Called, Tested, and Tired: Women, Ministry, and Baptist Life

 

On the way back from a Leeds University Christian Union Houseparty I had helped organise as treasurer, I was sat in the car with a former CU exec member as he drove along the M62 and he turned to me in the car and said, “Claire, you’re going to be a minister one day.” I’ve never forgotten that moment. When I tell the story of my call, I begin there. 

The call to ministry is a strange, all-encompassing journey of being convinced and giving in (that’s my experience anyway). It’s a call that you know will be sacrificial, change your life, and is only determined by God. The reason why we test a call to ministry so thoroughly is because it’s about who you are, not what you can do. It’s realising there is nothing else you should be doing but this. It’s knowing that God made you this way and by obeying his call you are completely submitting yourself to him.

As I grew up, I rarely met a woman minister, yet I was raised to believe I could become all God created me to be. I was a high achiever, always doing my best at school. I was a loner, not following the crowd, but trying to be my own person, perhaps at the back of my mind knowing that as someone made in the image of God, I needed to be no one but me. It has only been on my journey of call that I have discovered that there are people out there who think me being me is not who God has made me to be because they believe the Bible tells them so.

Being a woman in Baptist ministry brings with it a tension. A tension that I choose to live with because I love the Baptist family. This tension is created by our commitment to local church autonomy: some churches wholeheartedly affirm women’s leadership; there are a few who do not; and there are others in between. 

I am not going argue my position on women in ministry, because it is clear from my role that I believe it to be right and God ordained. I believe my call to be true. I believe that God spoke to me clearly in a tent when he gave me Isaiah 6 and told me I am one he wants to send. On my year out working with Christian Unions I studied fastidiously the texts that people continue to use to clobber me now and believed that I still needed to explore God’s call. I spent ten years exploring that – I did not come into this lightly. The Baptist Union has had a clear position as a body on women in ministry for a long time now, and I’ve written a resource, along with others, that helps churches explore that egalitarian theology, which is out there. I believe on that I have said enough, and I’m tired of arguing my very being with people (both men and women) who want to throw it back in my face. And there are other people who can do that better than I can. 

As a Regional Minister in London, I see both the beauty and the brokenness of Baptist life. I see unexpected growth, baptisms where the baptistry hasn't been opened in years, and churches persevering through hardship. I get to see and work with the amazing diversity of our churches, all trying to follow the way of Jesus as they seek to love and serve him in their communities.

But I also see the darker side: insecurity, control, and the quiet sidelining of certain voices. And over the past few years, I’ve seen that very acutely on the call of women into ministry. As I’ve talked about it with a number of colleagues – it sounds and feels like it's getting harder for women – and here I’d like to explore the reasons why:

Permission to Speak Out

I began this role in the midst of an incredible difficult season in our union - in the midst of the marriage consultation where existing divisions were highlighted. Debates about sexuality mixed with arguments about authority, and in that climate the question of women’s leadership became entangled in the conversation. Complementarian voices began to grow louder. 

The women in ministry argument became so entangled that when the results came out, and it was decided that the rules wouldn’t change, that it was noted that women were more likely to be voting for change, and therefore, in some commenters opinions, women were more likely to be theologically liberal. Assumptions were made online and left to fester and grow. (As an aside my personal take on this is that women are more used to living in tension, being that not all churches will accept them, and so living in tension amongst others whose theology of sexuality they might disagree with was an easier gap to leap). 

Public statements about male headship, in church and home, gained confidence, particularly as more prominent Baptist voices spoke out. What had once been spoken cautiously began to be said more openly, published online, discussed, not fully withdrawn, and instead pushed into the faces of women who are called to these roles. 

The need to be heard in the consultation debate, the assumptive interpretation of the results and the voices of some leaders within our union getting louder – it gave permission to speak out.

I remember my first ever ministers conference, where I was given the task of finding male advocates for women in ministry. I had a list of men who I needed to speak to, and I approached one, locally recognised minister, who took great pleasure in telling me, a woman minister in training, that my call to ministry was against creations order.

I thought that was a one off – but it’s not. Most recently, an experienced woman minister told me how she got caught up in a conversation about women in ministry with her male colleagues, which ended for her when one of those men told her she shouldn’t even be a minister. This confirmed to me what I had been feeling - that this was becoming more, not less, commonplace. 

The Backlash to Project Violet

Project Violet confirmed what many women already knew – that despite significant progress, structural and cultural barriers remain. While many welcomed its recommendations, others reacted defensively, suggesting that encouraging women disadvantages men or that the church has become “too feminised.” 

Project Violet has handed women a voice that has been muffled for some time and there are those who don’t like this and they talk back. Subtle, seemingly reasonable questions, often with a misogynistic twinge.

This backlash to women speaking out is not new or confined to the church, but we need to be aware of the effect it is having. There are some people who will not engage with the research, who will stay away from events, because they already fear what it means for them and believe it closes opportunities that were open before. 

Yet the Project has never been simply about privileging women; it is about the flourishing of the whole church—creating space for all whom God calls, especially those historically marginalised.

There is a rise in Non-Accredited ministers

There is a crisis of ministry in the Baptist Union - people are not coming forward for training. Why is this? There are probably a number of reasons that I won't go into here... but it's led to a change in our churches. 

That broader ministry shortage has led churches to look beyond accredited Baptist ministry, often calling leaders shaped in complementarian contexts. The worry for me is that this may gradually reshape our common life and theology. We face real questions about identity, accountability, and what we expect of those who serve among us. Will we need to begin to create a set of expectations and guidelines that is firmer on how churches and ministers might covenant with and respect those who hold a different view of women in ministry? Will we need to move towards being affirming (or at least accepting) of women in ministry being a requirement rather than a choice?

The Bigger Picture

Overlaying this is the so-called “Quiet Revival.” I love what we are hearing about the number of younger people arriving in our churches and how they are coming to faith and growing in Christ - particularly evident in the rise of numbers of young men. While any movement towards faith is good news, there are uneasy intersections with wider cultural currents, including forms of Christian nationalism and hyper-masculine Christianity. If some young men arrive formed by those narratives, how will that shape our churches? And what will it mean for women’s leadership?

There is anecdotal evidence to suggest that young men are more likely to vote reform and turn up at church and young women are more likely to vote Green and leave. We need to be aware of this and its effect on our churches. In her book “The Struggle to Stay”, author Katie Gaddini writes about how single evangelical women are leaving the church because they are not being enabled to be all they are called to be – because as men step up, they are being sidelined, seemingly only there to fill a gap, rather than be valued as who they are. 

This is echoed in one of the recent comments I have heard from a Baptist minister about women in ministry, stating that we are only there because men are not stepping up.

What happens when these young men step up? Will women be expected to step down by those who hold these views, however quiet and under the radar those views are? 

We need to hold these questions that hang in the air, and be mindful as we disciple those who arrive at our doors, that they are taught to embrace Jesus who loves them just as they are, but not to the detriment of others. 

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I do not pretend to have clear solutions, but I believe we must name what is happening. I ask for others - my brothers in ministry in particular, to pay attention, to listen carefully, and to walk with us towards a more level place—where women are not merely tolerated, but truly able to thrive in God’s call.

Because, in this moment, many of us are exhausted with it all. 

Searching for Christ(mas)

In the centre of every nativity scene sits a manger, or a crib, or a bottom drawer, or a packing box, or a bundle of blankets carefully but haphazardly arranged. 

In the twinkling lights, the candles, the laser shows, the stars, the tinsel that catches a glimmer of the street lights as the wind blows through the gaps in the windows. 

Behind advent doors, filled with the taste of goodness, surprises, unexpected creative gifts, the carefully planned messages planned meticulously each year. 

In the faces gazing through windows at the want but can’t have, in the lingering prayers and laughter of the loved one lost that hang around the room resting on the seat where she always sat. 

In the sacrifices, the generosity, the hampers that are packed - in those for whom a hamper makes Christmas, and those who get a feeling of warmth inside as they seek to bless. 

In gentle touches and in embraces, in those who simply sit, presence felt, silence valued. 

In knowing that a greater love than has ever been known lays thick in the air. Expectation, restoration, salvation, heard in the gentle gurgle of a well fed baby boy who surprised his parents and nearly turned up on a donkey. 

The word became flesh and moved into the neighbourhood.

Christ never left, you know. We don’t have to force him back into the Christmas box of all we think it should be. 

Every year there are rumours of a Christmas ban, of Christmas lights being ripped down, symbolic of our Christian core being ripped from the body of whatever it means to be a Christian nation. Of Christ being removed from Christmas. 

But Christ never left, you know. 

If you’ve lost sight of him then you might just find him waiting for you amongst the lonely, the hungry, the broken and the sick. 

You might just find him with those who have no place to call home, who are displaced, unable to return to a place ravaged by war and corruption.

You might just find him on the shore, waiting for the boats, caring for those who have just about survived a crossing full of deceptive hope of better because of a  new life that has been mis-sold. 

He’s here, in these streets, bringing light in the most dark and lonely of corners. Shining bright on the hillside, proclaiming hope, glowing beauty amongst the broken, possibility amongst despair. 

He chose where to dwell - in the neighbourhood. Amongst us. 

He never left, you know. 

Give it Time

Turn it off and on again. 

If you leave it for 10 minutes it'll work.

Try it again it's a bit temperamental. 

I'll go and get "...." - they know how to make it work. 

How long do we wait until we try another way? 

Give it Time. 

Last night I had an appointment near Westminster Bridge that finished about 6pm. The worst time to travel. My journey home took me via Waterloo (which has now lost its status as the busiest station in London to Liverpool Street, but is still awful at 6pm on a week day evening). I had two choices - Jubilee Line change at Canary Wharf or Northern Line, change at Tottenham Court Road. I chose the first. 

On arrival at the platform I realised that I had chosen wrongly. The platform was full of people queuing for the doors (only on the Jubilee line do people form into a queue - a jubilee quirk). The train arrived, the queue went nowhere as noone was able to get off the train, it was an actual tin of sardines at the door I had chosen. I had a decision to make - do I wait for the next train which will inevitably be as disappointing or do I change route completely? I chose the second. 

A long walk with travelators to the other side of Waterloo Underground. The trains, still full, were better, and for a moment then I thought I had chosen wisely. I even got a seat after the first stop. On arrival at Tottenham Court Road the train emptied, and the inevitable bottle neck at the exit didn't clear before the next train came. Like a blocked drain, we shuffled our way up the stairs as a very brave (or foolish) man tried to swim against the tide and got stuck half way down the stairs. The crowd divided at the top of the stairs and with relief, I believed I had chosen wisely. Hoping that the next bit of the journey would be more pleasant (it was 7pm by now), I arrived at the Elizabeth Line platform, where there was a train (not mine) with the doors open. I looked up at the information screen and it had the eight letter mystery word on the screen "delayed". But for how long? 

The train at the platform closed it doors, and the platform breathed a synchronised sigh of relief. 

It didn't move. 

The group of friends behind me considered their actions. Do they wait and see what happens or do they try another way? Their animated discussion included an analysis of how long they would leave it before they turned back on themselves. As they discussed there was an announcement. "We're sorry for the delay, the train is having issues, but we'll be on our way soon". 

The people behind me estimated 4 minutes as the optimum time. The man to the left of me was repeating the announcement loudly either to himself or to the hidden phone in his beard. 

The people behind me left. 

The announcer began to announce again and was interrupted. Another announcer piped up. "The driver is currently resetting the train, it will be on its way shortly".

A woman comes up to the closed doors, pressing the button trying to get on. She signals to the people inside "can you open the door?". "Alas, no", their forlorn exasperated faces replied back. She stood, lost, not knowing what to do. The people on the train stared at the people on the platform and the people on the platform stared back. The man to my left repeated the announcement from earlier loudly. 

(And repeat the last two paragraphs x 2)

The train began to move. There was an inaudible cheer on the platform as people cheered in their heads, not wanting to interrupt the silence of the delayed rush hour crowd. 

The information board flashed "the next train doesn't stop here". The silent cheer turned into silent groans. The woman staring at the door willing it to open hoped that this meant the next train would be hers. 

Give it Time. 

How do you know when it is time to stop giving it time? There is a time to give it more time and a time to not. If I had persevered on my first chosen route would I have been home an hour earlier? Probably not, because the resetting train eventually caused major delays for everyone. 

In the waiting, how do we know when too much waiting is too much? 

In Luke 13 Jesus tells the story of a man who has a vineyard where there is a fig tree that is not producing fruit. For three years the owner has seen no fruit. He asks the one who looks after the vineyard, what should he do? 

The man says "give it one more year", give it time. Look after it, nurture it, fertilise it, and then let's see next year, and if it doesn't provide fruit, we'll think again.

There is a time to give it more time, and there is a time to not. Maybe sometimes the waiting is about making time to find or even create the right solution, the right way ahead, the way that will provide an answer next time. Advent waiting gives us hope in the delay. 

Give it time, listen for the announcements and ask for advice from those who know a little bit more. 

There is a time to give it more time and a time to not. 

There is a time to nurture and a time to cut down. 

There is a time to give up and a time to reset. 

There is a time to wait and a time to say now is the time. 

May God give you peace in the waiting and the knowledge to know the time in the now. 

I made it home.  

In the Silence

We've all been there. Waiting. 

And waiting some more. 

There is no response, or the excruciating hold music seems to go on forever as you shift through the queue slower than snails pace, or your ask for an answer is responded to with an excuse that is pathetic and unwanted but difficult to argue with. 

Waiting looking into a void where the answer is so far away it is not even a dot. 

Prayer can be a bit like that. 

I've been chewing over the story of the persistent widow in Luke 18 for a few days now, unable to climb over the 'but what if you pray and there is no response?' question. The 'what if God is silent?' question. Is he there or has he gone on holiday? Has he forgotten me? 

It's one of the questions I find most difficult to answer and when we wait for  answers that are a long time in coming the silence does echo round the void. I've walked with others through this question many times - I've sat with them and wept with them in the silence... and its a tough place to be.

It's a question that many of us have wrestled with on our own behalf and on behalf of others and where the answer never seems enough, and instead we rely on the incomprehensible feeling of peace that God does bring in the most difficult of storms. Peace that passes all understanding. 

When God says wait.... and when he doesn't even say wait and is silent.... what can we do? 

The parable of the persistent widow tells us to persevere because God is good and right and just. 

Well that's true, but that might also be one of those answers that is a bit annoying, especially when the waiting is tiring you out and the silence is painful. 

What does persevering in prayer look and sound like when the whisper of an answer isn't there? 

It is remembering that we live in a broken and fallen world, and it is in this world that we pray for God's Kingdom to come. We recognise that suffering is a part of life, but we still pray for God's Kingdom to come. If we live with hope and expectation that at some point the suffering will end, then we can put on the shield of faith and look forward to the day that it will - it is our responsibility to cry out to God to change things as we point to signs of his kingdom coming. It is an opportunity to look ahead with hope to different. 

It is remembering that we are not in this on our own. When we get tired of it all, we turn to others to help us hold up our arms. We turn to God and say help me persevere. Jesus intercedes for us (Hebrews 7:25). The Holy Spirit prays for us in 'groans that words cannot express' (Romans 8:26). 

It is sometimes learning to live with what is and what has been as we best we can, and asking God to hold it and us, knowing that he understands the pain and frustration we may have to endure and that he is the bringer of peace that passes all understanding in the midst of the storm. Persevering alongside someone is trying to act a bit more like this in it all - not always asking them if the prayer has worked yet, but sitting with them and lamenting that it's all a bit rubbish really, and praying together to find peace as well as answers.

Perhaps perseverance is simply knowing that God will eventually speak, and will eventually act, and will eventually change things, but that right now the picture is more complicated than a simple answer, and so choosing to find comfort in the knowledge that where we sit and pray and question in the silence, God is there - in companiable silence - the kind of silence that makes us feel safe, that makes us feel loved, and helps us to know that there is light - even in the darkest places. 

The Word became flesh and moved into the neighbourhood.... and promised never to leave us or forsake us. 

A What in the Waiting

The big news of the week is that the Elizabeth Line (my local train) now has mobile signal all the way along its length even in the tunnels. The only place it drops out is as we go through the only stretch of the line (apart from the end) on my way home when we temporarily gasp for air at Custom House, where the train emerges from the ground. Strangely, Custom House was the only place where there was signal and I'd get people to text me so I knew they were coming and were only a few minutes away. The trains are deathly quiet right now as people bow their heads to their phones (including me) apart from those people who believe everyone else should hear their phone calls so to help their companions on the train only use loud speaker (don't get me started). 

no - this isn't the Elizabeth Line

I'm a great believer in using a mobile phone while you are waiting. A great distraction from the world around. I now don't need to take a book on the train (although that probably means that I won't read as much). I walked down the platform the other day and everyone but two or three people had heads bowed, thumbs scrolling and a look of bemused concentration on their face. As I walked down the platform I did wonder what made those two or three people choose not to go with the phone flow? They looked like the kind of people who had phones (it's rare not to have one). Following their example I stared vacantly into the distance as I waited eight minutes (can you believe it - eight minutes in London?) for a train. Without that distraction my mind had a chance to wander and notice things. It was quite nice really.

What do you do as you wait? 

I love the story of Zacchaeus - because he's short (I am a bit short...) and he's at the back of the crowd (I like to be at the back or side - means an easy escape), but mainly because it's a great story of how Jesus changes lives. 

If you read the story of Zacchaeus in Luke 19 you will see that there is quite a lot of interest going on. Zacchaeus is clearly waiting for something to happen - he's expecting to see Jesus, and he's expecting to find out something more about him. He wants to see Jesus and actively makes it possible from his short man position at the edge of the crowd. Today we might try and observe Jesus by looking through the mobile held up in front of us videoing the proceedings, but Zacchaeus didn't have that opportunity, so he climbed a tree instead. He saw him, and in doing that, Jesus noticed him. 

What are you doing as you wait? 

Advent waiting has an expectancy about it - there will be something to see at some point soon - something good. Zacchaeus makes sure he has the best view possible and it pays off with far much more happening than he very likely expected (I hope his house was tidy and he had food in). 

In our waiting, the story of Zacchaeus reminds us that actively waiting is a good idea. Zacchaeus could have waited at home and hoped for a knock on his door - but he didn't - he went to a place where he knew he would be able to see Jesus, ready for whatever happened next (maybe he had tidied his house and got food in.... just in case). 

Active waiting gives us a chance to be ready for whatever comes our way. It means we notice the things that are right in front of us - the opportunities that fall in our path, and we can choose to respond in whatever way feel is fit. If we wait passively with our eyes focussed on nothing but our next destination, we might miss whatever it is that wants to present itself to us, and that thing, it might be the answer or the open door we didn't know we had been waiting for, or, perhaps, we'd even given up on. 

"Here I am! I [Jesus] stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me."  Revelation 3:20

   

No more of this

'When Jesus' followers saw what was going to happen, they said, "Lord, should we strike with our swords?" And one of them struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his right ear. 

But Jesus answered, "No more of this!" And he touched the man's ear and healed him.'

Luke 22:51

Four powerful words. No more of this. Jesus intervenes before an action turns into a fight. When Jesus is arrested, despite his innocence, he doesn't fight it, and he intervenes when his friends try and fight for him, interrupting a cycle of violence driven by the nature of those around him to pursue what they believe is right. 

When we see those we love get hurt - when we see those we love treated unjustly - the obvious response is to fight on their behalf. We fight in the way we know how. The disciples have just been told to take up their swords because something is coming, and now their use of the sword is stopped. 

None of it makes sense.  

There are many things in the world that might make us cry out 'no more of this!'. 'I can take no more'. 'Stop'. From the personal things when life appears to keep throwing stones - perhaps the first one didn't hurt, but the series of one thing after another is beginning to - through a spectrum of disappointment and frustration - to the big things - the atrocities we see on the news. 

So many times in the situations where we cry out 'no more of this' we feel helpless because there seems to be nothing we can do to change the way things are and how things are becoming. 

But Jesus' "no more of this" is a declaration of another way. He breaks the seemingly never ending cycle, not by being the most powerful and forceful in human ways, but by declaring a new and different way. His way heals the ear of the one who is arresting him for a crime he didn't commit. 

I don't have the answers in all the places and situations where we are crying out "no more of this", but I'm thankful that Jesus not only understands and feels the suffering that is endured, but that he points to a way that is different, a way that is healing and a way that declares restoration. A way where the ways he says no to, will one day be no more.  

I try to be a person of "no more of this", who calls out injustice when I see it and who sides with those who are broken, but I don't do it well. Perhaps one of the challenges of the advent pause is to revisit the declaration of "no more of this" and to seek out a more Jesus way to declare it.

A light began to glimmer in the darkness - the darkness could not put it out. 

The Word became flesh and moved into the neighbourhood.....and declared "No more of this". 

An Expectant Pause

During Advent I am reading backwards through Luke and so yesterday I started with the resurrection. It is a strange way to journey - starting from the glory of resurrection, ending with the beginning, but I am hoping that I might gain new insight into the story of Jesus' life, a story that I have read over and over, yet  continues to speak to me in new ways. Yesterday it was even stranger to read of resurrection and then preach of conception, and perhaps this strangeness in journey contributed to me eating pudding before main as I snuggled up on my sofa under the lights of the Christmas tree to a cheesy Christmas film (the proper way to end the first Sunday of Advent). 

The last four verses of Luke are full of promise. They are full of pause. They are an insight into a moment before the what next. They give a prequel of Luke's next book (Acts) and give a hint of what is to come, but they don't go further than an earth to heaven pause in the proceedings of the story of the people of God as Jesus is taken up into heaven. An expectant pause that is full of joy and praise because the promise of the next has become certain. It's a very advent end to the Gospel.

The season of advent for me is a reminder that waiting so often is inevitable. In a year where I have been learning to praise in the unknowing of a seemingly never-ending pause that has been longer than I expected it to be, advent waiting feels a bit different this year. 

The season of advent has always been for me a reminder that in the inevitable waiting there is expectation -  a glimmer, a thrill of hope, however weary the world feels right now. And that glimmer, it is there at the end of Luke, and I wonder if for the disciples, this made the praise in the waiting come more naturally. 

Yesterday there was a moment at the end of the service when I saw the face of a woman light up with twinkly joy. I had given the members of the congregation a tiny little ball and had instructed them to wait before they discovered what that ball was. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted the woman who was so excited to find out what it was she removed the piece of white plastic from inside it before I told her to, and as the ball started to light up and twinkle, the joy spread along the row as the unexpected was discovered. On talking to the woman afterwards I found out that that little tiny twinkly light was a sign for her of what was to come after a difficult season. Her delight in God's goodness was infectious, and helped me to remember that even in the longest of pauses, there is always a hope ahead and a cause to praise.

In the little tiny twinkling lights of advent, in the frustration of the pause that is far longer than you anticipated, may you discover hope where you never expected hope to be.   

 "I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high." Luke 24:48