calling all single women
Alright ladies...this is meant to be a forum for discussion on a topic that I have been sorting through for quite some time. WHAT IS A SINGLE WOMAN'S ROLE IN THE CHURCH?
Here are my thoughts. I have discussed this many times with my roomate and have talked in circles for hours with her. My role as it is right now seems to be the "go-to girl". Seeing as how most of the women in our church are either 1. college students 2. wives 3. mothers or 4. career women it leaves me as a person with free time. I enjoy this role as I feel helpful, but in my mind the excuse that I have two jobs still leaves me feeling guilty when I don't help out as much as possible with the church. I'm not saying that other people don't serve, but many just have other responsibilities (i.e. lives of their own). I am therefore left in this in-between sub-culture of non-student, non-married, non-parent people without careers. I enjoyed that sentence because I used as many hyphanated words as I could. It is an odd feeling many times and I have tried to find my niche that helps me feel not so left out but it is very hard to relate.
Many times I feel as though I am missing something required to enjoy this club called "church"(like a husband or a kid). This feeling is not isolated to the church, but in the real world there are other people like me who are in this awkward in-between life stages stage. I just wish I knew where they are in the church....do they exist? Are there young un-married, non-student, non-career adults in the church? Where have they all gone? There were in our youth groups in high school, or our bible studies in college, and then they fall off the face of the earth. Until they have kids and decide that their children should go to church becuase that is what families do. Are we in the church so worried about "keeping up appearances" that we are not real? Are non-Christians intimidated becuase they do not have picture perfect lives and they will not fit in to our sub-culture?
Most of the time I feel as though the mid-American Christian Church still lives in the 1950's where women may go to college if they wish, but never really do anything with their education. I will shamelessly plug Mona Lisa Smile to reference this 1950's ideal. Within the church, women are expected to fulfill their God-given roles of wives and mothers and they are allowed to do ministry within the church if they are working with children, or under the supervision of a man. This may be a psuedo-feminine and product child of the 80's viewpoint...but I believe it's true for most mid-western middle class churches. I know that many of you are somewhat in this same position and I take comfort knowing that I am not alone in my struggle....but drop me a line and tell me if you feel the same tension.
Here are my thoughts. I have discussed this many times with my roomate and have talked in circles for hours with her. My role as it is right now seems to be the "go-to girl". Seeing as how most of the women in our church are either 1. college students 2. wives 3. mothers or 4. career women it leaves me as a person with free time. I enjoy this role as I feel helpful, but in my mind the excuse that I have two jobs still leaves me feeling guilty when I don't help out as much as possible with the church. I'm not saying that other people don't serve, but many just have other responsibilities (i.e. lives of their own). I am therefore left in this in-between sub-culture of non-student, non-married, non-parent people without careers. I enjoyed that sentence because I used as many hyphanated words as I could. It is an odd feeling many times and I have tried to find my niche that helps me feel not so left out but it is very hard to relate.
Many times I feel as though I am missing something required to enjoy this club called "church"(like a husband or a kid). This feeling is not isolated to the church, but in the real world there are other people like me who are in this awkward in-between life stages stage. I just wish I knew where they are in the church....do they exist? Are there young un-married, non-student, non-career adults in the church? Where have they all gone? There were in our youth groups in high school, or our bible studies in college, and then they fall off the face of the earth. Until they have kids and decide that their children should go to church becuase that is what families do. Are we in the church so worried about "keeping up appearances" that we are not real? Are non-Christians intimidated becuase they do not have picture perfect lives and they will not fit in to our sub-culture?
Most of the time I feel as though the mid-American Christian Church still lives in the 1950's where women may go to college if they wish, but never really do anything with their education. I will shamelessly plug Mona Lisa Smile to reference this 1950's ideal. Within the church, women are expected to fulfill their God-given roles of wives and mothers and they are allowed to do ministry within the church if they are working with children, or under the supervision of a man. This may be a psuedo-feminine and product child of the 80's viewpoint...but I believe it's true for most mid-western middle class churches. I know that many of you are somewhat in this same position and I take comfort knowing that I am not alone in my struggle....but drop me a line and tell me if you feel the same tension.
posted by Juliet at
10:14 AM
13 Comments:
This is so true. Even as a college student, I have to wonder where I fit in in the church. I'm 22 years old. I have never had a boyfriend...not because I've never been asked but because the people who've asked were either losers or didn't want the same things I wanted-- and also because I am a terrible combination of picky and unlucky. All of my friends are graduating, but I still have a year left of college...I'm too old to be an undergrad and to young to lead a normal life as a grown-up, and I have no idea where my career is going to go because I want to go into ministry, and as far as I can tell there is no career path for that. Just a matter of dumb luck and networking which we refer to as God's Will. Which leaves me with no clear steps to take except to google "religious non-profit internships" and Wait On The Lord. I have no real life and I spend the spare time I don't have volunteering at the non-profit coffee shop attached to my church, baby-sitting gratis for our College Minister's two little boys so his wife can attend youth meetings, and doing whatever else comes upper-most at church (i.e. church camp, registration for VBS, neighborhood easter egg hunt, halloween alternative party). With no acknowlegement except that of the occasional "thank-you" and the love of those two little boys. (And that's another thing! When did the church develop such a culture of not being able to show their appreciation? All we seem to do is complain.)
Which isn't too terrible a fate, I mean, we in America are rich and lucky and there are people in Mexico and other countries living in slums and building houses on active garbage dumbs where they forage for food; I know this, I've been on all the requisite spring break mission trips. But my point is that there ought to be a place in the church for single people with no clue where their life will go who, honest to goodness, just want to do the right thing and serve God.
And what about if I do get married someday? What then? Is it all about my husband's ministry? Does my calling get a say in how things go? Or does my calling suddenly end and a new calling to be simply my husband's wife begin? Or will we just be Providentially called to do the same thing? And what if we are supposed to be-- but we aren't? And I'm sick of people telling me that "God has a Plan" and that I "just have to have Faith." Those things are true and I know them. But the church never addresses those questions, and that is my frustration. Because they may not seem to be a big deal to every minister or pastor out there, but they are a very real issue to women in the church today, and I really think we need to figure this stuff out.
By the way, I'm not trying to be all anonymous, I just don't have a blog spot account...Hi everyone, my name is Mel.
By
Anonymous, at 12:38 PM
Anonimity! I can say whatever I want and you won't know who to get mad at. Great that is. Unfortunately for my first post here I have very little to offer. It occurs to me that the title "calling all single women" followed by "alright ladies" should have tipped me off that I should wait for the next topic since I don't fit that description so much. However I do partially fit your in-between subculture and have had similar frustrations.
The point about what people looking from the outside into the church see is interesting. For a church in this age to not have women involved in as many levels of leadership as possible is absurd. The logic used to keep this tradition in place is the same used by those who sill believe the sun revolves around the earth and can "find" Biblical justifications for the neccessity of believing that.
As for the "go-to-girl" person with free time and no career, in some respects its a great place to be in, if only there were more company there. Just yesterday I was reading about the absurdity of us believing that we can lay claim to a piece of time as being "ours". Not that when asked, any of us would say that our time is our creation and we can control it, but don't we so often operate with that assumption. We structure our schedules, compartmentalize it, maybe give God a couple hours a week to spend with Him, while spending thousands of hours a year making more and more money to use on things that take up more and more of "our time". We listen to the warnings of the world about "family time", "personal time", etc more then we do God's warnings about loving your neighbor and offering our bodiess and souls as living sacrifices to Him. Its not about feeling guilty for not helping out enough at church because wouldn't that problem go away if more people treated their time as a gift and not something to protect. By "helping out at church" I'm assuming we're talking about volunteering to do things such as tasks which most people don't really want to do but that "need" done. If this is accurate for what alot of single women feel their role is in the church that is a sad commentary.
If anything, the position of single, careerless persons in today's church can one of its biggest blessings, not because of the free time they offer to be eaten up by tasks but because of the Christ-like example they can set to those consumed with careers and misaligned views of whose time they are really spending.
I guess I did have alot to say.
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Anonymous, at 5:42 PM
This is Sarah, Barista-in-training.
I have a kind of different perspective on the single woman in church thing because I'm still in school. I have a lot to say about the subject, but I'll try to keep it focused to what you wrote.
So I think God wants me to be a doctor and thus I am in medical school. I entered undergrad with the intent of eventually going to medical school and became a Christian the summer after my freshman year. So the whole Christian culture thing sort of alarms me at times, and I regularly feel like an outsider. I often function as an anthropologist studying another culture.
While I was in undergrad, I went to this very conservative Baptist church for a few years. (It was this weird phase. God wanted me there, I wasn't sure I wanted to be there, but I learned stuff.) I was one of the only non-Baptist-raised people and definitely the only woman who was getting a college degree that was neither music nor education. My then-pastor, who is very conservative, was suprisingly supportive of my decision. But one of the elders had this sort of bizarre conversation with me once in which he point-blank told me that he thought I should go to do post-grad work in a seminary instead of medical school because I could meet someone to marry there. I told him that I didn't make life decisions based on where the men were. He laughed nervously. I was really mad and wanted to rebuke him as a Christian for thinking that God's will was so automatically bound to marriage for all single people when the Bible OBVIOUSLY does not say this. I think there was something cultural going on there where he was uncomfortable with the idea of a woman being single. Later, my campus minister who had always seemed so equal opportunity before told me that he thought I should consider being a nurse or something like that because it would be difficult for me to marry someone because I would be making more money than most of the available men. Little did he know, that wouldn't be a problem as I've been hunting Donald Trump ever since I first saw The Apprentice. Rarrr!
So I kind of felt, besides my rebellious streak flaring up, that I also didn't fit anywhere in the church if all these people (men, in hindsight) were putting so much emphasis on getting married and fitting in with the rest of the womenfolk.
I was thinking in church today that at least half the women our age are in this place: single with no prospects for being otherwise and not necessarily in their permanent-ish career yet. We might even be the majority. We just aren't talked about so much. There has to be a place for us to serve. For me, my semi-dream is to maybe start doing a clinic in a church basement somewhere every other week, so people who can't afford medical care can be welcomed and get prescriptions written and blood sugar monitored, yadda yadda.
Going back to the post-college singleness itself, I think that we all tend to look at it as between life stages because that's how the American church sees it, but it's really its own stage. There's this marginalizing of singleness that happens in which your life as a Christian woman doesn't really start or isn't complete until you're married. That whole attitude really undervalues all the stuff Paul was talking about when he said, "an unmarried woman or virgin is concerned about the Lord's affairs: Her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and spirit...I am saying this for your own good, not to restrict you, but that you may live in a right way in undivided devotion to the Lord." (1 Cor. 7:34, 36) Obviously Paul is saying that single women are superuseful in serving God and (presumably) serving the Church. Catholicism does a really good job of honoring this by stressing "the vocation of singleness." (My roommate is Catholic (and is definitely the best one I've ever had.))
I think Christian women are out there who both get an education and use it. But if you want to have kids, I think that is always going to change things for the woman more than for the man. And I think it's set up that way. For starters, we're the ones with the uteri and the lactating breasts.
When you say that women in the church are only supposed to work under men and/or with kids, what are the alternatives? Do you think that women should be pastors? Are there any non-pastoral positions that a woman could fill that would not involve children or working under men? I guess my example of running a wee clinic would fall under that category, although I would likely consult the pastor (male) beforehand.
Sorry this is all disorganized. My brain is sort of shot to small pieces. But I can tell you all about chemotherapy drugs. And I can draw little stick figure people in the midst of strange stories to help me remember the details of each drug. That's about all my head is good for these days.
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Anonymous, at 10:15 PM
The votes are in and Sarah wins for the longest comment...but I guess that this topic was more popular than expected. It seems as though most of us are looking for community, recognition, or something of the likes.
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Juliet, at 9:16 AM
Well, I was hoping to put together some long, brilliant, coherent response to this. I think I might eventualy do that. But, for now, it's just not coming together. That's because there are really several questions you addressed. I think the root of the question really is really an individual question that we all deal with, "why is my role in the church." Then ther is the issue of what a woman's role in the church is, which has gotten a lot of play over the years. And, then, there is the issue of singles in the church, which doesn't get addressed very much.
You observation of "missing something required to enjoy this club called 'church'(like a husband or a kid)" was right on. I have watched as people have gotten married and have been treated differently within the church. I have been passed over for ministry positions due to my singleness. It's ironic that this particular lifestyle (single, mid-to-late twenties) is idealized in the meadia (ie Friends and similar shows) but not so much in reality, and definately not in the church. Singleness is something to be cured. We have a single friend, we need to set them up. We are pittied for our singleness.
There is a definate "club" mentality. Couples like to do couple things. Nobody wants a thrid wheel around. And married people are clearly more mature and thus more qualified for various roles.
I think singles ministries don't really work because they do tend to look at singleness as a disease that needs to be cured rather than a cool time to hang out and as a time of opportunity. Seriously . . . who goes to a church singles mixer not trying to get hooked up while you are there.
I've got more thoughts, but none are coherent. I would say this . . . a single woman's role in the church is what it would be if she were married, carrer, or whatever. Your role is defined by your spiritual gifts and ablilites, not by your marital status.
So yeah, I'm sure that wasn't helpful.
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Unknown, at 11:05 AM
Hey Juliet... I've been chewing on your blog for awhile now. I read it before I went to camp, but didn't have the time to think about how I wanted to respond. I feel as if I'm in somewhat of a different ball game than you. But let me start with where I think we're in the same game. I often feel a part of the non-married, non-parent, non-career club. (I know, I know, I have a job, a career but it's at a church, and I feel like that's a lot different than being in the career world...)
Every time I turn around, someone in either a sermon, or during staff meetings, or just in casual conversation is talking about being married or having kids. Today is a prime example for me. We had been in our staff meeting for about 2 hours when Chuck says that we're going to have a 5 minute break and then we're going to discuss a "staff retreat". And I think to myself as I'm leaving the room, "a staff retreat... huh, I've been in churches that do that, but haven't ever been to one myself." Following our break, one of our staff members procedes to talk about this idea of a staff/spouse retreat (aka marriage enrichment). There were 2 singles in the room and I was just waiting to hear what they would say to us. But the only thing I heard was one person who made this comment, "So I guess you guys could go up with us and cook for us." Yeah right! Anyways, it turned out to be a 30 minute long discussion of which I could have used to go through my phone messages or emails from the previous week. (Ok, I think I'm finished venting about that.) So anyways, I do understand those feelings of being "out of the club."
But my situation is a litle different because I work at the church. So where do I serve? In the children's ministry... b/c I'm the children's minister! So... I often feel out of the "club" since I spend a lot of my time with kids and families!
But I think if it weren't for Fuel, a college age/20 somethings ministry, I would probably feel stuck in a transition period right with you. But this ministry has been such a blessing to me. I've connected with other people in this very same stage of life as me. And we do tons of stuff together. We get together for supper, play recreational sports together, hang out... And we do it together! If it weren't for this ministry and all the friends I've met there, I would feel very alone in this stage of life. But instead, I love it. I am having such a blast that I can't imagine my life any different right now. It's just so much fun!
But I will say, that I have been wrestling with an interesting idea about women in ministry... and hopefully in the near future can clarify my thoughts well enough to post on my blog. So keep watching for it. And sorry this comment was so long! :)
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Anonymous, at 6:18 PM
I find it ironic that while venting about our frustrations of feeling "left-out" we have found a community of Christian people all in the same position. We have all expressed the same issues. Now I feel heard and understood, and verified that I'm not crazy. There goes the counselor in me again...sorry guys, enough psycho-babble for one day.
But seriously, we are not the only ones that feel left out. In a breif conversation with our senior minister...he reminded me that at our church married with kids is the exception, not the rule. Sure there are different churches with different focuses and different ministries to be involved in...but the bottom line is that our position should not dictate our "usefulness." We are at this position in life for a reason, whether we like or not is another issue. God has placed us at a point to be used. If there is one thing that I know from the Bible is that God uses people in unique situations to accomplish amazing things. Perhaps we will be a part of something amazing. Perhaps we won't. But being in a position of service no matter our relationship or professional positions is vital.
Sometimes I think....why am I not a preacher?
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Juliet, at 8:26 AM
You (hopefully jokingly) say: Sometimes I think....why am I not a preacher?
Well, that is because you're a woman. You see, Biblical examples of women in leadership positions in the church occur when there is a lack of capable men willing and able to assume such roles.
I probably sound far too conservative for your taste (or that of most modern women), but the idea is Biblically proven.
As for my other thoughts on women in the church, I do think that the contemporary church is at a loss for where to place us (not just you as in the "in between career and education" woman, but women of all sorts...career, family, younger, etc.). There is a depressing tendency to lump them together in women's ministries and Bible studies specifically for women. And while such gatherings are useful upon occasion, the church should not solely reach out to women in such an exclusive manner. By doing so, I believe that the church limits the contributions of women as well as negates any knowledge and experience they may reap/share with the men of the church.
And as for your question of where the young unmarried, non-career, non-student adults are in the church, well...you've excluded way over the majority. Sure there are still people "figuring out what they want to do with their lives," but don't expect them to be in droves. Although you claim to be looking for your spot, it appears that you have created your niche quite well.
And yes, the Mid-American evangelical Christian church does tend to de-emphasize the contribution a woman can make on society as a whole...well, that is, except for having kids and staying at home. Although a family is indeed important, staying at home is hardly everything a woman can and should do. Too often do women feel the pressure of the church to family, family, family.
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Anonymous, at 1:46 PM
wow...that last comment really got to me. first you claim (I hope in a sarcastic manner) that there should be no opportunities for women to be involved in leadership positions in the church....and then you complain how women are limited within the church (i.e. women's ministry, etc.).
The first issue I will address honestly and very directly. I believe that there should be every opportunity for women to be involved within the leadership of a and "the" church. It is clear in the Bible that women have led within the church multiple times. i go to a church with a male preacher and male elders...but there are women involved in every aspect of this church and a pastor who is both interested in seeing women in leadership as well as listening to their imput. i completely believe that women can and should be an integral part of the church- even as preachers!
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Juliet, at 4:23 PM
It's quite simple, really. I didn't clarify myself. You mentioned specifically being a "preacher." It's not a role women should have within the Biblical Christian church. And you're right; women DID assume roles of leadership within both the Old and New Testament Churches. However, they never took the role of "preacher" or "elder" without the absence of a capable male leader to fill such an intergral position. I never meant to imply that women could not be leaders within certain boundaries. However, men should be the ones who are the senior ministers, preachers, elders, etc.
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Anonymous, at 1:23 PM
i'm not done yet. i want to be very careful with this topic of stay-at-home motherhood. i think that many single women or married without kids women can attack a stay at home mother as a cop-out. that could never be true. motherhood (especially when you are doing it 24-7) is one of the most draining and fulfilling jobs on the planet.
but i do believe that the church can often be a pressure cooker for people to reproduce.
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Juliet, at 2:34 PM
Well...I disagree with you. I know women preachers who are phenominal and clearly blessed by God.
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Juliet, at 2:38 PM
You say "i'm not done yet. i want to be very careful with this topic of stay-at-home motherhood. i think that many single women or married without kids women can attack a stay at home mother as a cop-out. that could never be true. motherhood (especially when you are doing it 24-7) is one of the most draining and fulfilling jobs on the planet."
Am I attacking a stay-at-home mom? No, not at all. However, I feel that the Christian church and the stay-at-home moms within also do the opposite and comdemn career women or women who blessedly balance a career and children. They often criticize women who also enjoy (and were given by God) priorites along with family. Women are often criticized for not choosing to have children. Or if they balance a career and family, the stay-at-home mothers of the church comdemn them as not putting family as a sole priority (despite God giving them both).
As for women preachers, believe as you wish. However, the Bible (neither Old nor New Testaments) does not afford women such positions to women within the church. I know many women who are Godly and inspired. However, such inspirations and gifts should be put to use in the many other ministries a proper Christian church affords women (outside the pulpit).
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Anonymous, at 4:39 PM
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