When Women Carry the Load
I’ll warn you up front, this post is a little complainy. If you’re a woman in ministry and don’t want to feel irritated by the way the organizational load gets pushed off on women, then close the tab and go watch something funny on youtube. Maybe a Worshicken video.
If you’re up for it, keep going.
I recently read an article from a male egalitarian pastor praising the work of a woman on staff who had taken over the organization of the men’s ministry.
The article went basically like this….
The women in our church have organized a vibrant women’s ministry.
The men in our church say all the time that they want a men’s ministry like the women have.
I (the male senior pastor) have hosted a few breakfasts, but I just don’t “feel burdened” to help launch a men’s ministry.
Pause here for a minute… I haven’t even gotten to the part that bothers me about women always carrying the majority of the organizational burden. The article is already problematic. A senior pastor is stating that the men in his church have repeatedly expressed a desire for someone to help them organize a men’s ministry. First - I have a hard time believing there are no men in the congregation competent enough to do the work on this. Second - the senior pastor says he does the bare minimum… organizes a few breakfasts that never develop into anything. He also says, he’s not “burdened” for it.
To be clear - men in his church are repeatedly asking him for something, he put in minimal effort to deliver, and really just didn’t care to do more.
Okay…. that’s the starting point for his next section, which he could have titled…
“If the men don’t want to be bothered, get a woman to do it!”
This pastor explains that a woman on staff “felt burdened” to take on the men’s ministry. He doesn’t explain why, but let’s assume she simply heard the cry for a ministry and felt her job as a staff member was to answer.
He doesn’t state whether or not the woman is a pastor, so I’m going to call her a staff member, which leaves that possibility open. But even if she is “director of something-or-other,” she’s obviously doing pastoral work here - caring for the congregation.
This woman on staff took over the organization, set schedules, recruited people, trained volunteers, and grew a strong ministry. She then handed it off to the volunteers she had trained.
The senior pastor’s take-away was, "look at how great we are because we are SO egalitarian we even let a woman organize our men’s ministry and it worked!”
I read that as, if you’re a male pastor, and you don’t care about the needs and wants of your congregation, but they won’t stop pestering you, just get a woman to handle it.
The way his article was written, I really can’t see any other take-away. Maybe he’s a bad communicator. Maybe he really couldn’t take on the men’s ministry. Maybe the woman on staff had a vision from the Lord. Maybe there was something else not expressed in his article that would make all of this make sense.
But I know from experience… many many experiences… many painful, exhausting, fustrating experiences… the most likely scenario is that the work no one else wanted to do got picked up by a woman.
This is common everywhere, but it’s rampant in the church. Sadly, I think it happens even more in egalitarian churches because they don’t feel any hesitation at letting women do things (even organize a men’s ministry), and then they get to pat themselves on the back for being so egalitarian.
Here’s my question for the egalitarian male pastors who think they are great for “letting” women do things: Are you treating the women like the men? Are you treating the men like the women?
I can’t tell you how many male pastors say, “I’m not good at administration,” and think that’s just fine, because they can hire women to take on the administrative tasks. That’s not fine. Don’t just hire to your weaknesses - grow!
I can’t tell you how many male pastors give male staff a pass because they “have families.” But they have no problem letting women with families take on extra work and extra hours.
If you are a male pastor and you are comfortable saying the men on your staff are bad at administration, you better be comfortable saying the women are bad at administration. If you let men get away with not doing things because they “don’t feel burdened,” you better let women get away with not doing things because they “don’t feel burdened.” If you let men do the bare minimum because they have a family at home, you better let women do the bare minimum because they have a family at home. But let’s be real, the church would unravel if the women weren’t carrying the load.
So instead…. how about stop letting men off the hook. Challenge them in their weak areas. Don’t accept the same growth areas showing up on reviews year after year after year. Don’t expect women to pick up the tasks the men “aren’t good at.” Don’t let the men put in fewer hours and less effort because they have families. Expect your staff to rise up to challenges and grow in their areas of weakness. Expect the men and women on staff to carry equal parts of the load. Imagine how many amazing things could be done for the Kingdom if the women were less burnt out, and the men were stepping up!
I believe the pastor who wrote the post had good intentions, but it had so so so many blind spots. And none of those blind spots are unique to that pastor. I’ve seen them a million times.
Do better, men.