This week in the Evangelical Twitterverse, a debate/war happened regarding The NINES conference’s speaker lineup featuring only four women. That might have not been such a big deal had there not been ONE-HUNDRED-AND-TWELVE speakers. Yeah, out of a 112 speakers, 4 were women.
Most of us have grown accustomed to the world of evangelical conferencing being a cesspool for gender inequality, BUT THAT is beyond ridiculous. Seriously, Todd Rhoades, the conference’s organizer–who might be a great guy!–should be ashamed, embarrassed, and apologizing all over himself.
Not because he got called out on Twitter.
But because he’s the director of a “leadership network” who describes himself as an “idea generator” and a “people connector”… and still, he organized a church leadership conference featuring a speaker lineup that was 96.4 percent male. Only in the evangelical church world can somebody be a leadership professional with a knack for networking and coming up with good ideas AND organize a conference featuring 4 woman out of 112 speakers…
And may I remind you that it’s 2013? TWO-THOUSAND-THIRTEEN.
In the real world, organizing a conference like The NINES would be considered poor leadership, a serious lack of networking skill, and a really awful idea. Why is it okay in the evangelical (non-Pentecostal) church world? WHY?
But rather than owning the failure, Todd offered excuses. Horrible excuses. Bullshit excuses.
According to Christianity Today…
Rhoades said that speaker invitations are driven by each year’s theme. Given that this year’s focus was “what’s working in churches”…
…The Nines focused on inviting senior pastors… “We [at Leadership Network] work with a lot of great women leaders. Unfortunately, not very many are lead pastors.”
He also said that a higher percentage of women than men declined invitations to speak.
These excuses are little more than a bad attempt to distract people from the truth about the situation…
That there should have been more female speakers at The NINES.
That there should have been female lead pastors included in the lineup.
That Todd should have sent out more invitations.
That Todd might want to rethink his Network’s approach to “networking.”
That as a so-called leader who organizes a national online conference that costs money to view, he should know and own the fact that booking 4 female speakers out of list of 112 speakers is inexcusable.
Because it is. It’s downright inexcusable. And yet many of us excuse it. Why? Are we afraid? Are we afraid that we might not get invited to XYZ Conference? Are we afraid of mean blog comments? Are afraid that speaking up might cause us to lose our “cool factor” in certain circles?
Oh I know what some of you are thinking… Where’s the grace? Where’s the mercy? Can’t we all get along…
And I hear you. However, it’s 2013, friends… and frankly I’m wondering the same questions…
Where is the grace for the thousands of female church leaders who serve their asses off for God and people, often doing that in spite of their working environments being dominated by men who use scripture as an excuse to be sexist?
Where’s their grace? Where’s their mercy? Why can’t we all get along?
Because I’m all about getting along. But my desire to get along does not mean I must be okay with the fact that much of the evangelical-church-leadership culture is a sexist male-dominated country club… a reality in which a majority of us are comfortable just letting be….
Well, I’m not okay with that. None of us should be. Evangelical men and women need to stand up and say enough is enough. And as far as I’m concerned remaining silent is taking the wrong side.
In the end, this isn’t about Todd’s blunder or the NINES conference, it’s about an evangelical culture that needs to pull its head out of the sand and start being intentional about gender equality.
Because enough is enough.
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Preach.
I still can’t get my head around the arrogance and condescension in the response from Rhoades. It made my skin crawl. And that article from Christianity today was such a spin piece, I’m still nauseated.
All the yeps.
“What’s working in churches?” I have found that most churches are focusing on hospitality or trying to find missions in their area. I can name 2 amazing women who work with churches and would do amazing jobs speaking on topics such as hospitality and the homeless or mission with people instead of to people.
The truth is these men who put together the conferences have not allowed women or acknowledged how women have contributed past the home making or music and church ministries.
In fact Todd Rhoades tweeted the fact that women can lend an important voice on topics such as pregnancy, abortion and marriage….again dismissing the voice of women in what works in a church and relegating the voices to the traditional places.
Thank you Matt for your voice giving credence to our voices.
I wish this was an isolated case… it is not. It’s true in the business world as well.
There was a time that symphonic orchestras would audition musicians behind a screen with carpeting so that all the jury would do is listen to the instrumentalist. No gender bias would be possible.
We are so concerned with containers and not with character… sad…
yuuup. if they want to be hierarchical (which it appears they do), they should just *own* that. but they can’t pretend to be well-meaning, cutting edge, or truly evangelical (as opposed to fundamentalist) and continue on this marginalizing path.
giant side-eye to Christianity Today’s mansplanation for it and to the fauxgressive speakers who co-signed the lack of diversity by agreeing to speak there.
Amen.
Being accused of “causing division” in church terms is usually just bullshit-ese for “I/we don’t like being called on the carpet, and I/we don’t have a good excuse for this.” Just a bunch of noise created to distract from the fact that a bunch of old dudes don’t want to shake up the good ol’ boys club and how things have always been. Dumb dumb dumb.
I would not be surprised to learn that most of the senior pastors who spoke were talking about “what works” were talking about ideas that women on their leadership team came up with and/or were charged with implementing. The lack of women speakers is terrible, but not giving them credit is worse. As a women in a non-SP role, this has happened to me more times than I can count. The evangelical church is one of the last places were it’s OK to be sexist and call it “differences in biblical interpretation.” So sad. I hope the next generation of women have it better.
PREACH till Kingdom come.
“These excuses are little more than a bad attempt to distract people….”
What would we do without MPT’s omniscience?
Agree, enough is enough… good piece.
But sadly I see this mindset continuing in the evangelical culture (and in many other religious cultures)… because almost all religions are based on texts that were written in ancient times when men ruled the world and women were seen as property.
So, welcome to the world of affirmative action, hard at work. Quotas welcome here. As I read the article, several women who were invited chose not to participate. The problem is that women who knew that this project has a history of too few women speakers, did nothing but whine.
Now we can be sure that next year’s event will be ultra sensitive to women’s needs so there will be a quota. Not necessarily because women want to be involved in successful growing churches with balanced budgets, but because they are such good whiners.
Every woman speaker will wonder, was I chosen on merit? There are so many good men preachers. There are so few good female preachers. In the last 20 years the number of women ministers in Main Line denominations has flourished. Their denominations are losing members and going broke. So maybe these women pastors need to step up, set higher goals, and achieve them.
I want a woman minister who gets up in the AM, spends her entire day in worship, fighting for the financial success and growth of her congregation, and if she notices an opportunity such as preaching on this 9 event, jumps at it.
Meh… To an “outsider” the whole “Nines” can seem like squabbling within a clubhouse… just like to an Elder, the Lead Pastor’s circle can seem like a club… just like to a deacon, the “executive elders” can seem like a club… just like to a church “member” the deacons can seem like a club… just like to a visitor, membership can seem like a club…
Many could benefit from C.S. Lewis’ elucidation on “The Inner Ring”; I know I have.