Clergy confront ministerial stereotypes

 

 

 

In 1998, a study by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research found that most clergy believe that women are more caring, more sensitive and more nurturing in their pastorship roles than men.

 

Today, women account for 15 percent of all clergy in the United States, and how they do their jobs compared with their male counterparts continues to be a matter of debate. Many pastors in Columbia say the characteristics necessary to meet the spiritual needs of congregants are universal. Pastors, whether male or female, must be compassionate and nurturing,

 

“Who says that compassion and nurturing should be female characteristics?” said the Rev. Maureen Dickman, pastor of Rock Bridge Christian Church. “But they are what we more or less connect as motherly qualities.”

 

The Rev. Lorenzo Lawson, pastor of Chosen Generation, agrees but says that kind of thinking needs to change. Traditional notions of femininity and masculinity are increasingly being questioned by pastors who say they are simply living out the scriptural teachings.

 

“You can’t be a true man of God without compassion,” Lawson said. “A man don’t have to be hard, don’t have to be ugly, don’t have to be abrasive, you don’t have to be a thug to be man. You can be caring, compassionate, and at the same time, strong.”

 

Many pastors say they are doing more counseling than ever. For Lawson, that means visiting jails and doing community outreach. It includes standing at Sexton and Garth streets and embracing young black men who may be struggling with drug and alcohol abuse,or, talking to single mothers who may not always feel comfortable in church.

 

Michael Burt, who has served as pastor at Grace Bible Church for 20 years, said that the issues he addresses with his congregants have changed over time and that counseling is a daily, and necessary, part of his ministry.

 

“I would say that there are more issues of complex relationships,” he said. “You always had the broken families, but there seems to be more cases of abuse, more cases of anger.”

 

Regina Green, who teaches counseling at Central Christian College of the Bible in Moberly, says that “deterioration of the family” has thrust clergy into different roles. Green, the wife of a pastor, tells students they could be overwhelmed by counseling once they become ministers and may have to set limits on their time.

 

“You never know who’s going to call, or, who’s going to walk through the door,” said the Rev. Amy Kay Pavolich, associate pastor of First Christian Church in Columbia. “I listen and provide pastoral care.”

 

Lawson says that being an effective minister, one who is able to listen, commiserate and guide, is not a matter of gender but of faith. “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, no slave or free, no male or female,” he said. “We are one in Christ.”

 

But, while pastors in Columbia do not believe women clergy have changed the profession, their increasing number is not without consequences, says Joan Hermsen, an associate professor of sociology at MU.

 

“The general theory is when women do work, we simply don’t value the work that women do as much as the work that men do,” Herman said. “Therefore, we don’t pay women the same.”

 

Hermsen noted that caregiving — including offering spiritual advice — has historically been regarded as women’s work. Hermsen predicts that as “feminine traits” become key to effective ministry, more women will be drawn to the profession. At the same time, she says, men today have more freedom to be nurturing than in previous generations, which could maintain the clergy as a calling of interest to both genders.

 

“Doing the so-called feminine type of work,” she says, “there is a greater latitude for men to do that type of work than less than 20 years ago.”