WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP – Page 2 – Free Methodist Conversations

WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP

EVANGELICAL, WESLEYAN, EGALITARIAN

November 1, 2018 By

Our Wesleyan heritage has been supportive of women in leadership throughout our tradition. Though not always lived out, here is a good article explaining this history. Written by Craig L. Adams you can read the entire article here.

In part he says:

“I guess it is a paradigm shift for a lot of people but, the fact is that the Methodist acceptance of women in ministry was well ahead of the modern, secular feminist movement — and is, in that sense, unrelated to it! The more radical, Bible-thumping, revivalistic branches of the Wesleyan movement accepted the idea of women in ministry long before the official acceptance of this by the United Methodist Church.

As proof I offer this passage from Binney’s Theological Compend Improved (1874): “Woman’s Sphere in the Church.”

This early egalitarian attitude toward gender & women in ministry is characteristic of the Wesleyan tradition and should be seen as part of the fruit of a progressive-revelation perspective on the Scriptures. The rejection of the practice of slavery by John Wesley and the earliest Methodists is another.

There is really a difference in how Scripture functions in Wesleyan theology as contrasted with other perspectives.

In a recent article on the Church of the Nazarene’s Holiness Today site, Al Truesdale (emeritus professor of philosophy of religion and Christian ethics at Nazarene Theological Seminary) writes about “Why Wesleyans Aren’t Fundamentalists.” He says that the fundamentalist approach is to see the content Scripture’s revelation as divinely revealed information: thus,

THE DANGER OF CIVILITY

August 28, 2018 By dwayman

Rev. Dr. Laura J. Hunt:

One of the most sobering experiences I have had recently was when I attended an African-American Conference and after a sharing session, when people had been invited to tell their stories of being marginalized, two different people felt the need to come to my husband and I (who are both white and newcomers to the group) to make sure that we understood that they were not angry black people. This seemed worse than any of stories we heard that day. It was direct evidence of how often white people have failed to listen, failed to have compassion, and have chosen to blame the survivors instead.

As a woman in ministry, I recognize that our frustrations, too, are often dismissed if they are not packaged in ways leadership (particularly but not exclusively male leadership) finds appropriate. I do believe that each of us is responsible for handling our anger in a godly way. But it is also important to listen to people delivering news we don’t want to hear, even if they are, or we perceive them to be, angry. In this video, Christena Cleveland does an admirable job of pointing out this phenomenon, relevant for both race and gender discussions, although she frames it primarily in the context of race.

Christena Cleveland, PhD, is a social psychologist, public theologian, author and professor. She is an Associate Professor of the Practice of Organizational Studies at Duke University’s Divinity School and the author of Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces that Keep Us Apart.

WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP

FEMALE CEO’s ONLY 5% and DECLINING

August 7, 2018 By dwayman

Women continue to be kept from top leadership even in the Fortune 500 Companies where a woman broke through the glass ceiling and became CEO. Here is an article on this.

It says in part:

“By Jeff Green

Of the at least 24 female chief executive officers of S&P 500 companies who’ve stepped down since 2009, all but three have been replaced by a man, according to an analysis of data on executive departures compiled quarterly by recruiter Spencer Stuart. That includes PepsiCo Inc. CEO Indra Nooyi, who announced Monday that she’ll leave the post in October, and at least four other women this year.

The largest companies have struggled to elevate women, who hold only about 5 percent of CEO positions. Progress has stalled even amid the revelations of harassment or other misconduct brought to light by the #MeToo movement and pressure from investors such as State Street Corp. and BlackRock Inc. to get boards to add diversity.

“Despite the advances that females have made over the last 10 years, and the big push that’s going on to get them into executive positions, if you look at the talent pool of available individuals, it’s going to be mostly men,” said Tom Flannery, who leads the global chief executive board services practice at Boyden, an executive recruiter. “Just from a pure odds standpoint, most of the time, when a CEO is replaced,

WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP

LIVED EXPERIENCE of FEMALE FREE METHODIST PASTORS

April 5, 2018 By

The Study Commission on Doctrine commissioned the creation of this film in order to allow all of us to experience the struggles of female pastors. Though each of the many women who shepherd our churches, including the five pastors in this film, would gladly give moving stories of God’s grace within their ministries, the fact is that it is difficult for our women. Just as in other professions where women experience bias due to the curse of patriarchy explained in Genesis 3:16, this same result of the fall permeates the very church God intended to be His instrument of healing the effects of sin.

Free Methodists have clearly established our conviction that in the church there is no distinction between male and female and that both are gifted to shepherd the church, we have found that we need to speak to the heart as well as the mind. When in the late 1800’s our founder, B.T. Roberts wrote the book on Ordaining Women (also in Spanish) and gave a clear explanation looking at Scripture, Tradition and Reason, he sadly found that the church was not ready to follow his leadership. It was not until the middle of the 20th century that the church he founded joined him in this vision given by God and began ordaining women. But now in the 21st century we still make it hard on the women God has called. Perhaps we do it in more subtle ways now such that we do not forbid them from being ordained,

WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP

IMPLICIT GENDER BIASES IN BUSINESS

February 10, 2018 By dwayman

In an article exploring implicit gender bias, the Harvard Business Review explored the reality of this in the business world: The article explains:

“Last year, Harvard Business Review investigated a company where women comprise only 20% of senior roles. Their goal was to find out whether differences in gender behavior explained promotion disparities. The researchers perused communication exchanges and data coming from sociometric badges that recorded interactions between employees. They hypothesized that explicit preferences such as women having fewer mentors or less facetime with managers would account for discrepancies. But as they analyzed their data, they found men and women’s work patterns and performances were indistinguishable. And yet women weren’t advancing whereas men were. What gives?

It comes down to implicit biases, the researchers concluded, which are our unconscious tendencies to favor one thing over another. Often, these mental shortcuts are morally neutral, like linking “doctor” and “nurse” and “hospital.” But connect “doctor” to “he” and “nurse” to “she,” and these associations become loaded, and can, as others have observed, have oppressive consequences.

This reality helps explain why most organizations struggle to close gender gaps: It’s not enough for women to compete and show they’re capable. Implicit attitudes must change, too. But how? Here’s where to begin:

Know what gender bias looks like

A preeminent legal scholar identifies two prominent forms of workplace bias against women:

First,

WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP

SECOND GENERATION GENDER BIAS

February 2, 2018 By dwayman

When prejudice moves into the second generation, it becomes more subtle and in many ways more powerful. Stephanie Dyrness Lobdell is a Nazarene pastor who writes a thoughtful and important article revealing this to us.

“In generations past, it was easy to identify explicit structures and policies that hindered women from obtaining and succeeding in pastoral roles, but in many cases, those overt barriers have been eliminated. Even so, the number of female pastors hasn’t shifted much. According to Hartford Institute for Religion Research, only 12 percent of congregations in the United States have female lead pastors, and, in evangelical churches, that number drops to 9 percent. If so many barriers have been eliminated, why haven’t the number of women and men in lead pastorates and denominational leadership positions equalized?

Researchers Herminia Ibarra, Robin J. Ely, and Deborah M. Kolb asked the same questions about women in the secular work place, and determined there was undoubtedly something in the water—something that went deeper than the overt barriers of years gone by. They named this experience Second-Generation Gender Bias, concluding that “second-generation bias erects powerful but subtle and often invisible barriers for women that arise from cultural assumptions and organizational structures, practices, and patterns of interaction that inadvertently benefit men while putting women at a disadvantage.”

Good Intentions Are Not Enough

Let’s be clear. We’re not calling out men for evil intent and taking names.

WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP

W.E.L.L. – WOMEN. EQUAL. LEADING. LEARNING

September 18, 2017 By

The Free Methodist Church in Southern California has an initiative led by a group of three excellent leaders: Rev. Colleen Hurley-Bates, Rev. Cheri Coleman, Lillian Johnson They titled the initiative W.E.L.L. You can find their work here.

They explain:

Core to our freedoms within the Free Methodist Church is the freedom for women to participate fully in the life, ministry and governance of the church as called and gifted by God. We want to invite you to be part of the conversation as we discuss how women are currently serving within the life and leadership of the FMC in Southern California and identify new opportunities moving forward.

At a recent meeting they had an excellent presentation by Dr. Bernice Ledbetter of Pepperdine University. This audio presentation is presented here to provide recent research substantiating what many of us are experiencing: Women and Men working together make better decisions and are more effective.

W.E.L.L. Meeting 9/10/17

Keynote by Dr. Bernice Ledbetter, EdD, Director, Center for Women in Leadership.

Keynote Message (Audio / M4A, 48.1MB)

WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP

NO JUSTICE, NO VALUE FOR WOMEN

July 9, 2017 By dwayman

Throughout history and throughout the world the subjugation of women has been a reality. In this article in the New York Times the situation in Afghanistan is explained as “the violence had its roots in tribal feuds and the pervasive practice of marrying off girls at a very young age for large dowries.” The curse on women is never more prevalent than when the culture does not value equality and justice for all – women, poor, minorities, and other “least of these” among us.

In part the article says:

“If Afghanistan is one of the worst places to be a woman, then Ghor, a province so lawless that people often wonder if there is a government there at all, may be the country’s capital of gender-based violence and abuse. Week after week there are reports of women abused or killed in Ghor by men who never face justice.

“There have been 118 registered cases of violence against women in Ghor in the past year, and those are only cases that have been reported,” said Fawzia Koofi, head of the women’s rights commission in the Afghan Parliament, who recently visited Ghor to raise awareness about the lack of justice. “And not a single suspect in these 118 cases has been arrested.”

“There is no value for women there,” Ms. Koofi added. “It is as if she deserves to die.”

With a population of over 700,000 and located in west-central Afghanistan,

WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP

DISHONORING WOMEN DOCTORS

June 25, 2017 By dwayman

Language is important. In this article studies were done and found that female doctors are often introduced by their first names while male doctors receive the title they have both earned of “Dr.”

The question this raises is whether in the church we also introduce our female pastors as “Pastor” or only use their first name. The result of such continual referencing is noted in the article as dishonoring. For the entire article click here.

The article reads in part:

“As sociologists, we know language is very powerful; it both reflects larger social meanings and patterns and can directly contribute to them, in many cases perpetuating social inequality,” said Allison, who studies gender equality.

“The words we use can shape how people feel about themselves and others, how they interact and how they make decisions about the distribution of rights and resources,” she said….

“Women don’t tend to be thought of as leaders. They’re thought of as worker bees and the people who work well together,” said Templeton, immediate past president of the American Medical Women’s Association. “Talking to us is no different than talking to their wives or daughters at home. They just assume, somehow, that they don’t warrant the same respect as the men do,” she said….

Anupam Jena, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School, said male introducers could be using first names because they felt that “the work done by female colleagues is somehow different than the work done by male colleagues.”

“Subconsciously they are not equating the stature of female speakers to be the same as male speakers,” he said.

WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP

FREE METHODIST WOMEN LEADERS BRING UNIQUE ABILITIES

May 19, 2017 By

By Dr. Denny Wayman, Lead Superintendent of the FMCSC.

At the 2017 Annual Conference in Southern California I presented the findings of an informal study I made asking Free Methodist Women Leaders what it is that women bring to the leadership position that is unique. These are my findings and presentation:

In Genesis we are told that the curse of the fall is such that women have been subjected to men (Gen. 3:16) – AND – it is the Gospel message that this subjugation will be so no more within the Kingdom of God (Matt. 20:25-26) This imperative given to us by our Lord involves both humble diligence toward our own personal prejudices and a consistent commitment toward our church systems such that our sisters are empowered and encouraged to fulfill their God-given purposes.

This year we decided as your superintendents to not divide into workshops as though some of us are interested in missions, and some in leadership, and some in multiethnic ministry, and some in empowering women. All of these five values we all share equally. They define us as Free Methodists!

It has been said that the 21st century is the century designed for the Methodist Message. Our commitment to relationships allows the postmodern world to be engaged in conversations that reach beneath the resistance to religion into direct relationships with God.

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Free Methodist Conversations

EVANGELICAL, WESLEYAN, EGALITARIAN

THE DANGER OF CIVILITY

FEMALE CEO’s ONLY 5% and DECLINING

LIVED EXPERIENCE of FEMALE FREE METHODIST PASTORS

IMPLICIT GENDER BIASES IN BUSINESS

SECOND GENERATION GENDER BIAS

W.E.L.L. – WOMEN. EQUAL. LEADING. LEARNING

NO JUSTICE, NO VALUE FOR WOMEN

DISHONORING WOMEN DOCTORS

FREE METHODIST WOMEN LEADERS BRING UNIQUE ABILITIES

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