​church or anti-​​man. No, the only thing it threat­ened was anti-​​traditionalism for with­out a doubt the force of a woman’s will­ing sub­servience in the world of church is her com­mit­ment to uphold the sys­tem of tra­di­tion that put her there in the first place.

What she did not know was that lib­er­a­tion into her full human­ity and fem­i­nine power was not anti-​​biblical nor anti-​​God, and not even anti-​​church or anti-​​man.

What if young women like the one in this excerpt had total free­dom to pur­sue the call on their lives, full access to bloom in their gift and flour­ish within the church behind or in front of the pul­pit? What would the church look like if women (on a global scale!) did not hold women back?

I want to offer three traits I think we would see in greater mea­sure if women were in fair col­lab­o­ra­tion with our broth­ers in every realm of min­istry and spir­i­tual lead­er­ship, pul­pit included :

• Churches would be more nur­tur­ing and hos­pitable.  It is a no-​​brainer that women are nat­u­rally good at build­ing rela­tion­ships and wel­com­ing home the for­got­ten son and daugh­ter. We are gath­er­ers. Jesus used shep­herd­ing metaphors in some of his sto­ry­telling about the mis­sion of the church. Women are nat­ural shep­herds. There would be a greater level of shep­herd­ing and rela­tional nur­tur­ing even women were truly let loose in the upper echalons of church government. 
• Issues of mar­riage, fam­ily and domes­tic cri­sis would be addressed fre­quently. I once heard a mar­riage coun­selor lament that pas­tors did so lit­tle to address mar­i­tal issues from the pul­pit. “They say they can’t because then their phone would ring off the hook. They are not equipped to help,” she reported. I think, how­ever, that if women were more involved in pul­pit min­istry and church lead­er­ship on a wide scale, that it would become ingrained in our faith com­mu­ni­ties to be sure to know how to address family/​marriage cri­sis.  These are the rela­tion­ships that mat­ter most to women (and men) and women know how impor­tant it is for faith com­mu­ni­ties to address them head on. Fam­ily mat­ters would become more cen­tral, I imag­ine, if women were com­monly pos­sess­ing lead­er­ship roles.
• More Par­ties.  This is what I think. Women love to hang out and talk sur­rounded by fam­ily, friends and FOOD!  Rather than just put women in charge of orga­niz­ing the next potluck or cater­ing the next pastor’s con­fer­ence, what if women were PASTORS and lead­ers and in their churches and were able to lead party gath­er­ings for the ben­e­fit of all? I like to think that if women were more abun­dant in lead­er­ship, the body of Christ would party a whole lot more.

So those are my thoughts. I’m a dreamer. I want to dream what the church can become when women and men are in true part­ner­ship behind and beyond the pul­pit. I didn’t even take time to write here about how Bible teach­ing could be affected or the Sun­day ser­vice. Wow. Imag­ine those changesd!

These are just some of my ideas. What are some of yours?  How do you think church would look dif­fer­ent if women were behind the pulpit?