It would be naïve of us to not consider factors that de-incentivize pastors to objectively study the issue of women in the church and home. The following are seven hindrances to pastors:

1. Christian Cancel Culture

The intimidation power of “the L word” (liberal) is truly frightening. No pastor wants to invite others to label him a liberal and edge him out of his community. As a result, few well-known pastors publicly say, “I once held a complementarian view but now affirm egalitarianism.” Once a pastor reaches a certain level of accomplishment, there’s too much to lose for him to come out publicly with an unpopular position. And before he reaches that level, he’s struggling so much that he has no wish to blow up any potential success.

When publishing houses, radio ministries, donor bases, and denominational ties expect a certain position, it is career suicide to do otherwise. For a pastor to study the issue of women in the church and home is like handling a grenade with a loose pin.

Look at what happened to Rick Warren after he ordained women as pastors—roles that, in his church, still carried lower status than elders. The SBC expelled Saddleback Church, despite its popularity and its status as one of the convention’s largest financial contributors. I suspect that Warren’s church building and best-selling author successes gave him courage to act by conviction rather than peer pressure. No doubt the SBC’s action damaged his reputation.

Terran Williams from Cape Town, South Africa was the long-time lead teacher of a megachurch that prided itself on doctrinal accuracy. The elders told Williams they get many questions on this topic and they would appreciate a better written defense for the church’s complementarian position. He set aside a week and then realized it wasn’t enough time, eventually making a shocking discovery. See terranwilliams.com for more. He eventually recognized he needed to resign his position, but he started a new church which is thriving. 

Tyler Staton of Bridgetown Church in Portland, Oregon is an example of a pastor taking a courageous stand. The elders of this church studied the issue and decided on an ecclesial egalitarian stance. Staton did a Wednesday night sermon series to present the case to the church. Listeners can hear the series on the Bridgetown Church podcast. I imagine the political climate of Portland spared these men from a backlash.

It appears Lance Ford began reevaluating leadership paradigms while still actively pastoring in the mid-1990s. He is now known as an author, professor, and missional leader. There are more scholars (i.e. Philip Payne, Gordon Fee, Scot McKnight) and university professors than pastors in the “once I was complementarian but now, I’m egalitarian” camp. I believe it’s because they do more research than the average pastor and don’t have the challenges of rocking the boat by trying to persuade an entire church to whom they are dependent for their livlihood.   

2. Lack of Time/Priority

For a busy person wearing many hats, why take precious time to really study an issue that will only get them in hot water anyway? “Let sleeping dogs lie” and “Is it really that important?” are common sentiments. 

It’s amazing that a pastor will spend hundreds of hours studying something far less practical (IMO), like eschatology, to determine his position. The church often considers that study a noble pursuit. But the church does not treat studying the issue of women a noble pursuit. Why is that question off limits? Why must we assume it is settled, but nearly every other secondary or tertiary issue is usually still open for study with far less scandal?

3. Power Factors

Why would men be motivated to do something that would undermine their own power and authority? I don’t mean to disparage tens of thousands of pastors as intentional power hoarders—I truly don’t believe they are. But at some level, I believe it’s a very real hindrance that many never consciously examine. We should recognize that these men have little to gain and everything to lose by releasing some power and control. 

More significantly, not only do they have their own loss of power to consider, but every other man. The peer pressure, not only from other pastors but men in the church, could become intense. Remember when King Xerxes I (Hebrew Ahasuerus) called Vashti to parade in front of leering, drunken men and she refused? His counselors told him he must banish Vashti or it would undermine the authority of every man in the kingdom. In his best-selling marriage book, Love & Respect, Emerson Eggerichs uses the Vashti narrative as an example of “disrespect” without critiquing the wickedness of the king’s command, effectively reinforcing the counselors’ concern as if it was godly counsel. Church men parallel every man in the kingdom.

4. Heart condition

It takes a special positioning of the heart to receive God’s gift of a true partner and let go of the insecurities that go with needing to be the leader. Furthermore, it’s just the opposite of our natural human tendency and everything we see in the world system. Most people see no problem with running a church or ministry like a business. I know a pastor who had an especially tender heart and willingness to partner. He sought high and low for another man who wanted to co-pastor and couldn’t find a single one.

When Terran Williams realized there was no solid evidence for male hierarchy, and that his wife was his ezer kenegdo (corresponding strength), he was excited to tell someone. She walked into the room and when he opened his mouth to tell her, his view of her had changed so much that he could only stammer and cry for joy at this revelatory truth that he had been missing for decades. That demonstrated a soft heart rather than a hard and fearful heart.

It’s hard to have empathy for human experiences that we haven’t experienced ourselves. We can imagine it and sympathize but not empathize. Men haven’t personally experienced being sidelined for a reason (gender) that has nothing to do with character, heart for God, and skill. It’s difficult for them to grasp how it affects women.

They may also underestimate what women could/would do if completely unleashed. They may have subconscious misogyny based on being told since childhood that being a girl is the worst thing ever, and based on growing up in church being told men are the chosen for good reason. They may truly not appreciate the value that women bring to the table. Considering these factors, it takes a work of God in the heart to view women as true equals. This heart softening probably has to take place before a pastor can objectively study the issue of women.

5. Fear of Undermining People’s Confidence in the Bible

Pastors fear that if they say, “Hey everybody, we’ve been getting this wrong for hundreds of years” they will undermine people’s confidence in the Bible. People will say, “So, what else have you teachers been getting wrong?” and “Can’t I trust the plain reading of the Word?” I discuss this dilemma in another blog. One of the pastor authors I read expressed this confidence concern and wrote about addressing the gender issue carefully with his church in light of it. It is possible to address it well, but it adds yet another challenge that a pastor needs the courage to face if he is going to be willing to study the issue of women.

6. The slippery slope logical fallacy

“If you compromise on women, next thing you know, you’ll be compromising on homosexuality and other sexual perversions.” The truth is, the function of women in the church and home has nothing to do with sexual perversion and it is insulting for people to act like it does. There have been denominations which recognized freedom for women and then also compromised on homosexuality. There have been denominations which had free women for far longer (some over a hundred years) but never compromised on homosexual and transgender issues.  

The slippery slope is a logical fallacy because it implies that people can’t hold the line wherever they want to hold the line. It says one decision plunges them down a hill of decisions out of control like a person on skis. It is important to make any change because one believes the Bible teaches it and not because one believes that times have changed and so the Bible should change too. There’s where the difference lies. A big obstacle to a pastor objectively studing the issue of women is that just the decision to do the study reeks of compromise in their mind. Like Williams, they might initially approach it just to prove the restrictive view.

Russell Moore makes the point that if there is a slippery slope in the direction of liberalism, there is also a slippery slope in the direction of legalism. 

7. “Everyone who is anyone says it’s been settled.”

Someone sent me a list of the four biggest-name preachers they admire and wrote, “These all hold the complementarian view and not the egalitarian view.” Those men also have a short list of their most-admired theologians. Who knows which names on anyone’s list were affected by reasons 1-6 above.

We now have many more resources and leisure time available to us, so we lay people are more accountable for learning than people in the past who could only rely on the great teachers before them. The problem is whether we allow ourselves to investigate more broadly or only investigate in our faith tradition corner.

For example, we know that the woman, Junia, named by along with her husband as outstanding apostles, was indeed a woman, after 150 years of having her name masculinized and the translation around her name obfuscated to hide the fact of her gender. Perhaps, if it weren’t for that and other deceptions, more big-name preachers would be egalitarian, or their names wouldn’t be “big” if they had taken an earlier stand in their lifetime, due to 1-6 above.

My book talks about seminary textbooks and how they retain errant information. One in five seminary students are enrolled in one of the six SBC semiaries which use a particular textbook that I talk about, and who knows how many others use it? (It’s still on the best seller list on Amazon.) Due to the internet, we are no longer entirely dependent on a small group of information gatekeepers, but they still keep some significant gates.

That is seven significant hindrances for pastors. No wonder this remains a heavy lift in many circles!