check out the stats that the wesleyan church just released on women in ministry.
http://www.wesleyan.org/ME2/Audiences/dirmod.asp?sid=E7B47906A5AD4EC3AE3D3ED6DA544B63&type=gen&mod=Core%20Pages&gid=6AC0E9B553C547D58F66A17866567D65&AudID=299A16BD5B604108B06C70F8A8FDACA5
in this article released it addresses the numbers of women in ministry. the question i have are these statistics good, or at least show progress within the wesleyan church? my first guess is they are not. the other day i received in the mail "the wesleyan church directory" which has addresses for every pastor within the united states. now one can estimate that there are 35 names on each sheet with 125 pages. which we can estimate about 4400 pastors in the u.s.
400 of these are women whether they are ordained, licensed or still studying for the ministry. check out the stats and let me know what you think?
5 comments:
Hi Nate. I suspect the numbers will remain the same or perhaps very slowly increase in the next decade or so. My suspicion is based on the fact that I've "polled" most of my friends and aquaintances met in the last four years or so, and I estimate only about 10-15% of them agreeing that it is okay, with even fewer individuals endorcing it in the form of advocacy. It is usually women who are adamently against the idea.
Based purely on the stats available I'd have to disagree with Jo Hanson. There are currently more female ministerial students than ordained ministers. That tells me the number of female ordained ministers could double in the Wesleyan Church in the next few years. And I personally hope the doubling continues for several decades ;-)
I hope your right paul! I was just assuming that many of those female ministerial students are married and of child-bearing age, and as such probably won't make it into full-time ministry any time soon....
(but I shouldn't assume).
p.s. most of the people I "poll" are our very own wesleyans...
I'm with Paul in thinking that the number of female ministers has the potential to double in the next decade. However, the one potential roadblock is if those women can find jobs. Will churches hire them? Relegate them to staff positions? Allow them a chance to be senior pastors? If churches are willing to surrender their male dominated leadership paradigms, the number of women might very well double. Otherwise, we'll lose some of our best and brightest to other denominations.
one thing that scares me is the number of solo and senior pastors being so low. i also wonder with how many of these assistant are children pastors?
pk- i hope female pastors do double in size, i hope to see senior and solo pastors specifically grow even more so.
jo- i agree with you that some of these girls will get married and have kids so might miss out. but i also wonder if it is God weening out the ones that are not supposed to be there in the first place. in the same way God takes guys out of the ministry that are not supposed to be there.
kevin- the ideal is definately to have more females in leadership, but as drury always stated. the average male students (myself included) always find jobs before the extraordinary female students.
in the two staff situation i can see why this happens, a male senior pastor hires another male because of all the interaction that happens. they might want to rid themselves that might per chance hinder this.
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