Sorry Pastors but statistics say that most of you don’t listen to the needs of 60% of your congregation. Not really listen….
On Saturday I posted a link to CBD and a book being offered entitled, What Women Wish Their Pastors Knew. (She also has a book…What Pastors wish Church Members Knew) Over the next few days I will be posting several summarization’s offered and some comments from Pastors and theologians addressing this issue from a Pastors Perspective.
Pastors, before you click the X at the top of the page to close or delete, saying, what does this women know about being a Pastor? I ask for a small amount of grace. I freely admit the only thing I know about Pastoring comes from three sources: First and Foremost, The Word of God…. the authority on this issue, books and articles written on the subject and by experience and observation. Note that I am posting the excellent forward by Eugene Petersen who is more than qualified to address this issue from a Pastors persepctive.
Women, before you yell YES !!!!! too loud… I ask you to check your hearts. Though you may feel woronged by a pastor in the past, remember two wrongs do not make it right or as the apostle Paul states in Romans 12:17: “Repay no one evil for evil. Have regard for good things in the sight of all men.” If your heart is bitter please stop and confess this hard heartedness and ask the Lord to open your eyes to what He would have you learn.
The authoress, Denise George has done a wonderful job at articulating the hopes, hurts, needs and dreams of Women in the Church today. Too many excellent Pastors have placed the true needs of the women in their congregations on the back burner. Given the life of a pastor the back burner NEVER is reached. I have known some Pastors who simply make a decision NOT to engage the women of their church on any meaningful level. Too often the result is a group of women, affected by the fall and having no male leadership become manipulative, devisive and worse. THEN the pastor will get involved, the outcome? Christ is not honored, God is not glorified, and the body is scarred……and womens hearts harden like diamonds. Pastors PLEASE read the following by Eugene Peterson that forms the forward of this book.
Pastors do most of their work in congregations comprised of a bewildering diversity of souls. We commonly use labels to introduce at least a modicum of order into the diversity: saints and sinners; children, elderly, and adolescents of all ages; rich, poor, and middle class; mature, immature, and neurotic; saved, unsaved, and backsliders; married unmarried and divorced. And Men and Women!
The french use an expression that I like very much, deformation professional — a liability, a tendency to defect, this is inherent in the role one has assumed, as say, a physician, a lawyer, a pastor. I have come to think that if there is a deformation that pastors are particularly liable to, it is our habit of presorting people into categories. Once we have a category to place them in, we have provided ourselves with a grid for “dealing” with them. We have reduced them by labeling them. Now we know where we stand and have a pretty good idea what we will do. The difficulty is that the label, before we even know his or her name, depersonalizes this intricately personal, one-of-a-kind, image of God SOUL into a some-THING (note, not some-ONE) that we as pastors are qualified by training and ordination to handle.
Labels have a certain usefulness, if used with caution and restraint. But when used habitaully and unthinkingly, stereotyping and “lumping” they are responsible for an enormous amount of damage in congregations. The damage is reciprocal: the pastor’s imagination is blunted and a souls uniqueness is violated.
The label”woman” is among the most damaging of labels used by pastors. The label depersonalizes the working identity of a large segment of any congregation into matters of gender and role. The label is then commonly subdivided into women with problems and women with gifts. If she is a problem, it is my job to “fix her”, find a solution and get her “functional”. If she is a gift, my job is to put her to work, to use her as a resource. “Functional” and “Resource” , note both are impersonal terms, furthering the depersonalization. The pastor is depersonalized into doing a church “job”; the woman is depersonalized into either a problem or resource.
The moment we do that, we are diverted from getting acquainted with what is most human in this person, child-of-God-human, an eternal soul with hungers and needs that are beyond our fixing and with gifts and abilities that cannot be slotted into a church “job”. But pastors are in an enviable, and maybe even unique, position to go against the depersonalizing, functionalizing habits of our culture and recognize woman as souls-in-formation, persons redefined primarily by their baptism and not by gender, thier debilitating problems, or their exhilirating jobs.
Denise George is doing a wonderful thing for we pastors. She brings the voices of hundreds of women from across this land and around the world onto the pages of this book, women whose pastors haven’t been listening to them. “Listen to us,” they say. “you’re our pastor!” My husband can tell you how many times I have cried as my soul screams out in need.
They of course have needs and gifts— don’t we all? But mostly what Denise accomplishes is a massive de-labeling, a de-categorizing, letting each and every voice be heard with all the dignity inherent in every daughter of Eve, making sure that we listen, really listen to who they are, not just what they represent, or where they are slotted in a file drawer. We hear these voices making common cause with all of us as souls to be respected and honored; and are reminded that we share the demanding work of growing up to the stature of Christ.
Eugene H. Peterson
Professor Emeritus of Sprirtual Theology
Regent College, Vancouver, BC
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