The State of Ministry to Women Today

Kelley >> Welcome to Beyond Ordinary Women Ministries. I am Kelley Mathews, your host today. And with me I have Becky Loyd. Becky is with Lifeway, but I feel like you’ve had a new title change here recently. Can you give me a sense of what you’re doing now?

Becky >> Yes, I have had a new title change, but I am acting as my previous title as the director of Lifeway Women. So I have actually been at Lifeway for 24 years, if you can believe it. I worked a lot my time in our kids ministry area until about 2010. And then I grew up and graduated to work with adult and women’s ministries.

And just in the past few months, I don’t know if this is growing up or I don’t know exactly what this is, but I am working on our really strategic planning for all of Lifeway. So working across all of our different ministry areas and making sure we’re aligned going in the same direction to serve church leaders.

It’s interesting, I was called to ministry. My dad was a Minister of Music. So ministry is in my blood and when I was about to kind of enter the workforce, I had a moment where it was, should I go to seminary? And I applied and did all the things and then I ended up in business school.

And so I’ve been doing. You hate to call it the business of ministry but that’s really the gifting that God gave me. And so I have been working at Lifeway serving church leaders and churches for the last 24 years. And it’s been the time of my life. I love it.

Kelley >> Fantastic. And no one at a business like that would want to ignore such talent on the business end of things because it’s certainly needed. So that’s awesome.

So we heard of you because of your time as director of the women’s ministry there, and there is a survey that was put out. Before I go there, I understand you’re an LSU tigers fan?

Becky >> Well, yes, I did get my undergrad and graduate degree from LSU. Go Tigers.

Kelley >> Well, go Tigers. Same here. So we have a lot in common already just like that.

Becky >> Woo-hoo!

Kelley >> I know. I love it. Couldn’t resist. Sorry.

But also, I have been in the Baptist world in ministry and women’s ministry. And so I feel like this connection is pretty natural here. And I was very interested to see the report that came out just last year on the state of women or the state of ministry to women. So let’s talk a little bit about that and what caused you and your team to put it out.

Becky >> Yeah, it’s really interesting. Lifeway is an entity that serves all parts of the local church – worship ministry, kids ministry. We serve many, many different parts. And as a person who my job is really to advocate for the work that we are doing for women at Lifeway, I found myself saying over and over again, women are underrepresented on the church staff.

I think I said it so many times that the guys just kind of rolled their eyes. When I’m in a meeting and my guys don’t forget, women are really underrepresented on church staff.

Kelley >> It feels really obvious.

Becky >> It does, when you’re a woman. It’s not as obvious, though, when a pastor or a leader is thinking about the entire church. It may not be. Sometimes it’s not as obvious to them. And so I was a broken record. And so that’s my self-serving reason for actually doing this.
Of course, we do leadership events for women, Bible studies for women, lots of things. And as we’ve talked to women either me or the incredible women who are on our team, we see that there are women who are volunteering their time to lead a ministry in their church. We see that they are paying out of their own pocket in order to have development opportunities for themselves.

So we started looking also, is there anything out there that helps to show what is actually happening in women’s ministry? Because there are also some, I wouldn’t say rumors, but there are some things that some people believe about what happens in ministry to women. Some people think it’s only brunches and baby showers and it’s so much more than brunches and baby showers.

Kelley >> Right. Sure.

How broad did it go? How many people participated?

Becky >> Absolutely. And some of women’s ministry is brunches and baby showers. But that is definitely not what we see in the local church and so I wanted to do that. So I started a conversation with Scott McCollum, who leads our research area. And he looked around. We did not find anything like it.

So we said, let’s do it. Let’s do this. Of course, this also happened as we’re coming out of COVID. And the church is just trying to figure out what is post-COVID Ministry look like.

Kelley >> Yeah.

Becky >> And we’re also at where there’s kind of a generational divide happening where you’ve got ministry leaders who have been leading for a long time, who are about to potentially retire and leave ministry and there may be a leadership vacuum when they when they retire. And so you know, we see a need to how do we help get them to invest in the younger generation? How do we get a younger generation to want to be invested in order to develop a leadership cycle that continues to just uplift women? So as we saw all those needs we wanted to get a baseline of what we saw was going on out there.

I’m going to say one more thing. There’s a lot of conversation about women in ministry in the culture, in the Christian subculture that we live in. And there’s a lot of opinions. There’s a lot of conversation. And I wanted us to provide something very positive, very tangible. That was data driven that does offer more conversation about what opportunities there are for ministry to women. And so that’s another reason that I wanted for us to get this done.

Kelley >> Well, it’s very thorough in the sense of the questions that were asked. And then the types of people who you asked to participate. So you have leaders participating from their perspective, and you have women in the pews so to speak also participating. So what were some of the positives that came out of this survey?

Becky >> Yeah, so you always want the things that you’re trying to accomplish to be the things that the women want to happen. So we surveyed both women who are part of the women’s ministry at a local church and women who are leading.

One of the top things, of course, women who are leading in the church want to disciple women, help them grow closer to God but that’s also what women who are coming to church want. They want to develop a better relationship with God.

So the fact that the objective that we’re trying to accomplish plus what the women want when they are participating in women’s ministry match, that was such a good I was thrilled that we saw that that was there. We ask a question what does women’s ministry bring to your church that it would not have without women’s ministry.

Another thing we saw was generational connections. When a church’s small group ministry or Sunday school ministry is age and stage, you have the women who don’t have a chance to connect. And so many times the women’s ministry setting or ministry to women, whatever it is, that’s the place where older women have the opportunity to make connections with younger women and vice versa. And that’s where you really can get life on life ministry discipleship happening. That again, depending on the church, is the way they do groups that may not just be a natural outcome.

Kelley >> Yeah. So a mixed generation community. And did you see that both leaders and members, that was one of their desires?

Becky >> Yes, for sure. That’s one of the things that was brought up that women have more relationships with more women in the church and more multigenerational relationships because of woman’s ministry. And of course, connecting women to each other keeps them in the church.

Kelley >> True. True. And there’s so much for youngers to learn from olders and vice versa. Beyond Ordinary Women, one of our missions here is to provide resources that, like this whole conversation is a resource for leaders. So knowing a) that the survey is out there and we’ll put a link to it in our show notes, that’s helpful.

But also some of what you’re bringing out of it, the value of the intergenerational, the value of discipleship, not only is that something that they need, but it’s something apparently that women are looking for. So that’s definitely great news to hear.

Becky >> For sure.

Kelley >> Okay. Any other positives that really jump out at you? I mean, we can go through the whole thing, but we won’t.

Becky >> Yes, we won’t. The other thing that I really pulled out is that women do feel valued in their churches. There’s, again, a lot of conversation that might make you think otherwise, but we did find that women do feel valued by their churches. And I think we’ll probably get to some of the things, there is a little bit of room for improvement, though, in women being equipped in their churches and finding ways to serve.

So I would say the really positive thing and I think 97% of women agree that they are valued. They feel valued in the church that they attend, and that’s a really great thing.

Kelley >> Did the questions ask them in what way? Or ask them to elaborate on what do they mean by valued.

Becky >> We did not. But we did asked, do you feel valued? Do you feel equipped? And then do you feel like you have a place for service? And we did see a difference.

Kelley >> Okay.

Becky >> There are more women who feel valued than feel that the church is equipping them. And then there are more that feel equipped. I can go to my little cheat sheet and look at the numbers.

Kelley >> Okay.

Becky >> Yeah, but you’ll see that in the research. There is some work to do, I would say, even though a majority still do feel equipped.

Kelley >> Sure.

Becky >> And have a place to serve. I do think that is a place you want to mobilize women to reach other women. You want them to have all the equipping they need to lead well. You want them to have a place in the church where they serve because that’s again, how women get connected. Women who aren’t serving in a church are more likely to leave.

And of course, there are times in a woman’s life when she has littles. I’m just making generalizations here.

Kelley >> There are seasons. Right.

Becky >> Yeah, these are generalizations. But most women, if they’re not serving in a church, it’s really easy for them to be like, well, I guess I just can’t.

Kelley >> There’s no place for me.

Becky >> Yeah.

Kelley >> Oh, absolutely. Yes. The more integrated you are in the life of the church, and that will always include serving, the more you feel connected and it’s your family, that kind of thing.

Becky >> 100%.

Kelley >> Let’s go back to the equipping part, because on one hand, the survey says that leaders want to disciple and the women are saying we want discipleship, and yet this equipping level is lower than you’d like to see.

Becky >> Yeah.

Kelley >> This may be more, not a matter of the survey, but your experience. Are there ideas percolating or from your experience of what can we do to improve that number?

Becky >> Yeah. Well, I’m biased because I’m at a place that provides resources for women to be in groups. But I think women being in groups is probably one of the best places for discipleship to happen. In groups with a resource, whether it be a woman at the church who is able to teach and guide through a discussion on a passage of Scripture, whether they use a Bible study, we’d love for women to use any of the Bible studies that we provide.

There are many other opportunities. But getting women together to get into God’s Word and then to talk about their lives, that to me is what begins relationships. It might be there’s a leader and five women or it might be two women or it might be a one on one relationship that starts just from the proximity.

When you’re going to a group every week and you see the same women that proximity hopefully breeds friendship, which should breed a deeper connection which hopefully will breathe life on life just ministry and discipleship. That’s what we want.

Kelley >> Some of that’s going to depend on the content, right? Like where women get into groups or men get into groups you can have relationship, you can have gossip, you can have a lot of things that aren’t growing in the Lord, so you’re definitely going to need some content to keep things centered.

And we’re back to the word equipping, growing someone not only in their love for the Lord, but knowledge of how to handle the Bible, how to teach, how to mentor. How do I interpret the Scripture? Where are my resources? How do I find them? Those sorts of things.

Becky >> Yeah. For many women, they honestly don’t see themselves as somebody who could lead or could step up. I even feel that sometimes in my own circles when I’m leading a small group like, oh, am I really equipped to do this? And it’s my job. But you feel a little bit of that.

But giving women confidence and competence, that’s right in the center of what we want to do at Lifeway is provide that content that helps them to not just be competent, but also confident. And it takes a spiritually mature woman to say, I’m not ready for this or I am ready for this. It also takes women speaking into other women and saying, you are ready for this and you just need to try it.

Let’s do it together. Let’s lead this group together and see what happens. And then the next time you can lead it, I’m going to be gone. You can lead it by yourself. And just doing that, developing leaders in that way and helping women see they can lead, they can mentor, they can do all these things and they don’t have to be perfect at it.

Kelley >> Sure.

Becky >> Their availability, the Lord will use for his glory.

Kelley >> Let’s kind of riff on that. One of the negatives that came out of the survey was the number of women ministry leaders who are volunteer versus paid.

Becky >> Yeah.

Kelley >> It’s horrible. I’ll own that opinion. And partially this is absolutely no surprise because I come out of a church where just two months ago we finally hired a woman to take over a 2500 member church to take over the women’s ministry that I and a friend had been co-leading on a volunteer basis for years and pushing and pushing for a staff member.

And you do talk about that, I believe, in some of the writings that you guys have put out around this survey. What are the disadvantages of a volunteer woman taking on a ministry to half the church?

Becky >> Yeah. It is over half the church, 51%. I made the statisticians look it up – are we sure it’s 51%? And they did. 51% of people in the church are women. And so when you have an under-representation of a woman on a church staff now don’t hear me advocating that a woman is going to be an elder or pastor but there needs to be a woman at the table.

When there are decisions being made about programming at church, when there’s decisions being made about even church strategy, I would argue church strategy then without a woman at the table you don’t have all of the church represented. Having women at the table changes the conversation because a man can’t live a woman’s experience just like a woman can’t live a man’s experience.

And we have to come together as brothers and sisters to meet the needs of brothers and sisters in the body of Christ. So yeah, it’s very disappointing to me. It was very disappointing. Of course, anecdotally, we knew it because we had seen it in all the women who we’ve had come to leadership training. But it was shocking to actually get the number.

I don’t think this is in the report but I had our statisticians do a little bit of digging based on church size. And so I want to refer to this. I have it pulled up. We do know that in as we’re looking at church size, that even in churches 500 plus only 29% of women’s ministry leaders are full time paid staff.

So I looked at those numbers and I thought, well, maybe it’s just that we have I mean, if you look at churches in America, there are a lot of small churches. There are a lot of churches at a hundred or under. I thought so maybe that is skewing this number. So we looked at it again.

We did not release this. This is for my own knowledge. I asked them to do this. But we found that when you get to churches that are 250 to 499, 16% of women are part time paid staff and 14% full time paid staff. So the larger the churches, the more likely they are to have somebody on staff. But they’re still sorely under-represented.

Kelley >> Yeah.

Becky >> A couple of things that come out of that from what I’ve seen, it takes money to do ministry. You have to invest. Invest means investing in people to lead a ministry, investing in resources. It may be investing in events. So without a woman on the staff, she’s not in any kind of meeting where the plans are being made.

She’s also not being developed as a leader because a pastor is going to develop the ministry leaders who are under him. He is going to develop his staff. If there’s a volunteer or a part time staff member, there’s a good chance that she’s not being developed by anyone because she’s not part of any kind of staff meeting where he does leadership lessons or being invested in if there’s no other woman on staff who’s investing in her.

To me, the things are having more women be able to advocate for the women in their church to a leadership team and also just getting invested in getting equipped themselves so that they learn to be better leaders. The church needs to work together. We want churches to work together to accomplish kingdom ministry.

And so if the women’s ministry is out here, led by a volunteer, there’s no way to know is what you’re doing somehow impacting the church’s ministry? They could be holding a completely different direction.

Kelley >> Right.

Becky >> This is the caveat that I say with that. If what they’re doing is working, don’t stop it, learn from it.

I would say this to a pastor, if you feel like your women’s ministry is going in a different direction than the church is then the answer would not be to just stop what they’re doing. It would be okay, what’s happening here that we can learn from? How do we get this ministry that’s happening to also connect to our kids ministry, connect to the ministry that we’re doing for men?

Whether or not you have an official men’s ministry or not, what do we do? What are we doing to get these people into serving at the church or into just making sure that they’re in a maybe they’re in a women’s ministry group, but there’s a small group or Sunday school class we need to make sure you’re connected to.

So women’s ministry needs to be a part of the strategy of the church, not just out here in the periphery.

Kelley >> Agreed.

Becky >> But if it’s working, take a look at why it’s working.

Kelley >> Yeah. So a lot of what you’re saying resonates from my own personal experience in the two churches I’ve spent most time in. One was really small and everybody was a volunteer except the head pastor and the worship. And so they eventually made room for two part timers, including me at a minimal, but we were very small, so even that was a sacrifice.

Large church, it’s gone through many iterations over the years, but now with our four years of volunteering, we came to some of the same conclusions that your budget is a reflection of your priorities. And if you year after year say no to women, we see that, we feel that. And then at the same time, you’re either taking advantage of a volunteer who’s in it for the long haul, or you have no idea what’s going on.

So that is another issue of, Okay, so the women are doing their thing. Well, do you know who’s teaching? Do you know what they’re teaching? Have you vetted them? You’re responsible as pastors for the leadership, the spiritual direction of your church. And if you have a rogue teacher out there, your responsible and you have no way of knowing there’s some structural issues to fix, right?

Becky >> Because if you’re equipping that leader, then, you know.

Kelley >> Exactly. Right.

Becky >> You have the capability to know, their theological knowledge, their spiritual and emotional maturity, all of that.

Kelley >> And you can have an impact on it, like, hey, let’s develop you or send you to this class or this conference or whatever.

Becky >> Yeah.

Kelley >> So when someone in women’s leadership watches this video, reads the report, one of the things I hope they come away with is a sense of how could I approach my pastor and give him some tools to say, this is what women’s ministry is about.

This is who we are, what we’re doing, this is why we’re doing it, but also share some data that will support what we have been feeling for a long time that women need to be at the table. Whatever your structure of leadership is, whether you’re egalitarian or complementarian and even if you’re egalitarian, sometimes you don’t act like it and you haven’t quite fixed structure to make it real life.

But whichever way you are officially, women at the table is a benefit to the whole church in whatever way you guys want to work that out. But yeah, being in those strategy meetings, long term planning, that kind of thing, what is the vision of the church and does the women’s ministry align with it? Well, we don’t know unless you let us in to hear about it.

Becky >> Kelley, it’s just simple things like let’s do a church wide event and then nobody ask him, so what are we going to do about child care? Like even just those simple things.

Kelley >> Yeah.

Becky >> A woman at the table is going to ask those questions and then they’re not going to be scrambling at the end to figure out, oh gosh, we forgot about child care. Or it may have changed the decision to be Let’s do it on a different day or let’s provide something. Let’s do something for the kids.

Kelley >> Right.

Becky >> Women have so much to offer. Women do so much work already in the local church.

Kelley >> Yeah. And this is not about credit. This is not something like women need the credit or visibility. This is real life impact that God made us sisters not children underneath, that kind of thing.

Becky >> That’s right.

Kelley >> And so, yeah, just having that view balances the male view. And we all have our own perspective. Because we see life from our own lens. And yet we have a narrow lens. We need others. And so if we’re going to talk about ourselves as a family, let’s look one.

Becky >> Amen.

Kelley >> I’ll preach a little bit here.

Becky >> Yes, I love it.

Kelley >> Okay. Well, we’re going to wrap it up here shortly.

This isn’t in your report, I’m pretty sure. But I did want to ask you, if you’re talking to a woman who is one of those volunteers or underpaid even if they are paid, they may not be getting an equitable salary for any number of sexist reasons. What do you tell them? What do you what kind of encouragement would you give to a woman who is in it to serve women? That is their life calling. And they’re willing to put up with a lot but it’s so hard.

Becky >> I think it all comes down to their relationship with whoever is leading in the church. So I feel like a woman who is maybe underpaid or is a volunteer, but feels like there needs to be a little bit more. I think number one, she can go to that leader with data and say this is what I’ve been able to accomplish with the resources.

But if we could just with a few more hours a week or with a little bit more investment, we could accomplish this. It feels really sometimes hard to advocate for yourself. So sometimes you need other people with you to advocate with you for more investment, whether it be in you as a leader or in the ministry as a whole.

But I do think every woman who is in a church has to evaluate, is this a good place for me? And I feel like sometimes women need permission to do that. Is this a place where I am being fed spiritually, where I’m being invested in as a leader, where the work we are doing does not go unnoticed, not that you get the credit, but the work that’s happening for women does not go unnoticed.

And if after continually asking, seeking advocacy from other people to a leader, you’re not getting anywhere, I think you just have to ask the Lord, Is this the place for me? Because the Lord is opening doors for women to lead all over the place in the church. And so if you are doing the work of getting equipped, there is a place for you to lead.

And so you just have to look for it. And I don’t want women to leave their church in droves because they’re not necessarily getting paid. That’s not what this is for. That’s not what I’m trying to advocate for. But you really do have to evaluate, is this a place where I can grow? Is this a place where I can thrive? Is this a place where the women that I’m leading can? And if it’s not, my advice would be to find a place where you can.

Kelley >> And those can be tough words sometimes to give and to hear. But there are some in situations where they’ve been toiling a long time and seeing nothing from the leadership for their women.

So, yeah, thank you for that word. And thank you for the survey. It’s got a lot of good data that I think churches as a whole need to see. That women will be encouraged by. And to bring it all back around, the whole purpose of a ministry to women is to grow them into the image of Jesus more and more.

There are so many different ways to do it. No one ministry will work the same, and that’s great. You need to work within your context to just bring them to the image of Christ.

So thank you for your work at Lifeway. Yeah.

Becky >> You’re very welcome. And I do hope that this survey gives women a tool. It gives women a tangible thing that they can take to a pastor or a ministry leader who is their leader and say, I just want you to see what is happening in ministry to women and let’s invest here. Let’s equip, let’s provide, let’s connect, let’s do all the things that we know help women stay in church, help them develop in their relationship with the Lord and eventually lead them to lead others in that.

So I just wanted something actually men could bite on, something that they would understand. Not that they don’t understand.

Kelley >> They like stats. They like numbers.

Becky >> They like data. They like numbers. So here they are. This is what’s happening. So it’s going to take us as brothers and sisters to fix this. So let’s work together to continue to equip women in the local church and provide all that they need for them to flourish.

Kelley >> Well said. Thank you. If you have watched or listened to this interview and want more information, more resources for your leadership, please go to BeyondOrdinaryWomen.org and you will find many videos and podcasts to help you out.

Thanks again, Becky. It was great to be with you.

Becky >> Thank you so much, Kelley. I enjoyed it so much.