The first item, or actually two items, of news relates to the ongoing discussion in the Presbyterian Church in America about the role of women in the diaconate. You may remember that at their General Assembly back in June there was a significant discussion about establishing a study committee to look at this issue and the various aspects of ordination versus commissioning versus participation. In the end the Assembly decided not to establish the study committee but to continue the discussion in the denomination, including through the process of records review.
As part of that continuing discussion the PCA publication byFaith has just published on-line a pair of articles that do a great job of presenting two of the aspects of this issue:
The Case for our Current Policy on Female Deacons by Ligon Duncan
The Case for Commissioning (Not Ordaining) Deaconesses by Tim Keller
Each of the articles is well written for a knowledgeable but not scholarly audience. For instance, they presuppose that you know a bit about the issue and are familiar with the concepts of complementarianism and egalitarianism. But they do a good job of discussing relevant points in the history of the debate as well as theological and scriptural issues without your eyes glazing over when presented with the Greek vocabulary.
It is also important to point out that the articles are written by two high-profile and respected teaching elders in the PCA with somewhat different views, but who both acknowledge, if not affirm, the present constitutional standard of the PCA that only men may hold any ordained office. They also affirm the constitutional standard that women are to be involved in the diaconate ministry. The articles discuss two different approaches to that involvement.
For those of us not in the PCA this is not an unrelated issue. Between the PCA, with no ordination of women, and the PC(USA), with full ordination of women, there is the Evangelical Presbyterian Church with “local option” ordination.
As the movement of churches disaffiliating from the PC(USA) began and these churches generally realigned with the EPC, there were concerns raised about the status of women’s ordinations in the realigned churches. In particular, Presbyterians for Renewal had an article in their 12 reasons to stay in the PC(USA) on “The PC(USA) Affirms and Encourages Women.” (All of my links to that original article are now broken but there is a post at Renewing.NewCastleFPC.org that has the original list of 12 reasons to stay in the PC(USA).) There was also a series of articles by the Network of Presbyterian Women in Leadership titled “Has anyone asked the women?”
In thinking about this I wondered “How much of an issue is this at the present time?”
So in my morning coffee break and over lunch today I did a quick survey. I took the EPC list of churches in the New Wineskins/EPC Transitional Presbytery and did a quick, and probably unscientific, look at all listed web sites to see how many had women on staff who were ordained as ministers. I would first note that of the 30 churches on the list, there is only one with a woman as the solo/senior/head pastor. In total I found about six women in what appeared to be ordained pastoral positions at these 30 churches. (I gave one or two ambiguous names the benefit of the doubt as being women and on some church web sites technical titles that a GA Junkie would want were absent, so again I had to make my best judgment if the individual was ordained. I also included one commissioned lay pastor. Like I said, it was quick, “back of the envelope,” and unscientific.) My best count from the web sites is that there are at least 66 total ordained ministers at these churches. At six out of 66 there are about 9% ordained women serving in these churches. So in reality, while six individuals may have an issue when the transitional presbytery dissolves (depends on the status of women in the presbyteries these churches will be transferred into), 91% will have no problem. (Interestingly, I just called up the PC(USA) 2007 statistics, and while they break out male/female elders and deacons, they don’t for ministers. But I would bet that the percentage of ministers in the PC(USA) who are women, while less than 50% is more than 9%. I did a count of my presbytery membership and it is 15%. For ministers serving churches it is 22% in my presbytery.)
It is interesting to consider the reasons for this low percentage of women in ordained ministry in these churches. I am not aware of a departure of women from the church as the church departs for the EPC. Maybe there is already a “corporate culture” at these churches that gives them an affinity for the EPC including the lower likelyhood of women in ordained office. Or you could play thought games with the cause and effect: “Because they have few women in leadership they have an affinity for the EPC” or “Because they have an affinity for the EPC they have few women in leadership.” While not losing sight of the fact that these churches are realigning with the EPC for other reasons, the issue of women in ordained leadership, or not in leadership as the case may be, appears to be an associated factor.
But at another level it is an issue. Over the last couple of months I’ve had conversations with two women attending my church about their sense of call to ordained ministry. For both, because of “where they are,” ordained ministry in their present situation is not an option, whether it be denominational membership or seminary attendance. They are still talking to God about whether the call is authentic and if so should they make a change in their situation.
And given time, maybe this will not be an issue with the EPC. I have speculated that with a continued or increased realignment of churches from the PC(USA) to the EPC there can’t but help being a certain “PC(USA)-isation” of the EPC which I expect will include the spreading of women’s ordination under local option, if not the approval of the ordination of women across the denomination. As I frequently say, time will tell.