Strengthened to Serve

I was intrigued and perturbed by the reading on 5th February from Mark chapter 1.

It was one of those 'in passing' moments, where one thinks, 'Wait a minute!' Simon Peter's mother in law was healed by Jesus, and then got up to serve him and his friends.

I'm not sure I've ever heard a sermon on this episode, but I was delighted to see a recent post from Nancy Wallace, via the Big Bible project. You can read the rest here:  http://bigbible.org.uk/2012/02/strengthened-to-serve-simon-peters-mother-in-law/

And as so often, when we read about women in the New Testament, there is more than meets the eye!

The Iron Lady

For years Margaret Thatcher has been held up as a model of a certain kind of woman leader.

One which most women don't want to emulate. She has singlehandedly given rise to a stereotype of woman leader: the 'Iron Maiden' - see Stead and Elliott, 2009.

Yet the film released last week seems to have confounded her critics.

Meryl Streep is an astonishing Thatcher, convincing in both hairstyle and voice. What sounded like a bizarre way of structuring a film, around a person's mental decline, has turned out to make sense.

Like many other women I have long pondered whether Mrs Thatcher did women many favours when she became Prime Minister. She seemed so unlike most women. Yet this film has made me rethink. It reminds us she did not have much choice in that era but to behave like a man. And perhaps behind the persona there was more of a real person than most of us realised.

There is a good review of the film on the Sophia Network website, and resources available from Damaris. It will be interesting to see what discussion it generates about women leaders.

The Iron Maiden stereotype seems to reinforce the idea that 'real' women can't be leaders. Femininity is inherently not suited to leadership.

But a human 'Iron Lady' might force us to think differently.

Are you an influential woman?

I'm reading a great book at the moment: Influential, by Jo Saxton.

The subtitle is 'Women in Leadership at church, work and beyond. Starting to read with high expectaions, I was encouraged by some words in the Foreword by Michelle Guinness, who expresses what I think many Christian women feel:

'How do we stay on the see-saw, balancing feisty, outspoken leadership with Christian grace and love?' It's a challenge, when the assumptions about what 'leaders' are like can often conflict with stereotypes of how women are supposed to behave.

Jo comes from the rising generation of women leaders, who speak at festivals such as Soul Survivor and Momentum. She seems to have left the UK and is living in the US but I hope that this book will speak to the new generation of women who see gender equality all around them but then find that in the church it is somewhat different.

Written in an accessible style, Saxton explores biblical role models such as Miriam and Deborah, New Testament women, and what the difficult passages in Paul's writings are getting at. 'What did women do?' She asks.So what should women be doing today?

I've been enjoying the book, and though I have read a few on this subject before, this is a fresh approach, Saxton quotes a number of women leaders in the church today, and there are plenty of action points and good advice woven into the chapters.

If you want an all-encompassing book which will encourage you in your leadership in the church - and beyond - this is definitely worth reading.

How gender makes a difference

How does gender make a difference in Church leadership?

That was the question I was invited to address for the October issue of FutureFirst, a news digest for church leaders: 'providing facts for forward planning'. So how does gender make a difference?

 

 

Well, it does and it doesn't. I'm increasingly convinced that the 'men are from Mars' version of difference may have a few elements of truth - but that's all. Research suggests that women and men doing the same leadership task tend to do it in similar ways.

 

 

The differences are all about women's different experiences. For starters, it's still difficult for women to be seen as leaders in some contexts, even when the theology allows them to be. A double whammy, if you like.

 

 

The most obvious difference is that just being born female means you may not be able to be a Christian leader at all - depending on your theology or that of your church. So it's not surprising that there are fewer young women than young men in Christian leadership. So for young women, it can be a lonely place.

 

 

Then there are worrying patterns of deployment. Women are more likely to be leading rural or urban churches and less likely to be leading suburban ones. I wonder why...? OK, I do have a few ideas why that might be.

 

 

So it follows that they are less likely than men to be leading larger churches, especially evangelical ones. And also less likely to be in senior posts, though this is changing more quickly than the larger churches situation, where at my last count, there were only 4 women out of about 172 larger churches led by women.

 

 

I suppose one could also suggest that the experience of being a clergy husband is quite different from being a clergy wife. If you are anywhere near Durham on 24th Novemember, there is an event that evening on clergy spouses, led by Dr Sarah-Jane Page. See the Durham website for details: and you need to email in advance if you want to go. Sounds fascinating!

Transformations at Lambeth Palace

Well, Lambeth was not transformed on Monday!

But around 50 people attended a conference entitled Transformations: Theology and Experience of Women's Ministry.

It was a great day, with introductory addresses by Lucy Winkett, Sarah Coakley, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, time to reflect, group discussions, a keynote address by Bishop Mary Gray-Reeves (from California), and concluding comments by the Archbishop.

There were a number of highlights for me, including the address by Sarah Coakley (Norris-Hulse Professor of Divinity at Cambridge). She reminded us that in the 1970s it was argued that the church would be transformed when women were ordained, because women were different.

Yes, the church has been transformed, by the 'cosmological disturbance' of women at the altar.

No, in the way expected - and I was glad to hear her knock essentialism on the head; there is still too much of it around.

She also highlighted some remaining problems, including the theological inconsistency of considering women in the episcopate separately from priesthood, as if the two can be separated, and what she called 'bureacratization', the busyness which women have to take part in to prove they can do the job as well as men. It was good to have this challenged, again from a theological perspective. Where, she asked, is prayer, presence and rest?

Groups explored a whole variety of subjects, drawing on thoughts from ordained women which had been submitted in advance. Patterns of appointment, scripture, different patterns of ministry available to women, the ordinal, liturgy and language, issues for clergy couples...

I could go on. Watch out for the production of some of the materials from the conference in due course.

Yes, it's been a while since the last blog. I'm leaving CPAS as of tomorrow, but this blog will continue...

Keeping the debate on the agenda

I've just come back from holiday to find the usual box-full of emails!

Nothing new there, but I was encouraged to find that among the boring ones were one telling me that Kate Coleman (pic above) is speaking at a LICC event in September, and one from a woman saying how helpful she'd found my book, amid the continuing confusion and controversy within the Anglican church.

First, LICC (the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity). On Monday 26th September, at 6.30pm Kate Coleman and others from her team, are leading an event: 7 Deadly Sins of Women in Leadership - an overview of the seven and an introduction to the first 'sin', 'Limiting Self-Perceptions'. You can find more about the event here.

Now to the email. The fact that all the dioceses which have voted regarding women as bishops have seen fit to vote in favour of moving ahead shows how much weight there is in support of women's leadership. But the debate continues in certain quarters of the church.

The idea that so-called subordination in the Trinity has a bearing on the leadership of women continues to be brought out as an argument against women's leadership - as if the relative positions or relationships of three persons of the godhead can say anything about the relations between men and women, or about women as leaders.

I do respect those who wish to be true to scripture, but I find it really hard to see how this obscure view of Trinitiarian doctrine can be thought clearer than all of Paul's practice and teaching.

So let's keep reading and thinking and talking: to overcome internal barriers such as 'limiting self-perception', and external barriers which continue to keep women safely in 'submission' on the sidelines rather than serving God in the spiritual battle!

In the image of God

In the Image of God is the title of a booklet recently published by the Sophia Network.

It's an 8-week course exploring what the Bible says about men and women, and is based on the course run by email last autumn. A booklet of 52 pages clearly can't go into a huge amount of detail, but I was impressed with the range and scope of the studies, and I hope it's widely read and used - see the Sophia site for details of how to buy a copy.

This resource was launched at the Sophia Network's excellent day conference last month, where Maggi Dawn, Howard Worsley and Lis Goddard spoke on different aspects of the debate about women. Lis had some extremely helpful and striking things to say about 'how to disagree agreeably', as well as providing some useful insights into the texts so often under discussion.

We need to keep discussing, and where we disagree, to do it agreeably!

At the conference I also found out more about the resources being produced by Restored, to help churches to understand more about domestic violence, and to help young people avoid getting into abusive relationships. I'm impressed that they are not just dealing with the results of violence but trying to stimulate wider thinking about relationships generally. It's also got an international dimension. Take a look!