My little rant about churches

My grandfather was, for the last sixteen years of my life, a pastor in my local church and it was amazing to have him be such an amazing role model for me in the early and more recent stages of my life. He is now recently retired and there is a new intern pastor that ended up taking the role of preaching on Sunday named Mike Brown. The reason I am giving a backstory is because I want my viewers to know that I truly do love most things about my church and I enjoy being there with my family when I can, however there are some things that I have recently came to realize from a male perspective, about the lack of equality between men and women in mine and many other churches across the world.

I recently did some digging and found out that in the 104 years of the church being founded, there has not been a single female pastor in that time. Females are not seen as leaders in the churches, but more as people who serve smaller roles. My grandmother and mother for example, are in charge of the nursery, tithing money, and for some part of the youth group. Even though these are vital roles in any church, they aren’t seen as a sort of leadership position. I also noticed that the women are usually the ones that sing in the choir which is nice but is also a sort of role position. When it comes to communion and tithing, the Deacons are what you would pretty much call second in command in the church, and they too are all male dominated in not just mine, but churches all around the world. Their jobs are to serve as role models while holding their selves to a standard for the people of the church to see and recognize. They give out the communion, say prayers, take the money, and meet and greet people coming or leaving the church. All of our deacons are great men of principle, but it’s just concerning to me that none of them are women.

One statistic that I saw in my research that was eye opening from The Hartford Institute for Religion Research, stated that “only twelve percent of pastors in America were females.” So, eighty eight percent of males lead their churches which is just absolutely absurd to me. I could maybe understand if it were a seventy thirty split, but eighty-eight is such a huge number. The question that now needs to be addressed is why? Women are very outspoken when it comes to the church setting and are extremely insightful in speaking and talking about Christ at least from my experience, so I don`t understand why there aren’t more female pastors. I would love the opportunity to hear a sermon from a female’s perspective and I think that they would do an incredible job of it.

When I go home for our thanksgiving break, I intend to go back to church and pick up on some more of the cues that show how women are treated as less than equal. I have always enjoyed and loved going to church but like I said before, recently I have noticed just how male dominated the churches truly are. I love everything about my experiences in the ministry and they have shaped me to become the man I am today, but the point I want to really drive home is the fact that there needs to be change. I know that it can`t be fixed all at once, but talking and bringing these things up is a good first step.