amanda advocates

Lily, a pastor’s wife from Indonesia was sobbing quietly. She and her husband with their two young children have moved to an isolated part of Java to plant a new church. It is an exciting time for her husband, but she feels left out – she has to spend all her time establishing their new home and settling the children and she wonders how she will ever use her gifts in the church. Her husband is so busy he has no time to notice her sadness.

In India, Shuna is a young woman working for a Christian agency. She is growing frustrated  because she is not listened to or respected. She is expected to take notes and make the tea at meetings even though she has more training and experience than some men round the table.

How do we nurture and develop gifted women leaders across the globe? We all know that women make up 60% of the Church, yet how many women are leading to their full potential as God gifted and created them?

More and more men (and women) are asking how to develop women’s gifts and leadership in their churches.

A recent WEA/Lausanne global survey of 500 Christian female leaders identifies 5 key social and spiritual challenges facing women around the world: poverty; faith or gender-based violence; marriage and family pressures; the pressures of social media; and church teaching that women cannot preach or lead men.

These are BIG issues. Is the Church taking them seriously and making them a priority in its planning?

We will not be able to ‘solve’ all these challenges but it is vital for us to respond wisely and humbly.

One of the best things church leaders can do is LISTEN to the heart and insights of women and seek to understand what women are going through in their communities. It will make our mission work more effective and relevant.

Another step male leaders can take is to ENCOURAGE women to take up bigger and more up-front roles. This was the number 1 recommendation of women in the survey! Women achieve a lot in their workplace and in the family but in church, opportunities to contribute are more limited and they lose confidence and enthusiasm. We don’t want to miss out on all those talents and giftings.

It is vital to have men who encourage and champion women just as Jesus did.

A third thing the global survey identified that would encourage women in leadership was a need for GOOD BIBLE TEACHING about women (there are 188 named women in the Bible and many more un-named heroines like the woman at the well). Pastors tend to use male examples in their sermons (because they are comfortable with those stories) What if they talked more about women in the Bible so they can relate more to the women in their congregations. We need sound teaching on marriage, family and women’s giftedness.

Both Lily and Shuna (not their real names) had the chance to recover a fresh sense of calling at leadership meetings organised in Asia by leaders of the Women’s Commission. What vital support and guidance these meetings provide.

We have thousands of equipped and faith-filled women leading amazing ministries and helping local churches disciple families and young people. In India, women train churches in how to detect and tackle trafficking in rural villages. In South Africa and Egypt, women have started many projects in poor areas to help young women. In Myanmar, women have a special role in reaching across denominations and ethnic groups to bring unity.

In Nepal, women are setting up groups in each state so they can help local communities respond to needs, not out of charity, but because God wants us “to do justice and love mercy” (Micah 6:8).

These ministries are not a side activity of the Church – they are key integral mission strategies. Churches can only benefit when they listen to women, champion their gifting, pray together and welcome women as equals in the Kingdom.

The full results of the survey are being analysed over the next month and there will be more helpful recommendations coming – look out for them – it is the voice of over half the Church.

I’m fascinated and appalled by the way many people still like to stereotype women and girls as either pure goodness or immoral seductress.

In a rape trial last week in Ireland, the defence barrister (a woman) asked the teenage victim to hold up her lace underpants worn on the night of the attack. The implication for the jury was that any girl who wore underwear like that was asking for trouble. The man was found not guilty (though I cannot know how important that part of the evidence was in the jury’s mind).

Story tellers in Hollywood Westerns used to draw the same simplistic picture – women on the frontiers of white settlement were either virtuous wives and homemakers bringing civilising values or bold bar girls with revealing clothes and little virtue.

In ‘Stagecoach’, a classic John Wayne and John Ford Western, the stereotypes are certainly there: the doc who drinks too much and the sanctimonious women of the Virtue League. But the coach passengers include Dallas, a girl of ‘easy virtue’ (their male clients are never described like that!) with a good heart. Wayne’s character, Ringo Kid, is drawn to her lack of hypocrisy and they fall in love. The ‘moral’ characters evoke little sympathy.

Maybe we need to allow for more Dallas models in our Barbie collections.

Wives in British colonial settings also carried the flame for moral rectitude and civilised values: in the face of challenging cultures where western men had affairs with local girls, British memsaabs were charged with upholding Victorian values. That meant church values too.

Australian historian Anne Summers summed up the colonial mindset in Australia with a wonderful phrase – women were either ‘damned whores or God’s police’. She argued that colonisation reduced 19th-century women settlers to one of two narrow roles: virtuous wives and mothers, “God’s police” who made sure colonists did not get drunk or gamble; or the transgressive “damned whores” who answered the repressed needs of men, in a colony where females were in short supply.

Bible commentators do the same thing – put the Bible’s women into one of 2 columns – very good or very bad.

Jezebel is ‘very bad’, so is Potiphar’s wife, so is Herod’s wife. And it’s mostly to do with sexual sin – these women tempt men to sinful behaviour. Eve is described as a temptress and blamed for causing Adam to sin.

On the ‘very good’ side we have young women who are usually described as beautiful, like Ruth, Esther or Mary.

I think this is why Billy Graham’s ‘rule’ about not meeting with women in private has been taken up so enthusiastically by a new generation – we still see women as unbalanced tempters and men as victims.

Billy Graham was a famous figure who I am sure attracted all sorts of needy people who wanted his attention – men and women. He was travelling a lot, away from his circle of support. He also knew that the media would pounce on any whiff of indiscretion.

I do not criticise his way of dealing with the issue of temptation but somehow now, we leave the man’s response out of the equation as if they do not have intelligence and strength to deal with vulnerable men and women.

(Well maybe they don’t, considering the huge number of cases of male leaders who have abused their power and influence over young lives)

We all have to get better at acknowledging the whole spectrum of behaviour of women. We don’t want to see women as static romantic heroines of chivalry but we don’t want the opposite either. Women are loving, nurturing, strong, brave, impetuous, emotional, intellectual, frail…..the list goes on.

It worries me that in these days of hate-filled discourse, there is a revival of idealising ‘traditional’ roles, and putting a soft glow on the complementarian idea that women are sort-of-equal, but just not equal enough to lead or teach.

Some women and men are totally happy to be homemakers, family builders and supporters of others. If that is their gifting and desire, fantastic.

But for those who are called and gifted to be teachers, preachers and leaders, we should not be vilified, and random Bible verses should not be quoted to imply that we are rebellious. The ‘blame women’ thread in contemporary commentary needs to stop.