I am sharing about what's going on for me this year, next year. And I tell them that my team leader is on paternity leave, so I am leading the team and the fellowship for the first few weeks. "Wait, you are?" Not exactly a tone of excitement. I am suspicious about their hesitation, but I will gloss over it at the moment.
At some point someone points out that all the women, save myself and two other girls at my table, are all sitting together in the other room. I pointedly tell them that this is always the case, I keep telling people our church always self-segregates like so. But he asks me what's really wrong with that, especially if the alternative is the youth groups that are all over each other. "All churches are like that, right?" No, I point out--your sample size of two churches, one being our church and another being a church plant based from our church, does not constitute "all churches". And under a quick breath I murmur that you will miss out on the gifts, perspectives, and life from your fellow sisters but this is not the place for theological arguments, this is not the place to point out how patriarchy in its broken form hurts all of us, and this is not the place to argue for redeemed relationships between men and women, and so we go on.
And they talk about their college fellowships, and one of my friends shares about how it "went downhill" his year. By downhill, he talks about how a guy friend of ours was asked to be admin (which I gather is the leader title of this fellowship) but turned it town, and then asked a girl instead. A girl. "You know this isn't good when they can't raise up leaders," he says.
And they ask me about our fellowship dynamics and I admit we have way more females this year than male and as he shakes his head several times, he says, "That's not good. That's really not good." And he asks me if I lead Bible studies and I can't tell if this is with the women-teaching-in-authority question in mind so like a coward I tell him that this year I sort of co-led one but next year I won't be. Somehow I've lost my confidence and my authority appears to be hiding behind a bush.
And I look around the room that is full of men and a handful of women and I wonder who will have the eyes to see what's going on here. I wonder what it means for relationships between male and female (for He created them both) to be beautiful and co-existing and flourishing. I desperately want a robust grasp on my position on egalitarianism or complementarism yet I fear the stronger I stand, the more I won't fit in here. But I suspect that some already get a hint. And I suspect perhaps that their view of gender--be it in leadership, appropriate distance, assumed dynamics--may impact the fact that few new women have joined the group as I see it. But who am I to say?
In the meantime, I am about to run out of fingers for number of times I hear these comments about women leading ministries spoken in doubt or disagreement. It's like I need a file for them, how to interact with the people who say them, and how to articulate my own convictions, but it's so complicated because it encompasses the emotional, theological, professional, relational realms and much, much more.
And so this advent season I will remember Mary. Mary, who in the gender roles of her time, said yes to an incredulous task with all its associated gossip and presumption and the destiny of never fitting in again. "Let it be to me according to your word," she says. Oh Mary. Did no one expect God to speak through you? No one expected the Messiah to come from you, did they? We can look at Paul and we David and all the men of scripture, but I also won't forget that this woman was a favored one. "And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord."
