Healthy Churches for Women

Kelley >> Welcome to Beyond Ordinary Women Ministries. I am Kelley Mathews and I am here today with Laura Barringer. She is the coauthor with her father, Scott McKnight, of several books. But today we’re going to talk about tov, A Church Called Tov. I’m going to give it a little bit of publicity right here. So welcome, Laura. Thank you for taking your time with us today.

Laura >> Thank you for having me. It’s an honor to be with you. I’m grateful to be here and to meet you and hear a little bit more, too, about your ministry for women.

Kelley >> Oh, yes. This is you’ll hear more about it as we go along. But we do a lot of these interviews, really, and just provide resources for support. I would say primarily women leaders in the church. But obviously when they’re online, anybody can access them.

So we will hopefully add this resource for looking at churches and what they can do and why they can do—make take real, tangible steps towards being safe and healthy churches, particularly for women. And so both of your books, the other one is called Pivot, but where and that’s a newer one, but we’re going to stick with the older one.

And it was very foundational, I think, to the conversation over the last, what, seven, eight years, maybe? I forgot exactly when it came out.

Laura >> 2020. The fall of 2020.

Kelley >> Only five. Oh, wow. OK.

Laura >> Yeah.

Kelley >> Yeah. Well, that’s you know, Covid does a lot to make time disappear, I think.

Laura >> It makes everything it makes everything fuzzy.

Kelley >> Oh, goodness. Well, why did you partner with your father? I mean, we if anyone doesn’t know Dr. McKnight is a New Testament scholar and writer and professor. And why did you guys partner up to write this book?

Laura >> I wanted him to write the book. So that was the original plan. The book started as a personal story for us. In 2018, in March of 2018, a story broke up here. I live just outside of Chicago. The Chicago Tribune is the major newspaper here in the city. And it was a story about our former church, Willow Creek, our former pastor, Bill Hybels. It was a story about accusations, sexual accusations made against him by a number of women, most of whom somebody in our family knew.

And it was a very disorienting, I speak of it now, but at the time it was very disorienting. It was disorienting because the church was saying the women were lying and the women were saying the church was lying. And I naively had not been you know, just I naively thought at the time, well, churches would tell the truth, of course.

And it really sent my head spinning. It sent our heads spinning. And my dad wrote a series of blog posts specifically about Willow that kind of we call kind of white Christian viral at the time. He just called them to truth telling, to resisting the false narratives, to repentance, to restoration with those they had wounded.

We didn’t want to write just like an exposé. There’s a little bit of that in A Church Called Tov. But we really wanted to write a redemptive story that would draw people to the goodness of who God is and his vision for his people and his church. And so somehow along the way, I got looped into helping him.

Kelley >> That tracks with what I know.

Laura >> That was not the plan at first. The plan, I was like, you write it. I am not a writer. You know, I have other things. I have a full time job of my own. But that’s how it all started. It was really the story of Willow Creek, which I quickly learned is far beyond the city. The topic we wrote about is extends far beyond the city of Chicago, beyond Illinois, beyond the United States. It’s a global call to action.

Kelley >> Yes. Yes. And I you know, I read through the book and you kind of open with story of how that situation kick-started this whole process. But what y’all put together is more of a vision for what the church is supposed to be. Now, you titled it A Church Called Tov. Tell us what that word means, you’ve already kind of hinted at it.

Laura >> Initially, the title was turned down by the publisher. They said, “Oh, we don’t use Hebrew words in our titles.” And my dad, who has written, who is a prolific writer, was like, “Oh, no, well, that’s the title. So, OK, you like me, it’ll catch on.” And it did. He was right.

Tov is the Hebrew word for goodness.

And I have learned through my father and through the Bible Project, which I watch constantly and listen to constantly, that it is we should think of tov, goodness, as one of the major moral categories of our Bible. That it really should shape our entire lives as followers of Christ, because God himself is, his being is tov.

Everything he made everything he will make is tov. In fact, if you open your book to the first page of Genesis, you’ll find tov there seven times. God saw all that he had made, and it was very tov. This little dog sleeping behind me, tov. And then I’ve learned that that little word tov follows more than 700 times in the Old and New Testament. Jesus is our tov shepherd. I can keep going on and on. You get the idea that it is one of the Bible’s major moral categories, and it is how tov should shape our entire lives—at home, at work, everywhere we go as followers of Christ.

Kelley >> When I was in college, I was just really getting started in the Bible Church. And so I remember being in you know, Sunday School class, and a visiting teacher came. She had just experienced her house burning down. And so we were kind of all talking about that. And her lesson this I mean, I don’t remember a whole lot of all those lessons, right?

But this one thing sticks with me of how she held up her hands like a frame and said everything has to come through the goodness of God. So the goodness of God frames everything that happens to us. So same idea, I think, of knowing and trusting of who God is. And then we can look at life knowing he’s not out to get me. He’s not evil. He’s not trying to hurt me, all those things, because he is good.

And I think as what you guys put through this book is that the church, we are his agent, right? We are his representatives in the world, and we are to reflect his goodness, but we don’t always.

So what I want to kind of walk through here is, of course, no church is perfect, but some churches are actually harmful or have an ethos, you know, this culture of toxicity.

Can you give me some clues? Like if I walked into a new church, which I have done over the last year when I moved to go church hunting because we moved away from our former home area, what kind of clues ought a woman look for or anybody as far as is this a good church, a safe church?

Laura >> That’s a really good question. And I like that because it goes to the heart of tov culture.

Speaking on the topic of women today, when we write about a goodness, a tov or a goodness-shaped church, one that empowers women, we are talking about something deeper than just including them. Right? It’s not just about including women. It’s about it’s about forming a culture that reflects God’s goodness. One that restores dignity and nurtures gifts and will resist a system of harm or like a hierarchy of some sort.

So what we’re looking for, like red flags, if you will, are the opposite of that. And I think a lot of people, a lot of men and women are asking that question right now, like what are the signs of toxicity in church culture? And I could go on for a long time. I’ll mention just a few.

I think one big red flag is when you think about leadership and you think about power dynamics. How are decisions made? Are decisions flowing down from like one powerful man, one powerful person? Or do they come through like a shared discernment, shared process of a leadership team that includes women? Like are female voices represented in the church?

Or a red flag for me would be that women are absent. They’re absent from decision-making tables, they’re absent from teaching platforms, they’re absent from elder boards. I don’t like when women are, like tokenized, like they’re present, but they’re valued like for the image of them being there not necessarily for their influence.

Something that I appreciate so deeply about the church that my husband and I attend now is that women who have gifts, women who have gifts of teaching, theology, scholarship, leadership— those gifts are like encouraged, they’re nurtured, they’re recognized.

It’s not just like, oh, this is the token thing. And we’ll say that we have a woman doing this. But no, like it’s very deeply valued.

Those are just to name a few. I could keep going.

Kelley>> Just a few. Oh, I’m sure that’s so. Yeah. Because you think of authority and it’s important to know where God derives from and what’s the process within a church. Because, you know, from the leadership, it flows downhill so to speak.

Let’s talk about some of the elements that you guys write about of tov culture. Now you have seven and we’re just going to camp out, I think, on maybe one or two because we could, again, all give so much fodder for thought. But there’s plenty of illustration.

Compassion and empathy. I think you list them out separately. We’re going to just kind of combine them because empathy is sort of the feeling and compassion is the way it’s worked out. What do you think of the recent trend that, you know, minimizes or kind of even tries to reject the idea of empathy?

Laura >> I know I’ve been watching I’ve been watching the trend. I first of all, for those who are fighting the use of empathy or the word empathy, I’m catching a lot of what’s behind it. And it feels like anxiety. It feels like fear.

I can get into that more, but I think it’s important to define like, how are you defining empathy? Are you identifying it as like blurring the line between right and wrong?

Like, exactly how are you? Are you defining it as overly sentimental? Like, I think when those who are resisting the word, I would really like to know what is it to you?

Kelley >> So and that feels like, yeah, like nobody really wants to come right out with the definition. They just use the word to feed their own agenda. That’s my impression.

Laura >> Because I think if you really look at what empathy is, how could you advocate for resisting it? Look at Jesus, look at the gospel. He embodies that empathy. So I think that’s that’s my first comment. Last question and I don’t have the answer, but I really would like to know how empathy is defined by some that are resisting it.

Like I said, I feel like I’m catching a lot of fear behind the comments, behind the tone. I think there’s the fear of like moral boundaries slipping or it’s become like it’s being used as like a progressive agenda, sort of manipulative, like empathy is a woke narrative.

That, you know, they say, oh, yeah, Christians should act compassionately but not necessarily feel empathetic.

And so it’s become so politicized. And I take issue with that, to be honest. I take issue with it because here’s why. Because look at Jesus. Look at Scripture. The Gospels are full of stories of Jesus not only caring about people, but stopping and thinking of —when he was on the road to Jerusalem and he was coming out of Jericho and there’s the blind and deaf man yelling, “Son of David, have mercy on us, have mercy on us.” And the crowd is telling him, telling those men, “be quiet like hush.” Like the message I imagine they would have received, “You are not important enough to distract this man from his mission.” You know?

And what does he do? He stops, ask, turns, asks for these men to be brought to him and says, “What? What do you want?”

And they say, “We want to see.” And he heals them. And I think that’s like empathy embodied is like—not just the healing. Of course, that’s like so beautifully compassionate, but it’s the stopping them and seeing them and so.

Kelley >> Being seen.

Laura >> Yeah. And when I see this debate in the news, I’m thinking, I think we’ve really lost like what empathy is, right? Our motivations are from ministry, from care, from sacrifice. And I just I’d take issue with it being a politicized term.

It helps that Jesus being our tov Shepherd, it helps us see the experiences of those who are marginalized, those who are suffering, those who have been ignored. And I think rejecting empathy, resisting empathy is dangerous because it could really to blindspots like it can make us less merciful. Where is our Christian witness if we don’t have empathy?

Kelley >> Preach to the choir. That’s exactly right. So I was thinking, you know, the Gospels come right out and say Jesus felt compassion, right? Like it’s right in black and white—or red, whatever letters you like.

So if that is the heart of Jesus, which I totally agree as a church leadership, if you’re talking to someone who’s on staff, whether they’re pastor, associate women director, like men and women, but they’re in leadership, are there any steps that you would recommend that they take to better ensure you were talking about somebody needing to be seen and heard, valued like the blind men?

But the women often feel invisible or unheard or just ignored. They’re taken for granted because they aren’t men and they’re not in leadership. And so we’re talking complementarian churches, but also it can that can happen in any church, whatever label they give themselves. And again, I’m not trying to paint every church this way, but we know that it does happen.

What would you tell leadership to do to help them start to turn the ship, so to speak, so that they can begin to have better healthier practices when it comes to valuing and seeing women.

Laura >> That’s a really good question, a thoroughly important question. The first thing that comes to mind for me is listening. Think of listening as like an offering of discipleship. Let women in your congregation share how they have been included or excluded. Encourage pastors to listen, to practice empathy, not just defensiveness.

Sit with those—sit with people who are uncomfortable without trying to rush to defend your system or theology, be quick to listen and really think about your teaching theories. Think about the words that come from the pulpit. Are women can women help shape the applications of a sermon? How does this text sound from a woman’s perspective?

Like, I think if we avoid men is the leader/women is the helper. Instead of using that as our framework, like let’s flip the script. I shouldn’t even say flip it because I believe this is what Jesus taught. But like if we are co-laborers in Christ, what does that look like? What does that sound like in a church?

But women have to feel safe to be honest and I think that start with being good listeners without being defensive and practicing empathy and being willing to hear where women have felt unsafe and excluded.

Kelley >> Mm hmm. That’s great. Where have they felt unsafe and excluded? Knowing and hearing the specifics, and that might change from church to church. I know part of what inspired your book was the lies about infidelity and spiritual abuse from a pastoral leader, which honestly, it was in the middle of the MeToo and ChurchToo movement, right?

Well, it may have been at the beginning, but I don’t exactly remember the timeline. But, you know, in the late 20-teens became the trend where women were finally speaking out en masse about the fact that they had experienced some kind of sexual trauma or abuse or discrimination, and they were using the hashtag MeToo. Well, it jumped into the church because women thought, “You know what, this happened to me because a pastor did this to me or some kind of spiritual leader did.”

And so we started to see some movement towards reform and education and maybe even apology with varying levels of success. I would probably venture to say it has not really succeeded and, you know, really changing a lot, but at least the awareness is greater.

So as a church leader, when it comes to pastoral, being a safe pastor—maybe that’s not the right term, I don’t know. But what would you say about making church safe for women in that specific realm? Because that’s kind of a physical safety, but also a spiritual sense of well-being that I can trust these leaders not to take advantage of me. And as leaders, let’s just talk to the leader here.

What can we do as leaders if we are on staff of the church as many of our viewers are to begin or further becoming a healthy leader in that respect? Does that make sense?

Laura >> Yes, when so the first thing that comes to mind is women are watching what they what we watch, right when harm happens and I’m not going to say if it happens, but when it happens, you know what? How does the church how does the leadership respond?

I come from a trauma-informed background, so if I’m a little biased, that’s why. But the other part is, is the protection of the wounded, what is prioritized or is it the protection of the reputation of the church or the leader. My dad always says, like when an event happens, when trauma or when something comes to light, when a scandal arises you can always tell who the church is and who the leaders are by their response.

And there were a lot of really terrible ones, Willow Creek being one of them. There are some tov examples, and I did write about one of them in the book but we can the hope is that we can learn from the example of those that that we did not do well, that did not do well.

We hear a lot, “Well, that wasn’t our intention. We didn’t intend to do that.”

And intention doesn’t matter. Right? Goodwill isn’t enough. What we need is a goodness culture that will build a system and that representation, like women, has a channel for feedback where they can speak candidly and they feel safe doing that about policies or like or, “Hey, this sermon really didn’t settle well with me.”

And they don’t fear, like, blowback or a reprimand for speaking up. I talked about listening. I go back to that again. Like think of it like you’re just like discipleship to listen and know the experiences of women in your congregation. Offer care and counseling to be led, or at least or co-led by women.

Kelley >> I think it’s critical. Yeah.

Laura >> You know, like, like let them let our let our partnership in the church be mutual, male and female. We are designed to co-rule, to co-exist, to co-create. So I think reframing the question from like—can women lead as a woman allowed to do this? Like, let’s just take that off the table and replace it with how? How can we lead together?

I feel like a tov church would understand that. That God’s spirit is not just poured out on men. It’s poured out on women, too.

And like I said, I mentioned the church where we go to right now. And it doesn’t it really doesn’t. It was such a relief to walk into this church and see women preaching, women leading alongside men. And it’s just not even a thing. Like it just is what it is because we are made in the image of God together. And I believe you have it. You know, the pastor will say, like, “I really believe you have a teaching gift. I want to help develop that in you.”

Whether it’s a man or a woman, it doesn’t matter. It was such a relief that I thought I feel like this is the body. This is the body where all of us are allowed to use and develop the gifts that God has given us.

Kelley >> That’s sounds divine, actually. And pun sort of intended. Yeah. Kingdom working the way it’s supposed to work is a wonderful experience.

Actually, I was going to kind of walk you through some of the elements of a tov church, but you kind of blew right through them. You just name them all, like, you know, knowing the names of stories and stories of women nurturing them as agents of God’s work in the world, and then intentionally promoting their contributions in the life of the church.

So those are just a few characteristics of a church that promotes goodness, that reflects God’s goodness in the lives of women—which also benefits men. So this isn’t just to make the ladies feel better. This is to actually reflect the purpose of God in his local church body.

Is there anything you want to throw in there that I haven’t asked? I know we could go on to a whole different topic, but this is probably long enough and focused enough.

Laura >> Yeah.

Kelley >> You have so much in this book, so. Yeah. Any final thoughts?

Laura >> No, I just want to reiterate again, I feel like it’s so much more than just including women. It’s not just about including them, including them on a committee, including them to sit at the table. It’s about seeing them as an equal partner, as seeing them as they have gifts, too.

As you know, women have been preaching and pastoring since A.D. 1. You know, like leadership is collaborative and women are welcomed and they are seen as having equal value as men. That gifts and callings are not defined or assigned by gender, but they are assigned and defined by the spirit who gracefully gives them.

So I guess that’s what I feel is most important on my heart today is it’s so much more than just including. It’s about seeing and developing and giving women the freedom to use the gifts that God has given them.

Kelley >> Yes. Yeah, that’s a wholehearted amen there. It’s almost when a church utilizes both men and women that they become a whole body. They aren’t just, you know, they haven’t cut their arm off because they refuse to use it. That sort of imagery. And so when women are sidelined because of theological differences, that’s what ends up happening.

And I would also say, I don’t know who amongst our viewers hails from a complementarian background versus an egalitarian theology. But even in a complementarian world, there are ways to affirm and empower women to use the gifts that God has given them, like you were just saying. And there is always room for improvement in how women are not just included, but considered essential to the life of the church.

So I highly recommend A Church Called Tov. There’s so much more in here but I just feel like we as an American church are in a bit of a crisis at the moment. Some of it stems from—well, there’s a lot of things it stems from, I think, but the treatment of women is part of the it’s become, I don’t know, not a consequence, but the fallout maybe, of core theology. So I want to just thank you for writing the book, for letting your dad talk you into it.

And obviously you all did well enough together, you wrote a second one together. So,

Laura >> Yeah.

Kelley >> I need to pick up Pivot. I believe I have it on e-book waiting for me. Now that my school is over, I have much more time to read things I want to read. Yeah, I look forward to that.

So thank you for your time. Yes, looking forward to reading that and appreciate your time with us today.

I want to point our viewers and listeners to some of the other resources on the BeyondOrdinaryWomen.org site. We have produced videos that talk about caring for women which has been a major topic today of how churches can care for women.

If you go to our Resources page, you will see the Caring Well page, and it has videos such as Recognizing Rape Culture, Caring for Women Who Struggle with Porn, and Sexual Abuse in the Church, which was an interview that I did with Mary DeMuth who is well versed in church hurt sorts of topics.

So those are just a few of the resources that we have to help leaders just learn something new to help minister with good, solid advice and insight from other people who are doing good work with them. So I encourage you to turn to that and let us know your thoughts. And we hope that it blesses you.