Stories from the Front

An excerpt from Stories from the Front: Navigating the Majority-Male Church Leadership Space

Published in Co-Laborers and Co-Heirs in Christ: A Family Conversation in 2019.

For ten years, I have worked for Parakaleo, a ministry that supports and trains pastor’s wives and church planting wives. I have attended presbytery meetings, conferences for church planting leaders, and denominational assemblies. I have worn the nametags and logged the miles.

In this majority-male space, mine might be the only XX chromosomes in the room, except for the kitchen help. I will have the bathroom to myself. During the extended opportunity for networking, men will smile or nod on their way to talk to someone else. I can attend the meet-and-greet and not be greeted. I wonder if this means they don’t think I am relevant. That I don’t bring anything to the table, other than, perhaps, dinner.

I am here to advocate for other women—often, their own wives or the wives of men they oversee. But they don’t see me unless I take the initiative, so I must overrule my introversion. I approach small clusters of men sipping coffee from paper cups. I ask questions. “Where are you from? What do you see God doing in your work?” I learn about what is going well in their settings. I ask if there is training or support for their ministry spouses. When I initiate, they are gracious. Yet I am not seen unless I initiate.

This sense of invisibility or exclusion has not been my experience outside of ministry. For twenty years, I worked in education reform where I also attended meetings and conferences. I was evaluated according to my contributions, not my gender. I was allowed to put my shoulder to the wheel, and welcomed as part of a team to help solve pressing educational issues. I was even recognized for my contributions.

Ministry is different. I sometimes feel that as a group, men in church leadership struggle to know how to engage women or deploy our gifts. I fear that to some men, my gender and I am a mystery.

To be fair, sometimes I attend these events with my husband (who is usually off networking with someone else), so perhaps other attendees think I am just a wife. An add-on. I hasten to add that those who know me are affirming and engaging; this invisibility is with men I don’t know.

I’m not unsympathetic to men; as a clergy wife, I know that pastors face a fusillade of criticism, especially when it comes to women. They haven’t done enough. They didn’t do it quickly enough, or didn’t get buy-in from everyone on their way to getting things done. They are criticized for leading and berated for not leading. The Enemy loves to sack the quarterback, and sometimes, so do people on the home team. Many men at these conferences and meetings live in fellowship deserts; they are dispirited and hungry for encouragement or affirmation from their male peers. They have already composed their resignation letters in their heads. They want to hear tactics to succeed, and to outrun the voices that tell them to quit, just quit, and now. Perhaps they think my experience, if I have any, is not relevant to their own…