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Several years ago, I attended a conference designed for women leaders in the church. It was a flashy event with brilliant keynotes and, as expected, I left energized and fired up. I did all the conference things. I waited in line to stalk certain keynotes and then I drove home with my female colleagues in a car filled with hope and estrogen. I’m not sure if it was caffeine or camaraderie but we returned to the office that following week with fresh energy, vision, and ideas.
As with all things hyped up and event driven, the buzz eventually wore off and our new ideas dissipated. As time went on, many of the women I met at that event left their churches and ministries. I’ve been in ministry for twenty years and the litany of leadership anxiety and ache that women carry is still growing.
Even in churches that boldly proclaim support for women leaders, it gets messy. Old habits are hard to break, and organizations do not instantly become amicable to women just because one is suddenly in a senior role. Power dynamics are always at play and the risk of creating a toxic culture is high. Dr. Scot McKnight and Laura Barringer write about these toxins in their book, A Church Called Tov: Forming a Goodness Culture that Resists Abuses of Power and Promotes Healing. Together, they speak about the intersection of power, celebrity, and the church.
Tov is a beautiful image that also models for us how to build goodness cultures that honor and support women.
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