Pastors pastor women
I state the obvious: As a male pastor, I should be a pastor to women. It should not be said of my ministry that the men got good teaching, mentoring, and compassionate attention, but not so much the women. Female pastors may have these challenges too, but here I am focusing on men.
This is not always easy. As a man, it’s more natural to relate to men. Also, all the recent cases of pastoral misconduct strike fear in my heart. Wouldn’t it be safer for men just to relate to men and women to women? However, gospel reconciliation is a healing of the wound between men and women.
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How should that work in pastoring? When I preach, I will preach to both men and women. The women listening should feel I understand them and reach their hearts and minds. I will mentor both men and women as the next generation of leaders. My pastoral care should extend to both men and women. A teenager with gender dysphoria, a young mother with postpartum depression, a single 40-year-old woman, a widowed grandmother, all deserve to be prayed with and encouraged by their pastors to be strong daughters of Zion.
Of course, this all needs to be qualified. I am not saying any pastor needs to be everything for everybody. A team working together can minister widely.
Further, ethical boundaries in ministry are essential. Nothing ruins the church’s witness more than a pastor whom women cannot trust. Before becoming a pastor, a man needs to ask himself, can I be trusted in a room alone with a woman or a child? If there is any doubt, he should not be a pastor.
But ethical practices are there to make healthy pastoral ministry with women possible, not to make it unlikely. They provide safe places for a healthy, godly pastor to encourage, pray for, and work alongside women in the church. Each pastor will need to create a practice that’s comfortable for him (and his wife, if he’s married), that avoids even the appearance of wrong, that keeps relationships healthy, natural, and thus results in wonderful ministry with the women in the church.
Should male pastors meet one-on-one with women congregants? This deserves caution and will vary with the local culture, situation and individual. What makes this delicate is the power difference between a male pastor and a female congregant. A first test is to ask, are the women in my church comfortable meeting with male counsellors, chiropractors, doctors or other professionals? If so, then it could work for pastors as well, if like other professionals they have established practices and codes of ethics. It’s important that both the pastor and his spouse, and the women in the congregation all feel safe and comfortable with how the ministry is happening.
And this all needs to happen within churches where men and women have healthy friendships with the other gender. There are few places in society where young and old, married and single, can have meaningful friendships with the other gender. Church can be a rich place when this happens in a healthy and transformative way.
The pastor can lead this. Like Elijah provided for the widow of Zarephath, like Jesus shared water with the Samaritan woman, like he visited Mary and Martha’s home, like Peter prayed for Dorcas, like Paul befriended Lydia at the riverbank, like he taught Priscilla, like John wrote to “the lady chosen by God and to her children, whom I love in the truth” (2 John 1), pastors pastor everyone.
