As of October 1, 2023, my weekly articles will be posted only on Substack. I have been playing around with Substack, cross-posting articles there and here on my website for the past couple of months. I’ve found that I really like it over at Substack because 1) it is even more flexible and user-friendly than Squarespace and 2) there’s a greater potential to build community. Here’s what you need to know:

• I will still update the rest of laurastephensreed.com regularly.

• Entries on my laurastephensreed.com blog will remain here. I will not migrate or delete them.

• If you are a subscriber to my laurastephensreed.com blog, I have switched your subscription to Substack for you.

• If you are a subscriber to my monthly Mailchimp newsletter, I will not automatically add you to my Substack. (You are certainly invited to join me over there, though!) I will continue to send out a monthly newsletter, because I think that’s a better place for announcements than Substack is.

• There will be free and paid subscription options on Substack. With your free subscription you’ll get new content every Tuesday like I’ve offered here. With a paid subscription you’ll get an additional article, resource, or giveaway once a month that is exclusive to those who opt for a monthly ($7) or annual ($60) plan.

Questions? You’re always welcome to contact me!

Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash.

As the notion that church should be a family thankfully (hopefully?) fades into the ether, we need a new metaphor for the kind of belonging we hope to experience ourselves and to extend to others.* I think community could be that idea, but the word is so overused that it’s in danger of being meaningless. I’d like to share two experiences of community I’ve had as a way of drawing out what it could mean for congregations.

Karaoke night at the bar

My best friends and I decided to mark the end of our first year of seminary by going to karaoke at a nearby dive bar. I had never been to a karaoke night, much less performed at one. But there was something about this place that immediately drew me in. The bar was full, which gave it a certain energy. There was lots of support for those brave enough to sing. Rather than keeping to their own groups, people circulated and enthusiastically greeted newcomers. When I returned to school in the fall, Trackside became my regular Wednesday night spot. It didn’t matter if I had an 8:00 class on Thursday (that’s what naps are for) or of I wasn’t feeling my best (that’s what ginger ale is for). I was there - and I was singing. Now, I’m not a good singer, but I had so much fun getting up in front of others and putting on a show. I tapped into a different part of my personality than my front-facing introvert/seminary student, and everyone in the place cheered me on, just like they did for everyone else. I took my mom once, and she recalls everyone shouting my name as I came through the door. I took my mentoring committee for ordination, and that night is still what some people on that committee remember most about that process.

The comic shop

Currently, the place where I see community best embodied is at the local comic book store. I don’t really read comics, but from the first time I accompanied my husband and son, I was warmly welcomed. So is everyone else, even on event days (Free Comic Book Day, Wonder Woman Day, Batman Day) when the store is JAMMED with customers and local artists selling their creations. Those special days are usually fundraisers for local organizations like the domestic violence shelter and the animal shelter, so the store is keen on supporting the local community. More important than the welcome I have experienced, though, is the hospitality I have observed. The Comic Strip is a safe harbor for the LGTBQIA+ community. My own kid was greeted like a hero returning from war when we moved back to the area, and the shop runners and local artists still talk about the characters he has developed and cosplayed over the years.

It probably hasn’t escaped your notice that my two examples of community are in no way church-related. That’s not to say that I have never felt like part of a church community. It is to say, though, that I think most congregations have work to do. I want church to be a place where everyone, from newcomers to long-timers and from kids to adults, feels that they are wanted and that they would be missed if they didn’t show up. I want church to be a meeting spot for cross-pollination of different ideas and people who wouldn’t otherwise interact with one another. I want church to be a laboratory where people can use their gifts and try new things while getting a lot of support for those efforts. I want church to be a space where everyone can be their truest, most beloved selves. I want church to be sacrificially and intimately tied to the world around it, being the good and highlighting the good that others are doing. These are the aspects of church that are sometimes lacking, and through the travail that was the pandemic, they have also become my non-negotiables. This is what community is for me; this is the church to which I want to give my time, talents, and treasure.

*I could create a whole other post about the problems with calling church a family. I’ll just share a couple of points here, though. Families are often insular, looking out for their own and making it hard, though often unwittingly, for others to join in. And some families tend to harbor dysfunction that is very harmful to those most affected by it.

Photo by John Cameron on Unsplash.

Note: the blog is moving to Substack! I will cross-post articles here and there in September, then post only on Substack from October onward. You can find me here on Substack.

Artificial intelligence is here, and someday the robots might come for us just as Sam Waterston warned. In the meantime, we need to figure out what AI can do and shouldn’t do for us.

This is true in the church world as well, so on a lark, I randomly chose an AI generator from a web search. This particular site produces mission and vision statements for a range of industries. All I had to type in was “church,” then choose a tone (inspirational), then select “generate.” Here’s what came back:

Vision:
To create a welcoming and inclusive community where individuals can find hope, inspiration, and spiritual growth, empowering them to make a positive impact in the world.

Mission:
Our mission is to spread love, compassion, and faith by providing a place of worship, guidance, and support for all individuals seeking spiritual fulfillment. Through inspirational teachings, uplifting music, and meaningful connections, we aim to inspire and empower our congregation to live a life of purpose, kindness, and service to others. Together, we strive to create a world filled with love, peace, and harmony, guided by the teachings of Jesus Christ.

It’s truth-telling time. How different do these statements sound from your church’s mission and vision statements? Probably not much. Most guiding statements tend to be aspirational and vague. And that’s why I’m becoming more convinced that they are not the most helpful touchstones for congregations. Leaders expend vast amounts of energy and time (and sometimes big money on a consultant) coming up with a vision and mission…and then the robots instantly manufacture something almost as good. This is one way AI is useful: it’s telling us we’re not putting our resources into efforts with the biggest impact.

Here’s what I’d like to see churches work toward instead:

A helpful story of our congregation. A church can have many narratives about how it arrived at the present moment, and they all might ring true to varying degrees. Not all of them will be useful in terms of seeing the congregation as part of Christ’s body and God’s ongoing work in the world, though. Often we need to be more thoughtful about how we understand and share about our church.

Core values. These can be lived or aspirational, as long as there is clarity about which is which. Brene Brown’s values exercise is a useful one for both individuals and organizations. Naming a church’s story can also illuminate what it is about. What are our non-negotiable commitments that without them, we wouldn’t be us? What ways of being are we trying to incarnate with God’s help?

Seasonal plans based on these values. Covid obliterated what little confidence I had left in 5-10 year strategic planning. Churches need to be more nimble and responsive. (Exceptions include such initiatives as capital campaigns. These too, though, must be deeply rooted in values.) What is God inviting our congregation’s focus to be for the next 6-18 months?

Another kind of AI: appreciative inquiry. Congregations and their surrounding communities are full of individual and collective blessings from God, some tapped and others untapped, that could be put to very positive use in the name of living out values and focus. These gifts change as people come and go and as circumstances change, so they need to be inventoried on an ongoing basis.

Means to assess whether the congregation is being faithful to its core values. This is everything from whole-ministry assessments to individual event debriefs to mutual ministry reviews with staff. How are we stewarding our gifts well in service to the nudges from God we’ve discerned? What adjustments do we need to make?

A congregational covenant. We are people of relationship, because our Trinitarian God embodies connection and also seeks kinship with us. How we interact with one another needs to reflect this, but as mere mortals we benefit from reminders of what healthy bonds look like. We can name and agree to intentional behaviors and attitudes, then establish regular opportunities to recommit to them.

All of these tools are more practical and customized than mission and vision statements, and we shouldn’t trust them to artificial intelligence. Consider how you might stock your congregation’s toolkit with them.

Photo by Mohamed Nohassi on Unsplash.

Note: the blog is moving to Substack! I will cross-post articles here and there in September, then post only on Substack from October onward. You can find me here on Substack.

I have been playing around with Substack, cross-posting articles there and here on my website for the past month. I’ve found that I really like it over at Substack because 1) it is even more flexible and user-friendly than Squarespace and 2) there’s a greater potential to build community. Over the course of September, then, I will begin migrating my current writing to Substack. Here’s what you need to know:

• I will continue cross-posting articles for September. Starting in October I will post new writing only on Substack. (I will still update the rest of laurastephensreed.com regularly.)

• Entries on my laurastephensreed.com blog will remain here. I will not migrate or delete them.

• If you are a subscriber to my laurastephensreed.com blog, I will switch your subscription to Substack for you.

• If you are a subscriber to my monthly Mailchimp newsletter, I will not automatically add you to my Substack. (You are certainly invited to join me over there, though!) I will continue to send out a monthly newsletter, because I think that’s a better place for announcements than Substack is.

• There will be free and paid subscription options on Substack. With your free subscription you’ll get new content every Tuesday like I’ve offered here. With a paid subscription you’ll get an additional article, resource, or giveaway once a month that is exclusive to those who opt for a monthly ($7) or annual ($60) plan.

Questions? You’re always welcome to contact me!

Photo by Erda Estremera on Unsplash.

“Ministers have the privilege and responsibility of accompanying people through all kinds of joys and hardships. We can offer a comforting presence and serve as a guide in making meaning of all of life’s events. Sometimes, though, something so devastating happens that we might feel less equipped as we’d like. Sometimes we are struggling as others are reaching out to us for help. Covid-19 certainly gave us layer upon layer of personal difficulties and as ministers assisting church members who were hurting. The pandemic will not be our last encounter with crisis, so we could all benefit from a primer on trauma.” Click here to continue reading on the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship blog.

Photo by Susan Wilkinson on Unsplash.

I love my coaching work with progressive churches. It feels like coming home theologically. It does my soul good to know that there are congregations out there offering safe harbor for people who all too often face rejection in many corners of our culture, including church. I celebrate the changes these congregations are affecting in the world, grounded in their faith in a God that has created each one of us in the divine image.

Many of these churches have fewer than 100 active participants, and some are under 50. (Note: not all progressive churches are small, and not all small churches are progressive.) Maybe these congregations were once larger and have become smaller because of stands they have taken. Maybe they were always this size. Let me be clear that I don’t think attendance and membership numbers are helpful metrics. They do not reflect the impact churches have on their members or on their larger communities, which is often much larger than these numbers suggest. That said, we live in a world that tells us that this hard data is meaningful. As a result, members of progressive churches can wonder why more people haven’t joined them. They know their congregations have something that many people need: a center of welcome, meaning-making, and positive action. So why are these churches often on the small side?

The people for whom your congregation is a good fit have often been wounded by past church experiences. If your church is welcoming and affirming of LGTBQIA+ people, for example, there’s a good chance that those who need your kind of faith community have, unfortunately, been rejected elsewhere. This makes it so hard for them to walk through the doors of any church, even if it’s one that has taken pains to extend hospitality to those who have been marginalized. (And once folks work up the courage to attend church, even those of us with the best of intentions are prone to microaggressions that can be retraumatizing.)

Christianity has been weaponized. I am a Baptist who came of age during the height of the battle for control of the Southern Baptist Convention, which led immediately to the subjugation of women and eventually to other problems such as coverups of widespread abuse. But you don’t have to be Baptist to be affected by twisted religion. Just look at the current tangled mess of fundamentalist Christianity, ultra-Americanism, and white supremacy. The whole Church is blemished by what is essentially a grab for power in the culture wars.

Education about your iteration of church is needed. Because of both of the points above, many people who could find a home in your congregation will first need to know how and why you are different. That will take intentionally and consistently showing up and building relationships in the places these potential constituents occupy, both online and in person.

"Evangelism" is a concept with a lot of baggage. Many people with a more progressive theology hesitate to go out and recruit or even educate about their faith communities. We associate evangelism with strong-arming and condemning, with one-sided conversations and the sinner’s prayer. Let’s take back this term. Let’s think of it as showing up Christ-like in the world: taking a genuine interest in people and their stories, offering them our care and our time, and allowing ourselves to be changed by them just as they might be changed by us. (Yes, I believe Jesus was changed by his relationships. See his interaction with the Syrophoenician woman.)

Small church is an all-hands-on-deck situation. What this means is that there is usually a solo pastor, maybe with some very part-time staff, and a lot of leadership distributed across the laity. Sometimes we foist responsibility onto newcomers too soon, eager to share some of the work. These newcomers might need time to heal from past church experiences first, or they might be so new to church life that there’s a learning curve for stepping into lay leadership. Either way, we must be able to give them space to get to know the congregation, to grow some roots, and to discover organically how they might use their gifts in service to the church’s mission. If your church can’t offer that breathing period, newcomers will likely not stick around.

Small congregations sometimes feel self-conscious or apologetic about their size. What I want you to hear is that your church is very much needed. You are redeeming the Church’s reputation and practices. You are saving the theologies and sometimes the lives of the people in your midst. Small can be very, very mighty. And with the ways that you have expanded your reach during the pandemic, there is no limit to what God can do in and through you. Thanks be to God for who you are.

Photo by Hilda Trinidad on Unsplash.

I have had several conversations with pastors lately about the gifts and challenges of sabbaticals. Here are some of my thoughts after reflecting on those discussions:

Extended time (> 1 month) away for pastors is essential. When ministers take 1-2 week vacations, they are usually just fully relaxing into renewal and replenishment when it’s time to think about re-entering the system. That’s because it takes several days to set aside the heavy mental load that pastors carry all the time.

Pastors’ extended time away is good for congregations. It helps churches remember that they - not their ministers - are the church. It also allows congregation members to exercise leadership and creativity muscles that they often don’t when pastors are around.

Many churches require too long a gap between sabbaticals. Some congregations permit sabbaticals every seven years. While seven might be a biblical number, that length of time between sabbaticals sometimes means that pastors are army-crawling their way to that milestone, utterly depleted at that point and wondering if ministry is sustainable over the long term.

Rest is not something any of us - pastors and non-pastors alike - needs to earn. Sabbatical policies, whether they are set up for every seven, five, or even four years, imply that they are a reward for hanging on that long. (There's a big difference between offering sabbatical out of a recognition that ministry is hard work and using it as a carrot.) Rest, though, is part of living into God’s likeness in us. God wove rest into the very design of creation.

The one-year clause keeps ministers locked in and resentful. Most sabbatical policies come with a caveat: the pastor must return for at least a full year of ministry following an extended break away. I think the intention here is to keep ministers from disappearing into the ether during sabbatical. However, this requirement 1) often comes with the every-seven-year sabbatical policy (at which point pastors are burned out), 2) implies that the sabbatical not only is a reward for hard work but also that there are also strings to that “gift,” and 3) suggests that congregations don’t trust their ministers to do right by them.

Sabbaticals aren’t one-size-fits-all (for pastors or churches). Some ministers might want a month off every year instead of a far-off sabbatical, while others might need three months at a stretch for travel. Some churches can tolerate the pastor being gone for longer, while others might have circumstances that make it more necessary for the minister to take more regular breaks for shorter lengths of time.

All of this is to say that sabbaticals are good and necessary, but they can be even better if we rethink them.

Photo by Mantas Hesthaven on Unsplash.

Recently I was talking with a coachee who is leaving her current call. “I’m exhausted,” she said. “No one tells you how tiring it is.” She wasn’t referring to all the mental work of details she’s preparing for her successor or the physical efforts involved in cleaning out the books and files she’s accumulated over a long tenure. (Those are very real too, though.) She meant the grief work - her own and others.’

So let’s talk about it.

It is emotionally taxing to manage the time between when a pastor announces a departure and when the exit actually happens. You are feeling a range of emotions, and so are your parishioners. You might be deeply sad to say goodbye to some people you’ve grown to love. You might feel relieved to leave behind those who have antagonized you or taken up a disproportionate amount of energy. You might be thrilled to go to a new challenge or to take a much-deserved, much-needed break. You might feel scared because you don’t know what is next. You might be miffed that people seem largely unaffected by your news.

On the church members’ end, they might be excited for new opportunities for you. They might feel lost and anxious because they have benefitted so much from your ministry and from your steady presence. They might be angry at you for leaving and even more so for setting boundaries around contact with church folks after you go.

So you have your big emotions and they have theirs. But they are not one-and-done feelings. The process of bringing closure to relationships happens over and over in that pre-departure window. And even with some sense of finality, the tenderness does not go away. So how do you navigate this span of weeks, or even months?

Know that this will be hard. It is hard because you have invested significant periods of time and parts of yourself in this holy work. Thanks be to God for what you have done and who you have been in this context!

Feel the feels. Honor what is going on in you and in others. You are in a thin space, where the buffer between you and God and between you and your people is less substantial than at other times.

Focus on relationships more than details. Yes, it will be good for the next minister to know who the homebound members are and what signature events for the congregation are coming up. But those are notes the new person can get elsewhere, if needed. Your successor cannot bring good closure to your relationships with parishioners.

Take good care of yourself. Don’t fill your last weeks too full. Set up emotional supports such as a video call with a non-church friend or some time with your watercolors so that you can recoup enough energy to do the relational work your soul and others’ must have.

Pray for your people. Pray for them to be ok without you. Pray for them to love their next pastor (and vice versa). Pray for them individually, since you know their specific situations. You will soon no longer be their minister, but you will always care about and want good for them.

I am a firm believer that we do as much ministry in this time between announcing our departure and leaving as we do in all the time leading up to the transition. On behalf of church people everywhere, thank you for wanting to wade through that time thoughtfully and compassionately.

Photo by Nick Page on Unsplash.

Recently I wrote about the differences between change, transition, and transformation based on William Bridges’ work. Basically, change is a technical tweak to behavior, and it’s prompted by a shift in circumstances. Transition and transformation, though, nudge us to see and be, not just act, in new ways. They are adaptive challenges, and as such, they are much harder.

There are times when all we need is to do things a little bit differently. I might need to find a different route if there’s road construction on the way to one of my regular destinations. No big deal. But if I decide to stop driving my car altogether because of the environmental impact, that’s trickier. I might say I want to make that change, but then I justify hopping behind the wheel just this one time, which then turns into many times. Something is keeping me from shifting my behavior.

Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey, professor at Harvard's Graduate School of Education and Associate Director of Harvard's Change Leadership Group respectively, have written a great book about why meeting adaptive challenges is so tough. In Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and Unlock Potential in Yourself and Your Organization, they introduce an approach to sussing out how we get in our own way. First, we identify the transition or transformation we seek. Second, we name the things we are doing that run against that end. Third, we consider what it would look like to do the opposite of those counter-productive behaviors, which allows us to surface our deeply-held worries and hidden commitments. Fourth, we then articulate the assumptions behind those worries and commitments.

Using my example of no longer using my car, I might change that into a positive statement for the transformation I’m looking for: I want to start walking, using public transportation, or carpooling instead of driving my own car. The counter-productive behavior is that I still use my car. After all, it’s a tough habit to break! If I really think about not ever using my car, I start to worry about how reliable I can be if I only use other modes of transportation. (Reliability is a core value for me.) Will I always be able to be on time? Also, I might spend much more time in transit. What will that mean for my available work windows? And, of course, there’s a comfort factor. It’s 90-100 degrees from May-October in Alabama. I’ll practically need to hook up to an IV to stay hydrated if I’m in the heat that much more because I’m walking or waiting for a bus. These concerns highlight some hidden commitments I haven’t previously thought about. I perhaps lean too hard and too often into presenting a very tailored version of myself. I can put work above justice efforts. I don’t like to sweat. (Ok, I already knew that last one.) These commitments lead me to assumptions that undermine my efforts to make this big shift: if I’m less reliable because I’m more beholden to a bus or carpool schedule, people will trust me less. I don’t believe I’ll have time to get all my work done well. Sweating makes me look and feel gross, which means people might not want to be around me.

Kegan and Lahey propose experiments to test these assumptions that hold us back. We do, in micro-doses, the things our assumptions scream at us not to do, then we collect data on how others react and how we feel about our own functioning. So I might take the bus the next time I need to go somewhere that I’m expected to be at a certain time. I’ll assess whether I’m actually late and what happens if I am. I’ll notice what the impact is on my work time of a longer journey to my destination. If I’m sweaty when I get there, I’ll note how far people stand away from me. As I continue to experiment, the effects of my assumptions will start to erode, and I will build new routines and new neural pathways.

We live in a world of adaptive challenges. The Church is no different. We see shifts we want to make, but we often can’t get there in large part because we are incorrectly assessing the situation as simply requiring a change in what we do. In this time, there are very few situations that call simply for technical solutions. We must be ready to see and be in new ways. Kegan and Lahey offer a framework for digging deep enough to see what’s getting in our path and then to remove that barrier.

Photo by Kalei de Leon on Unsplash.

You’ve probably heard of Gary Chapman’s five love languages. We typically think of them in terms of our personal relationships. But what if there are ministry applications as well? Read more here on the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship blog.

Photo by freestocks on Unsplash.

Recently the Southern Baptist Convention met and expelled two congregations with that have women pastors on staff.

This might be significant, but the SBC isn’t the only Baptist game in town. Below is an excerpt from my college capstone project, written in 1999.

Women were disheartened by the SBC’s public attack on their rights and abilities to serve God in any capacity, but moderates were awakened to action. In 1986 they formed the Southern Baptist Alliance (SBA), a body which chair Henry Crouch hoped would be “a voice of conscience in the Convention.” Though many moderates did not support the SBA because they still had hopes of retaining representation in the SBC, the SBA was the first organization to lend continuing financial support to Southern Baptist Women in Ministry. Nancy Hasting Sehested’s call to the pastorate at Prescott Memorial Baptist Church in 1987 was a landmark in Southern Baptist women’s struggles to become accepted as legitimate members of the ministerial community and showed both Baptist and non-Baptist women that there were places where they could use their God-given gifts. However, when Sehested was nominated in 1988 to deliver the sermon at the Southern Baptist Convention, the nominator was swiftly ruled out of order. In 1989 moderates suffered another setback when the Foreign Missions Board denied the appointments of Greg and Katrina Pennington to the mission field when their local association pointed out that she was ordained. But in 1991 moderates formed the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF), a fringe organization of the SBC which welcomes women to participate in the worship services held when the CBF convenes. Some CBF churches allow their members to show their support for either the SBC or CBF by designating to which body their tithes are sent.

When I wrote about the Alliance of Baptists (formerly the Southern Baptist Alliance) and CBF, I had no personal connection to either body. Now I claim both as my Baptist home, and neither retains any tie to the SBC other than some shared history. The Alliance and CBF both fully welcome the ministerial gifts of women, and the Alliance is also fully committed to the inclusion of the LGTBQIA+ community in ministry. There are, of course, many other expressions of Baptist in addition to SBC, CBF, and the Alliance.

Recently the Southern Baptist Convention met and expelled two congregations with that have women pastors on staff.

This might be significant, but it wasn’t always like this. Below is an excerpt from my college capstone project, written in 1999.

Before the conservative whirlwind swept through the SBC and left its oppressive mark, women were beginning to make very slow but evident advances in the leadership arena. Women’s voice at the national level of the SBC began in 1868 when they first gathered during the annual Convention and raised money to support overseas mission work. Though a request to seat two female messengers (read: voters) at the 1885 Convention was denied (one unnamed delegate was overheard as saying, “I love the ladies, but I dread them worse”) and the SBC constitution was amended to exclude women from acting as messengers, women became an organized and recognized (though independent) voice when they established the Women’s Missionary Union (WMU) in 1888. The WMU raises funds to finance world missions, and its presence in SBC has greatly increased since its inception. Women continued their gains in the twentieth century as four women began attending classes at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1904 and women were granted the right to act as messengers and vote at the annual Convention in 1914. And the 190s brought great victories as a woman was elected to the vice-presidency of the SBC for the first time (1963) and as the SBC broke through the ordination barrier. The occasion did not pass without controversy, but on August 9, 1964, Addie Davis was ordained by Watts Street Baptist Church in Durham, North Carolina.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s conservative repression has discouraged but not stifled women’s efforts to serve in Southern Baptist ministry. In 1983 Nancy Hastings Sehested and thirty-two other women held a conference in Louisville, and in the course of these discussions the groundwork was laid for an organization independent of the SBC that would provide women with a network of Baptists (including both men and women) who support women in ministry. The founders of Southern Baptist Women in Ministry (SBWIM) realized the importance of helping women meet and correspond with people who understand the difficulty of finding staff positions and who encourage women in ministry even as conservatives doubt their abilities. The establishment of SBWIM touched off a conservative reaction which led to the now infamous resolution on ordination and the role of women in ministry at the 1984 Convention. The resolution proposed that since the Bible clearly relegates women to submissive roles and that “man was first in creation and woman was first in the Edenic fall,” women should not become pastors or accept any kind of church leadership role that requires them to be ordained. The motion passed with 58% of the vote. Despite the SBC’s disregard for women spiritual leaders, churches have local autonomy and can call women to ministerial positions and ordain them.

When I presented this paper at a national conference, I had many people come up to me afterward and tell me that they didn’t know that there were or ever had been women ministers in the SBC. It shows how thoroughly the SBC’s efforts at women’s erasure have been. Most Baptist women in ministry have moved on from the SBC to other Baptist denominations or networks. SBWIM, mentioned above, changed its name to Baptist Women in Ministry. It resources women in a range of Baptist denominations, and it will hold a big 40th anniversary celebration in Louisville this fall.

Significantly, because I grew up in the midst of the Baptist battles, I did not see a woman on the chancel for any reason other than singing or making an announcement until my first semester of seminary. (That must have been some kick in the pants from God for me to trust my call, never having seen women in ministry before then.) I found my way to Oakhurst Baptist Church, the congregation that ordained me, because it was in the news for being expelled from the state SBC convention for calling a gay pastor.

Recently the Southern Baptist Convention met and expelled two congregations with that have women pastors on staff.

This might be significant, but it’s not a new development. Below is an excerpt from my college capstone project, written in 1999.

Women’s struggle for respect as church leaders has been a particularly explosive issue representative of the growing rift between moderates and conservatives in the Southern Baptist Convention (a divide that has paralleled and been reinforced by the aforementioned culture war and religious realignment along conservative-progressive lines). Coinciding with increasing gender equity in the culture at large in the 1970s, many of the most influential bodies in the SBC such as Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (Kentucky) and Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (North Carolina) became somewhat progressive in terms of gender equality, and they in fact encouraged women in ministry by holding conferences regarding women in the church and by establishing women’s centers on some campuses. In 1980 a female co-pastor at a church in Richmond baptized new Christians, and women were chairs of deacons at a few churches. However, the beginning of a holy war came in 1979 when the conservatives launched the first offensive in a plan to overtake the SBC and managed to land their candidate, Adrian Rogers, in the SBC presidency. Rogers’ bid for the presidency was successful in large part because conservative leaders had organized meetings across the country to mobilize biblical inerrantists and to encourage them to act as messengers (read: voters) at the annual meeting of the Convention. The president has the power to appoint people to many of the leadership positions in the SBC, and prior to the conservative tidal wave most presidents chose a diverse group of Baptists to represent the varied viewpoints within the SBC. However, Rogers and subsequent presidents abused their appointive powers and replaced more moderate leaders with men who had conservative tendencies. The Sunday School Board and the boards of trustees at Southern Baptist seminaries were just a few of the bodies that became theologically homogeneous.

Conservatives continued their offensive to eradicate the influence of moderates in the 1980s. At the 1980 Convention, a resolution that urged SBC institutions only to hire faculty and staff who would affirm biblical inerrancy was passed. During the same year in his address to a congregation, fundamentalist leader Paul Pressler revealed part of his political plan when he asserted that conservatives “need to go for the jugular - we need to go for the trustees [of Southern Baptist seminaries].” After forcing the inerrancy issue and overtaking many of the key positions in the SBC hierarchy, conservatives extended their agenda so that it became more social and moral in nature. Paige Patterson, who along with Pressler was the key organizer of the conservative coup, intimated in 1986 that conservative planks not only on theology but also on such issues as school prayer, abortion, and federal budget reduction would influence the future hiring policies of the SBC.

This excerpt certainly doesn’t cover everything the SBC has done to marginalize women. (And, of course, it doesn’t even touch the reality that the SBC was founded on white supremacy. I highly recommend Robert P. Jones’ book White Too Long for that history.) It is simply to show that the “issue” of women in ministry has been a live one in the SBC for a long, long time, and I believe it has little to do with theology and almost everything to do with politics and power. I allow the SBC, the denomination of my youth, to take up very little of my brain space these days. I’m called to ministry, and I don’t need the SBC to affirm that. Instead, I’d rather use the privilege that comes with not having to care about what the SBC does to lift up the amazing women in ministry that I know.

“For a long time there has been commonly-held wisdom about church size dynamics and the role of the pastor at each church size….One of the casualties of COVID, though, might be the applicability of these tenets, because churches are starting to realize the limitations of this thinking.” Click here to read more on the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship blog about these limitations - and the opportunities inherent in them.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash.

“Laypeople might not know this, but many pastors struggle with loneliness. This might seem strange since our work is so people-centered. We are a member of yet isolated from our congregations. There are certain boundaries we must implement to be good ministers. We often must move away from our support systems to find ministry positions. We tend to work long hours, hours unlike other professionals, that make it tough to develop relationships outside of our vocational lives.” Read more about why this loneliness is a problem we must solve and my thoughts on how to do that at the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship blog.

Photo by Sasha Freemind on Unsplash.

Lots of ministers I know are planning for renewal leave. This makes me so happy! I celebrate alongside the clergy who are getting a break from their rewarding yet demanding vocation, and I am grateful for congregations who see the value of an extended time away for ministers.

Renewal leave is different than vacation. It’s not just about the length, which is usually measured in months rather than weeks. There’s much more trust involved on both sides. Pastors count on their people to carry on the work of the church. Congregations expect that their ministers will return to them with energy and creativity after the time away.

Because renewal leave is significant for all involved, I have written the following prayer for the clergyperson’s last worship service before leaving. Feel free to use it as you see fit. It will work best with the minister reading her/his/their respective parts and a lay leader leading the people in the lines from the chancel.

People: On the seventh day of creation, God took a step back from all that hard, holy work and rested. 

Minister: That rejuvenation, just like all of creation, was very good.

People: And so it was that God wove the design for replenishment into the fabric of creation itself.

Minister: All of us, made in God's very image, are intended to take time away for renewal. 

People: We celebrate today that our minister is taking a season for purposeful rest.

Minister: I love you all, and I love being your minister. 

People: We love you, and we are grateful for your leadership and care and for the chance to be in ministry with you.

Minister: This time away will help me be the best possible minister for you. It will permit me to tend more fully to my body, mind, and spirit so that I can help you do the same.

People: This time away will help us be the best possible partners for you. [Choose one of the following here: “It will allow us time to prepare ourselves for the next season of ministry” or “It will call upon us to step into gaps caused by your absence and allow us to own even more our gifts for leadership.”]

Minister: Thank you for this opportunity to take renewal leave. I bless you during this season when we are apart, yet always together as parts of Christ's body.

People: Thank you for modeling sabbath for us in the midst of a world that too often prioritizes productivity. We bless you during this season when we are apart, yet always together as parts of Christ's body.

All: At the end of this renewal leave, may we look back and know, as people created by God and continually re-created by rest, that it was very good for us all.

Photo by Yu Kato on Unsplash.

It is now just over two weeks into the Easter season. If you are a Christian minister who was in the pulpit on Easter Sunday, you could not avoid mentioning the women who were called to be the first Christian preachers.

It didn’t matter which Gospel you used. In Matthew, the Marys are commissioned by both the angel and Jesus to go tell the disciples about Jesus’ resurrection. In Mark, the young man in the tomb gives a similar directive to the Marys and Salome. In Luke, the women who had come from Galilee with Jesus encounter two men in dazzling clothes who announce to them that Jesus is alive, and the women relay this message to the disciples. And in John, Mary Magdalene is the first person to encounter the risen Christ, and he asks her to let the disciples know that he is about to return to God. The details vary from account to account, but in all of them, faithful women are first called to proclaim the resurrection, which is the heart of the Christian story.

And yet, plenty of people still believe that women are not fit for ministry. Even more think they wouldn’t make good lead pastors, even if they don’t say this quiet part out loud. I’ve written elsewhere about how churches can do the work to be ready for a female pastor. But do you know who could potentially be the best ally for clergywomen? Male senior pastors, particularly those with clergywomen in second chair positions (e.g., associate pastor or ministers of specific age groups or programs - I’ll shorthand them all as associate pastors for the purposes of this post). If that’s you, here’s what you can do:

Go by a similar title. By this I mean if you ask to be called “Pastor [your name],” call the clergywomen on your staff “Pastor [their names]” rather than simply their first names (or, heaven forbid, “Miss [their names]”). Encourage church members to address them that way too.

Close the wage gap. I cannot tell you how many churches I know of in which the male senior pastor is making six figures and the women on staff are barely making a subsistence wage. (Yes, there can be differences in levels of experience and responsibility that must be factored in, but not to the tune of an $60-80K disparity.) Find ways to raise the clergywomen’s salaries or sacrifice some of your own to make take home pay more equitable.

Advocate for a parental leave policy. Whether or not you have young children or children at all, ensure there is a just parental leave policy in place at your church. (If you’re not sure what a just policy looks like, contact your judicatory and ecumenical colleagues for examples.) If a new child comes into your family, use the policy in full so that it becomes seen as a parent thing, not a woman thing, to go on this kind of leave.

Collaborate with clergywomen whenever possible. Look for ways to partner with female clergy at your church and other churches. Don’t just limit yourself to teaming up with ordained women, though. Pull women into your church’s lay leadership pipeline.

Share credit liberally with clergywomen when genuine and appropriate. “She did this this thing. Isn’t it great?” “We did this thing together. It is wonderful to have such a great partner in ministry!” On the flip side, support clergywomen when they are attacked by critics and naysayers for illegitimate reasons.

Model good boundaries. Some lead pastors work 60+ hours a week but tell their associate pastors that they don’t want them to overfunction. It doesn’t work that way no matter how good the intention. Senior pastors set the tone for associate pastors’ (many of whom are women) expectations of themselves and churches’ expectations of the entire pastoral staffs. The associate pastors will seem less available, interested, and capable if they stick to the hours they are paid for, and they will juggle an unsustainable load (which can include parenting younger children, caring for aging parents, and carrying the mental load of the household and often that of the church) if they don’t.

Amplify female voices. Welcome your own female clergy and laity into preaching and worship leadership. Invite women outside your church to preach, teach, and lead. Look for gifts in women in your church that they don’t yet see themselves. This creates a culture of call for women. I didn’t see a woman on the chancel for any reason other than singing or making an announcement until I was in seminary. (The first time I did, I sobbed with joy and relief that I wasn’t alone or hearing God incorrectly.)

Be a great reference. Many clergywomen will eventually want to be lead pastors. Talk up your female associate pastors and other clergywomen you know to others before they even begin looking for lead pastor opportunities. (This is especially helpful since some churches now search for a pastor exclusively using informal networks and looking for ministers who aren’t currently seeking a new position.) Give them outstanding recommendations. Celebrate when they leave to take on larger roles.

If I had to boil all this down, I’d simply say, “Normalize women in leadership and share your power.” That’s easier said than done. But some male senior pastors are already doing aspects of this. (Thank you!) And what could be more true to the Gospel in this season that started with women being the first ones trusted and commissioned by the Divine to preach the good news than to support clergywomen’s voices and leadership?

Pastors are in a tough spot these days. The Church as an institution is in the midst of major change that pre-dated the pandemic but was quickly accelerated by it. Those we looked forward to seeing after Covid still haven’t rejoined us. The budget is tightening. The volunteers are burned out. And each person in the pew comes bearing big worries, some of them personal and many of them shared: political rhetoric is becoming more and more divisive, and we know that injustice, climate change, and gun violence endanger each of us. That means we are all a little on edge. That makes us all a little harder to shepherd.

When we are anxious, we can get stuck in the parts of our brain designed to protect us. Our brain is wonderfully made to focus all our resources on survival when we face a physical threat. Unfortunately, this set-up is less helpful when needing to have a hard or uncomfortable conversation than it is when we are faced with a hungry or threatened predator. Our brain chemistry locks us out of our creativity and openness to possibilities and instead urges us to take what seems like the shortest route to safety and stability.

Enter: anonymous feedback. An unsigned note or a verbal message passed through a third party might seem like the best way to give your pastors a quick check on the pulse of the congregation (or, at least, of one member of it) while sparing both of you some trouble. But here’s why that feedback might not be as effective as you hope:

It separates the criticism from needed context. For feedback to be useful, the one being critiqued needs to be able to ask further questions (e.g., what was it about this that really troubled you? Who specifically are the people upset by this?). And often there is a pastoral care issue beneath a criticism, which cannot be unearthed and addressed if there's not conversation. 

It doesn't follow scriptural witness about conflict. Matthew 18 tells us that the first step in resolving friction is for the offended party to go directly to the one who offended, even (perhaps especially) if the offense was unintentional. Subsequent actions include bringing other people into the conversation if necessary. Nowhere in Matthew 18 is there mention of anonymous feedback.

It puts the receiver of the feedback in an awkward position. Family systems theory teaches us about triangulation, in which someone is roped into being the middle person in a relationship rift. That triangulated person might have little to no stake in the presenting issue, but they are caught between the hopes and needs of two people with which they must interact.  

It puts the pastor in a defensive posture. If your pastor doesn't know who is giving this feedback, that is a recipe for high anxiety: who is upset with me? Who is looking more closely for me to slip up? Whom can I trust? These questions are distractions from - not conditions for - fruitful ministry. 

It doesn't contribute toward forward-looking solutions to the issue. If a situation is concerning enough that you need to offer feedback, it's important that you are also willing to help look for a way to resolve it. That requires working together with those involved, which isn't possible when feedback is given via an unsigned note.

It deprives both parties of the chance to strengthen the relationship. It might seem counter-intuitive, but sometimes the most trusting relationships come when the people involved were willing to be honest and vulnerable with each other about disappointment or disagreement. Take that chance!

Luckily, we have more helpful ways to take our thoughts to the people who lead us. Lay leaders can set these expectations and procedures in place to get the kind of information that they and the pastor can use:

Consistently refuse to entertain anonymous criticisms. Make it policy that unsigned feedback will be trashed, remind the church about that policy regularly, and stick to it. People will have to decide whether the issue is important enough to them to be more direct in their feedback.

Create clear feedback loops and educate the congregation about them. What, then, is the best way for pastors and lay leaders to receive comments? Name the how (e.g., by filling out a form? setting up an appointment?), the when (e.g., anytime except right before worship), and the who (e.g., the pastor or personnel committee). 

Don't wait until annual reviews to share feedback with the pastor. Many ministers dread annual reviews because it has become a time to pile on all the congregation's frustrations and survival anxieties from the year prior. Feedback is much more helpful when it is specific and timely. 

Encourage positive feedback as well. Your pastors need to hear what you appreciate about their ministries. They will be better able to receive your critiques if they know you see their gifts as well as their shortcomings. As with negative comments, specific and timely feedback is the most useful. 

We all get anxious and frustrated at times. That means we care. But those feelings are also signals that we need to make an effort to tap into our higher brain functioning by interrupting the idea that we are in imminent danger (by such means as taking deep breaths, going for a walk, or watching a funny video). When we do, we can have productive, substantive conversations that allow us all to be the body of Christ together, working in concert to share the love of God in a troubled and troubling world.

Photo by lilartsy on Unsplash.

One of the most helpful classes I took early in my coach training was about change, transition, and transformation. (The class content built on the work of William Bridges, who was an expert in these areas.) Often we lump the three terms together, but they are actually quite different:

• Change is a shift in our circumstances. It is external. We can choose it, or it can be forced upon us.

• Transition is a response to change. It is learning to see things differently as a result of our shift in circumstances. Our insides work to catch up to what is going on outside of us.

• Transformation is a wholly new way of not just seeing things differently but being in the world differently. We are fundamentally altered because we have so fully embraced change.

We do not go directly from change to transformation. There is that transition time in the middle in which what was is now in the rearview, but what is yet to come and whom we are yet to be are still in the future. Think of this neutral zone as a bridge between two realities. One of the functions of bridges is to carry us over water or roads. Not having solid ground underneath feels very precarious for a lot of people, including me. Yet there we are, left having to move forward, not just stay parked in the middle of that bridge - even if we can’t fully see what’s on the other side.

In our lives we have all found ourselves on the bridge at one time or another, prompted by a move, a job change, a birth or death close to us, or an injury that has altered how we move about the world. In 2020 people all across Earth found ourselves in a neutral zone. There was a sudden call to go from all that was familiar into lockdown. If we got out of our house, we needed to mask and physically distance. If we brought anything from the outside into our home, we were told, at least at first, to wipe it down for pathogens. Schools ended the year abruptly. Churches moved community online. Nothing felt familiar anymore. We couldn’t hug our people. We couldn’t go to the places we wanted. We couldn’t observe milestones in the ways we were used to. And how long would we be in this profound disorientation? The epidemiologists were saying from the start of Covid’s spread that – optimistically – we were in a 2-3 year event, though many of us, including me, could not hear that for a long time. We just reacted to a drastic shift in circumstances. But when weeks turned into months, we adjusted our way of thinking: ok, we are now in a global pandemic. There is no quick fix. We will do what we must in order to get through this, one day at a time. Our seeing realigned with our doing. To some extent we are still in the latter part of the Covid neutral zone. The virus is very much still with us, and we don’t yet know what a world where we are fundamentally changed by our pandemic experience will look like. Thankfully, we have a lot more knowledge and tools now to blunt its effects.

As a result of Covid and so many other changes in the world, many of us individually and collectively are in our own neutral zones. Maybe we’re doing things differently because we have to. Maybe we’re even seeing things in new ways because of our shifted circumstances. We’re still on that bridge, though. So what do we need to get to the other side?

• Celebrate what was without getting stuck in it. What is the legacy that you are taking with you into the neutral zone that can help you navigate it well? What are the values to which you will stay true, no matter what the future looks like?

• Cultivate your noticing that that God is working in, among, and through you. Sometimes it’s hard to see, but we never leave­ God’s compassionate presence and the hope of communal salvation that Jesus offers.

• Assess the tools at hand. Every person, every group, every congregation has a wealth of gifts that put you in position to cross the bridge. Maybe they need to be redistributed, but you have – and are – enough.

• Ask lots of questions. ­­What if…? I wonder what…? When we stay in that stance of thoughtful and playful curiosity, or even faithful doubt, creativity and possibility are available to us.

• Trust in and mutually support one another. The neutral zone is not the place to get stranded or to strand others. This is a bridge best navigated together.

The good news is that we don’t have to transform ourselves. We just have to open our hearts and our minds to God’s invitations, being confident that when we do, God will work in us in ways that don’t just fundamentally alter us but also the world around us.

 Photo by Modestas Urbonas on Unsplash.

“When [your former pastor doesn’t set boundaries], the incoming minister will have a shorter tenure than necessary, because it’s hard to compete with a beloved predecessor who won’t go away. So, the cycle of the departure of the pastor, the interim time, the search for a new minister and the installation of that leader begins again. This is costly to a congregation in terms of energy and money. It particularly lessens momentum in fulfilling its mission.

“So how can we all make this transition easier?” Click to read my thoughts on the CBF blog.

Photo by Mantas Hesthaven on Unsplash.