The following is an entry in the Big Data and the UMC series: how data can help disrupt false narratives in the Church.
It is often claimed that, because the United Methodist Church has female clergy and female Bishops, we have broken the stained glass ceiling. However, a study of the most recently-available numbers and pastoral leadership in the UMC tells of at least one stained glass ceiling still present in the largest of the UMC’s local churches.
The Top Only Four
Pictured above is Rev. Dr. Karen Oliveto, Senior Pastor of Glide Memorial United Methodist Church in San Francisco, California. She is a rarity in the UMC, not only in her talent and ability…but also due to a unique combination of her gender and her status.
You see, Dr. Oliveto is one of the only two women who serve as Senior Pastors in the Top 100 United Methodist Churches (by attendance).
There are 207,700 United Methodists that worship on an average Sunday at the top 100 United Methodist Churches in America. Out of those, only 2% of them worship with a female senior pastor in charge of the order of that local church.
In fact, of the 177 United Methodist churches that have over 1,000 people on an average Sunday morning, only four have female senior pastors:
- Karen Oliveto, Glide Memorial UMC, California (appointed 2008)
- Juanita Rasmus, St. John’s Downtown Houston, Texas (began 1992 – co-senior pastor with Rudy Rasmus)
- Deborah McLeod, Mandarin FUMC, Florida (appointed 2009)
- Linda Harker, Norman McFarlin UMC, Oklahoma (appointed 2011)
For the top 177 churches in the United Methodist Church (in America, not worldwide) to have only four women is pretty bad. 2.26%!
In a denomination that celebrates women in ministry–and has female Bishops, church executives, and all levels of the church–why are our numbers so dire when it comes to the largest of our local churches?
Why are women shut out?
This is not a new phenomenon. In 2006, the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry studied the topic and found that of the churches that worship more than 350 people on an average Sunday, men were twice as likely as women to occupy those pulpits.
But what is the root cause?
Dr. Oliveto (twitter) responded to this question with the following observation:
I think we don’t see women in our largest churches because church and society still value male leadership over female leadership. Stereotypes of who can lead–what style of leadership is valued, who is conferred authority and why—are based in cultural assumptions about gender and race.
One reason why the UMC has historically seen more women serving in local churches than other mainline denominations is in no small part due to our appointment system. A church must accept a pastoral appointment regardless of the potential pastor’s race or gender.
The appointment system breaks down around large churches. Large churches–which are organizationally more complex AND pay more–often get to pick their pastor and THEN request that the Bishop approve the appointment. This allows a congregation’s underlying sexism/racism to influence who may serve as their pastor.
Every church has to overcome a systemic level of bias away from the straight white male that has been the “traditional” pastoral image. Every. Church. Our connectional system is better equipped than call systems to take on these issues head-on, but as Dr. Oliveto said, it is when our connectional systems become more like call systems that such biases become more manifest. It takes a willingness by the Bishop and the local church leadership to appoint someone transformative–a willingness that is not always present.
We can do better…eventually.
For female clergy, Dr. Oliveto recommends being part of a program by GBHEM that connects female clergy of larger pastorates with other female clergy in the church. By starting these mutual conversations and support, they are able to encourage one another and learn from each other. Click here for more information.
For the Church, I believe we can make two tweaks to our connectional system that will lead to a more equitable system:
- Church planting: Many of the largest UMC’s were relatively recent church plants and the senior pastor is the founding pastor. In many churches and conferences, women are not a high percentage of the church planters, and are rarely given a prime opportunity with lots of potential. Even if that is not the case in many areas these days, it has been in the past, and we see it in our list. For new church start planning teams to put intentional work into identifying and training women to lead these opportunities will slowly turn the numbers on their heads. Having women as planters but not giving them the same resources and opportunities as men does not count.
- Making Management not the Goal: The UMC does have a significant percentage of female Bishops: 15 out of 60 worldwide active Bishops (25%) are female. I don’t know of a single Annual Conference without some female DSes–even my small conference has 50% women. Do the best women clergy become District Superintendents and Bishops instead of large church pastors? Do we trust them more with being managers more than leaders of our biggest pulpits? I hope our Bishops consider training women to take the pulpits of our largest churches when transition comes naturally or is needed rather than pushing them to become Bishops instead.
Let us be clear: Giving intentional discernment, training, and equitable resources to women is not preference, gender bias, or straight-white-male-hating. It is about making the church a better place for all to have the best opportunities and removing the roadblocks to allow the Holy Spirit to nudge into place who the Spirit wants.
Thoughts?
The reality is that the UMC still has more women clergy than the largest megachurches and the largest denominations (Catholic, Southern Baptists) in the world.
We are the leading edge for women in ministry.
We just need to lead better.
Thoughts?
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Obligatory disclaimer:
“The statistical data included herein were provided at no charge by the General Council on Finance and Administration of The United Methodist Church (GCFA) and may be obtained directly from GCFA, PO Box 340020, Nashville, TN 37203-0029. This data is proprietary and is owned by GCFA and may not be used in any commercial or exploitative way, to make a financial profit, or in a manner that defames the United Methodist denomination or its agencies or organizations. GCFA does not endorse any particular use of the data or accept responsibility for its interpretation or analysis by another.”
The question about leadership vs. management is a good one! As a younger clergywoman, people will often say, “you’ll make a good bishop or d.s. someday” but I have never had someone say “you’ll be a great large church pastor.” Like it doesn’t cross their minds. That being said, I think Iowa does a fairly good job of placing younger clergy in medium sized churches as the lead pastor and I’m curious how that will impact these figures in 10-15 years.
Katie, that’s *really* insightful about the comments you receive. Thanks.
Maybe the largest Churches, are that way, because they do not have female pastors.
Maybe the people read and understand the Bible better than the UMC leadership?
God made all of us equal. But He also made us for different roles. There are many good areas to serve in UMC for women.
It is not a matter of talent or gifts, if it a matter of obedience to God.
Yeah that’s not what United Methodists believe.
“God made all of us equal. But He also made us for different roles. ”
I believe that He made *individuals* for different roles.
God’s expectations of individuals are not soley defined by gender any more than they are defined by race or hair color.
It seems to me, when this argument is made it is always about limiting females. The question I always have is: what roles are denied to men that are not defined by biology?
I get that, too, Katie!! But, I really, really love the local church and want to serve as I am called! I agree that the “management” issue is probably key. Thank you for bringing it to light, Jeremy!
One of the issues for mid-career clergywomen is that many of us were moved laterally in our early years. I did some research on the Texas Conference a few years ago and found that, when compared with men with the same number of years of service, clergywomen ordained in the 1990s were consistently in the bottom third when it came to church size and salary. I think there was an unconscious assumption that once women got on the cabinet, they would look after other women in the same way that men helped appointment the pioneering clergywomen. This is happening now for some younger clergywomen, but we essentially obliterated an entire generation of women in our conference as the majority of those ordained in the 1990s are no longer in congregational ministry. Many are no longer in ordained ministry in the UMC. The cabinet is also reluctant to give women the big jumps in church size and salary that it would require to appoint mid-career women to large churches.
Wow. Write down this date–I agree with most of Jeremy’s assessment! (We rarely agree on much.)
I’ve looked at this in the past and also concluded that many of our most effective female pastors get tapped for administrative, DS, and Episcopal positions–and therefore derailed for this kind of church leadership.
I also believe that church planting is the other major key.
I will add something Jeremy didn’t say–the vast majority of the “leading edge” (100 largest) UM churches are evangelical. Many of them are new church plants. The ones that were existing churches like Ginghamsburg and Frazier grew dramatically under the leadership of a entrepreneurial pastor (same skill set as a church planter) who had a heart for reaching lost people with the Gospel.
So I think one key to seeing more clergy women in these kids of pulpits is identifying and equipping evangelical women with a heart for reaching the lost. I’m encouraged by what is going on at both United and Asbury in this regard. I was also incredibly excited to hear Wesley Covenant Network talk about empowering more evangelical women as church planters!
Let me share a name that I fully expect to see on the list some day: Carolyn Moore of Mosaic in Evans, GA. She is a evangelical, female church planter who loves lost people.
Blessings and peace, Beth Ann
I’m gonna write this day down, Beth Ann 🙂
Jeremy answered his own question with his first “tweak.” How many of the “top 100” or “all megachurches or whatever universe you want to study still have their first founding pastor or the pastor who led them to that point? Instead of constantly looking at this as some sort of patriarchal conspiracy, perhaps it would be good to actually dig into the data?
The point about the push to “diversify” conference leadership leading to a paucity of female large church pastors is also well taken. Currently, only about 20% of elders in full connection are female. Yet, how many of our bishops, district superintendents, conference program staff, or general agency staff are female? The same is true on race where only ten percent of elders in full connection aren’t Anglo yet depending on which area you measure, a quarter or more aren’t Anglo.
But, it is nearing Christmas time so our regulatory agencies do their regular Christmas and Easter activities: use apportionment dollars to paint the denomination in as negative a light as possible and then wonder why new people don’t come in the doors of our local churches.
I don’t think mega-churches are a Methodist/Wesleyan way to do church.
(That said, if we’re gonna have ’em, it’d be ideal if there was gender equality in their leadership).
What Roger said.
I’m deeply interested in a feminist critique of “church leadership” models, for the reasons you name and many more. In our annual conference we took a look at base compensation compared to gender. It wasn’t pretty.
Was that for similar sized congregations or for length of pastorate?
If you have a large number of fairly new female clergy, then the results of a study are going to be skewed.
Good point Roger. I agree – the fascination with mega churches is not really a Methodist tradition. It is an accommodation to the Evangelical Mega Churches.
Having been to a number of the largest churches across the connection, my experience is that the women clergy on staff at these church are kept on the periphery. When some of these churches do their biggest events, the women will pray, announce, etc. but will rarely be given a leading role in worship or leadership. I agree that a number of these churches are a bit more evangelical than some of the clergy women who are leaders in annual conferences. St. John’s in Houston would be an exception. One of the two largest churches in our annual conference is led by a woman, but when the pastors of the large churches gathered this fall, by invitation only, the male associate pastor from that church was invited, but not the woman senior pastor. What’s the message there?
So you know my mom is a UM pastor. She joined the clergy as a feminist and has taken pride in the position of the denomination with respect to female leadership. Over the decades she has been a part of female groups that have sought to promote women within the denomination. A few years ago she shared frustration with me that none of the young clergywomen she knew in Oklahoma were interested in ‘climbing the ladder,’ so to speak. There were none who really wanted advocates to help get them bigger churches or more authority. I asked her why she didn’t just put herself forward to be that kind of minister. “I don’t want to,” she said. It’s a phenomenon also noted in politics, where women are more likely to be happy with ‘lower’ representative positions, where there is less power grabbing and more time with constituents. Likewise, my mother very much needs ministries in which she is interacting with the constituency more. While there is certainly something to be said about continuing social norms, I do think it is important to give women agency in this equation. They aren’t passive recipients of male-dominated norms. Rather, they have participated for a number of decades in creating what we now see. I feel like your article is really missing like half of what is important to know, which is that while women would like to see more representation in this area, not many of them really want to do what it takes to get there.
In my conference, I noticed that the overwhelming number of associate pastors are women, and it seems that all the women in our conference started as associates–that’s of course not true of all the men. Exactly as you said -we are seen as inherently better assistants/administrators rather than leaders.
In Minnesota AC many of our large churches are led by women. The church I serve, Christ UMC in Rochester, has five (not all full time, but still…) women clergy on staff – including the lead pastor. Minnesota is hardly the land of the mega church, so our numbers are nowhere near thousands on a Sunday. I’m appreciative of a cabinet that puts women clergy into lead positions.
As always, this is a great, thought provoking write up.
I’d like to think more about the impact of polity on this challenge. I am less inclined to believe that the appointment system necessarily leads to more women leading as pastors in local churches. For instance, I don’t know the numbers for women pastors of large churches within the PC(USA), but though they have a “call system”, 25% of pastors in that denomination are women. A percentage that parallels the UMC. Though absent an episcopal polity, the PC(USA) is connectional in ways that more resemble the UMC than (say) Baptists and UCC’s. Thus, it may be connectionalism that leads to more women in pastoral leadership, not an appointment system.
Furthermore, I wonder what data there is on clergywomen’s health and retention as pastors in the UMC compared to other communions. Women (especially women of color) may be appointed to local churches, but far too many churches aren’t ready to receive them. I know too many stories of women colleagues whose burnout is directly tied to the glass ceiling of not being received as pastor within the local church.
I hope someone out here is doing this research, but there may be a correlation between women not being appointed as senior pastors in large churches and the difficulty retaining women as pastors due to too many of them serving in hostile and sexist local church contexts. Brilliant and called women pastors who otherwise would lead large vital churches, may discern the need to serve in contexts beyond the local church, which (may) hinder interest in and opportunities to serving large churches in their futures. Beyond being tracked to management, it is the hostility of the local church to women pastors that, I think, leads dynamic women clergy to “management” over “leadership” as you’ve defined them.
I find the phrasing of this sentence frustrating: “The UMC does have a significant percentage of female Bishops: 15 out of 60 worldwide active Bishops (25%) are female.” Why is 25% “significant”? Is this really something worth touting as a success?
As a doctoral student in biblical studies, I recently read the annual report for the Society of Biblical Literature and found a similar celebration of numbers that are clearly (to me, at least) pretty abysmal. Their report said the following: “The membership of SBL is more diverse than ever before…Women make up 24% of our membership today, a figure that has remained level since last year. Of our members who identify ethnicity, almost 14% identify themselves as Asian descent, Hispanic, African descent, Native American, or Pacific Islander. This percentage has increased by 2% in the last two years.”
Isn’t it another “false narrative” to put a positive, inclusivity spin on numbers that, while an improvement over Congress (18.7% women currently, yay?), are far from any semblance of gender parity?
So they shouldn’t celebrate until they reach what number? I think the small steps are worth celebrating too. And I try to remember that celebrations don’t mean the fight is over, you simply celebrate what success you have made. The church I am pastoring currently celebrated 80 years of federation (we are one church made of two denominations who worship together), but that doesn’t mean that they simply stop the church now and close the doors. They keep pushing forward, celebrating all the way.
Bad news. Good news. One of your highlighted female pastors was guest preacher one Sunday when we were visiting one of our children and family in San Jose a few years ago. They were trying the local UM church for the first time as new area arrivals. The guest pastor’s sermon, a one-sided attack on the church’s historic position on a certain issue, did have the unforgettable effect of severing a 5 generation connection with Methodism by my child and the family. They left the UM church that day and have not looked back. The good news is a daughter UM solo pastor with a seriously growing UM church elsewhere in the US where men and women, including a heavy military presence, heartily respond to her ministry. Regardless of gender, clergy who produce the goods and grow churches will be recognized; those of the old school, regardless of gender, who pastor a larger church only when appointed to a larger church, had best get used to dis-appointment. The shift toward quality expectation is great news for quality female pastors on a playing field not yet even but moving in the right direction.
I agree that I would like to see more women in large parish ministry, but what we often forget is that we look so much at evening out the numbers, that we forget the process for getting there. That process of the District Superintendents getting together with the bishop to PRAYERFULLY DISCERN where God wants each of these people that HE has called to pastoral ministry, is what we are contingent upon. If we believe that our DS’s and our Bishops are truly being led by the Holy Spirit in this discernment process than we shouldn’t be worried about which gender is in which church.
I am a member of a very large UMC in the North Texas Conference. While our senior pastor is not female, we have several female associate pastors. I know that’s one of the points of this post, we need more female sr. pastors, as opposed to asst. pastors, but I would like to point out that when I attended an Ash Wednesday service at our church this past Wednesday, every aspect of it was led by a female pastor on staff, from the scripture reading to the sermon, even all of the pastors charged with applying the ash to our foreheads, it was all done by female pastors on staff. I thought it was pretty neat, which is I guess is another point of your post. Attending a service at a large UMC where everything is led by females shouldn’t be a novelty. All in all though, I love our senior pastor and think he does a great job of utilizing his entire staff, especially the female pastors.
Why don’t female pastors plant and grow large churches? Then they could call the shots just like the big boys do.
Has anyone considered that though the hierarchy has been able to change their sexist
views, that they are afraid, rightly or wrongly, that the congregants are still sexist and they
are afraid of losing large numbers of congregants by appointing females to head large
congregations? Maybe the problem is that we are all afraid to challenge the sexism in
our congregations because we are more concerned with numbers than preaching the Gospel.
Agreed, there is a tendency in our church hierarchy to focus blame on the pastor when conflict and resistance are evident in a church, rather than holding the congregation responsible for systemic bias and unrealistic expectations. If the Bishops and Cabinet would be willing to risk challenging the destructive patterns and prejudices in all our churches, no matter what size, then we could make some progress. When women are “promoted” to being a cabinet member or Bishop, perhaps that is because working on Conference Staff is a more protected position, where one does not have to stealthily navigate ongoing reactive undermining behaviors by people whose main objective is to force out the new woman pastor, who may be perceived as being too assertive, bossy, businesslike or whatever else some people believe women should NOT be. And, without violating any confidences, I can say with certainty that just because a woman is appointed as a senior pastor to a very large and diverse church, it does not necessarily follow that she is made to feel welcomed or valued, or given as much authority as the male associates or other staff. Women in those positions also suffer the abuse of masked misogyny and hostility, and the cultural barriers to accepting the authority of a woman, while they may be less explicit than they were 35 years ago when I was ordained, they are still there in many implicit ways. Sometimes that makes them more difficult to address and resolve, and those of us who try to confront and transform these unhealthy dynamics are labeled unkindly, even by our female DS’s.
This is a whole different but related topic…
Remember Master Yoda said, “Size matters not.” Your opinion assumes larger attendance is better and therefore has better leader.
Other than that thought, I think the key to changing this will be having more female church planters, as you suggested. Thanks for having this important conversation.
In our conference not only all the large churches have male pastors, they are also all White men. This has not always been the case but over last 10 years we have gone back instead of forward. And at times, it seems like only one voicing this issue is myself who is a minority women who has been serving for 20 years in the UMC.
I think what Jeffrey Rickman said above is true in many areas and gets lost in the discussion: some women simply “don’t want to” go to a large membership church (neither do some men), preferring a smaller church and a more intimate model of ministry. When you become a senior pastor at a church that large, you pastor the staff – who in turn pastors the church. Those who are gifted, extroverted, and wired to be nurturers find large membership churches somewhat frustrating.
Some left unsaid is that clergy who are women are often married to men, whose careers (lay or clergy) often take precedent over the career of the woman. An “ambitious” pastor–whatever the ambition–usually has a spouse that takes a supportive role. Clergy spouses who both serve churches often make career sacrifices for one another. A clergy-lay couple would make sacrifices as well, especially in an appointive system. How popular is it for a man to be the supportive/sacrificial spouse?
Given your love of big data, have you ever cross-checked how many of the 100 Largest Churches (not a Methodist/Wesleyan Way??) are either: 1) still led by the founding pastor (Resurrection, Granger, Woodlands, Faithbridge) OR 2) re-invisioned & re-imagined by a long-tenured pastor so that it is a de facto church plant (Ginghamsburg, Windsor Village).
I feel like you would find those numbers extraordinarily high.
My point is that relatively few of these congregations are plum appointments in the traditional sense. Relatively more were grown to their size under the long-tenured leadership of their current pastor.
I would agree with your feeling, Talbot. The quest to change these numbers then will take place over a decade or more of dynamic new or re-engaged church plants by women, not by a few brave appointments today.
Do you really think that there are a bunch of enterprising female pastors who would like to plant a new church who are being told that they cannot do that???
I was wondering if you could send me the statistical data you used for this posting. I am doing a presentation/project on women and religion and would like to focus in on women in the pulpit in the UMC. I like how you pointed out the belief that because we do have female preachers, we have broken the stained glass, but that however is not true. Thank you!
I’m remembering when a highly regarded woman pastor was appointed to a large membership congregation in a conference to which I was previously appointed. The congregation was indeed somewhat on the evangelical side. She showed up in a white alb with high church liturgy. It didn’t work, of course. Too bad.
Have you explored this one with a racial spin? Might as well make some more folk mad.
Jennifer Stiles Williams is now the Lead Pastor at St. Luke’s in Orlando with about 1600 in average worship attendance. So you can add her to your data as well.
Thanks Jamie. This post is from 2014 so an update will be posted at some point.
The UMC continues to find ways to exclude some humans using the hyphen. Women-pastors, Hispanic-American, gay-people, African-American, Indigenous-people. A hyphen makes less thans, those who need a descriptor so we know for real they are not white men who don’t need hyphens. I have watched the UMC do COSROW studies for women and integration plans for brown and black skinned people to be equalized and in 52 years as a Methodist, I have never found us to be United with those we continue to choose to hyphenate.
Exactly! That’s the best one paragraph descriptor I’ve ever read to explain what’s going on in our Church.
I have heard many male pastors’ sermons and only a few of them gave great sermons. I have heard only a few female pastors’ sermons and have not heard a sermon that was great from any of them. In addition, a lady I know says that women aren’t made senior pastors because “the men won’t listen to them”. Maybe that’s true but both men and women want great sermons from their pastor – male or female. Hopefully those doing selections of senior pastors are considering that.
I was disappointed in Minister Karen. In my opinion it may be why there’s so many places in the Bible that women shouldn’t be ministers. I’m not sure on one side or the other of that issue. But Minister Karen seems more of a politician,using words like racism and bias. Because other people choose to have a male minister it makes them those words. My heart believe she’s lost in her politics. Minister Karen, keep your head down and do God’s work. We don’t need another politician in the church. May God bless you
I’ve heard great sermons from women and mediocre sermons at best from men but they still pay the men more…