- Published on
Since this COVID-19 crisis it has had an untold impact on Christian higher education. The real impact has been the real personal impact on the students and my professor friends. What got me thinking was my alma mater Southeastern University just laid off 34 professors. Let that sink it -- 34 professors lost there jobs. Wow.
During this time I started to rethink why am I getting a Ph.D? And I've come to the simple conclusion:
I want to.
I want to solve a problem.
And I like it.
I'm so for my friends that are like me working towards a ministry focused Ph.D. (Bible, theology, or ministry) and those who are thinking about it -- here's some thoughts that I really wrestled with. So hear me clearly, I really don’t want to be a wet blanket, a dream crusher and I say my comments as a doctoral candidate myself. I'm simply sharing my own questions and observations, so here you go, hope it helps.
During this time I started to rethink why am I getting a Ph.D? And I've come to the simple conclusion:
I want to.
I want to solve a problem.
And I like it.
I'm so for my friends that are like me working towards a ministry focused Ph.D. (Bible, theology, or ministry) and those who are thinking about it -- here's some thoughts that I really wrestled with. So hear me clearly, I really don’t want to be a wet blanket, a dream crusher and I say my comments as a doctoral candidate myself. I'm simply sharing my own questions and observations, so here you go, hope it helps.
3 Considerations Why You Shouldn't Do a Ph.D.
1.) Professional Life. Frankly there are very few jobs that pay full employment as a professor preparing people for ministry. They simply don’t exist and if they do it's tied to a one year contract and you can be let go at any point (broadly speaking, of course there are exceptions). That's a tough life.
2.) Financial and Professional Cost. If you do a ministry focused Ph.D. you should absolutely not pay a dime for that degree. You should either have a full ride, a foundation/grant/job or rich uncle to pay for it. The economics simply don't work. Why would you do a Ph.D. in New Testament or practical theology and pay $85,000 for it when you "might" get a job making $65,000, and be employed on a renewable one-year contract. Then go to compete in a job market that isn't there because Christian institutions of higher education are not growing, and you're going to end up being an adjunct professor for five different schools to cobble together $34,000 a year, teaching 10 courses, without insurances, or retirement ? Welcome the job market - If you're lucky.
3.) Ivy League. If you do a Ph.D. and it happens to be at an Ivy League you might be able to compete in the market but you have to be absolutely extraordinary. I personally know a few PhD’s from top 10 schools that were not hired on as full-time faculty. They are in fields like economics, public policy, and management science, and of course ministry. Now those friends of mine found work in business, government and research but they didn't find an academic post. My ministry Ph.D. friends are still looking.
The #1 Consideration Why You Should Do a Ph.D.
Personal Mission. You want to. You want to solve a problem. And you like it.
There is only one reason to do a Ph.D. and that’s because you want to. You want to add to the body of literature on a subject and advance human knowledge. AND you view your Ph.D. research and teaching as a professional hobby, something to fund your retirement, vacation money or you need to remodel the kitchen.
You don’t do it for a job; you don’t do it because you want to be called “Dr”; You don’t do it because you wanna impress your parents or your kids. You do it because you have a problem and you wanna solve it and it’s 100% for personal mission. (And hopefully you save the world in the process.)
Well there's my 2 cents. I hope it was helpful and gave you some things to wrestle through. If you disagree with me, that's ok. It's my day off, now, I need to go work on my dissertation. Love ya!
1.) Professional Life. Frankly there are very few jobs that pay full employment as a professor preparing people for ministry. They simply don’t exist and if they do it's tied to a one year contract and you can be let go at any point (broadly speaking, of course there are exceptions). That's a tough life.
2.) Financial and Professional Cost. If you do a ministry focused Ph.D. you should absolutely not pay a dime for that degree. You should either have a full ride, a foundation/grant/job or rich uncle to pay for it. The economics simply don't work. Why would you do a Ph.D. in New Testament or practical theology and pay $85,000 for it when you "might" get a job making $65,000, and be employed on a renewable one-year contract. Then go to compete in a job market that isn't there because Christian institutions of higher education are not growing, and you're going to end up being an adjunct professor for five different schools to cobble together $34,000 a year, teaching 10 courses, without insurances, or retirement ? Welcome the job market - If you're lucky.
3.) Ivy League. If you do a Ph.D. and it happens to be at an Ivy League you might be able to compete in the market but you have to be absolutely extraordinary. I personally know a few PhD’s from top 10 schools that were not hired on as full-time faculty. They are in fields like economics, public policy, and management science, and of course ministry. Now those friends of mine found work in business, government and research but they didn't find an academic post. My ministry Ph.D. friends are still looking.
The #1 Consideration Why You Should Do a Ph.D.
Personal Mission. You want to. You want to solve a problem. And you like it.
There is only one reason to do a Ph.D. and that’s because you want to. You want to add to the body of literature on a subject and advance human knowledge. AND you view your Ph.D. research and teaching as a professional hobby, something to fund your retirement, vacation money or you need to remodel the kitchen.
You don’t do it for a job; you don’t do it because you want to be called “Dr”; You don’t do it because you wanna impress your parents or your kids. You do it because you have a problem and you wanna solve it and it’s 100% for personal mission. (And hopefully you save the world in the process.)
Well there's my 2 cents. I hope it was helpful and gave you some things to wrestle through. If you disagree with me, that's ok. It's my day off, now, I need to go work on my dissertation. Love ya!
- Published on
April 16, 2020, Washington D.C. The Center for Public Justice spotlighted Victory Church as a Sacred Sector Partner. The Sacred Sector is a learning community for faith-based organizations and emerging leaders within the faith-based nonprofit sector to integrate and fully embody their sacred mission in every area of organizational life. The original article is located here.
COVID-19 & Public Justice
BY JAMÉ BOLDS AND CHELSEA LANGSTON BOMBINO
Victory Church in Yorktown, Virginia is a congregation within the Assemblies of God fellowship whose mission is to “invite people to discover Jesus in everyday life.” This church emphasizes a holistic, incarnational gospel in its organizational core values to:
Victory Church is a 2018-2019 Sacred Sector Community participant, and has long shared a mutually beneficial relationship with the Center for Public Justice (CPJ), started through Victory Church Pastor Jamé Bolds. Through a mutually beneficial collaboration, Victory Church and Sacred Sector (an initiative of CPJ) strengthen each other as they seek, in community with other congregations and faith-based organizations, to live out their sacred animating beliefs, in every area of their organizational lives - even amid the current COVID-19 pandemic.
Lead Pastor Jamé Bolds, along with Missions Pastor Mark Shanks, approaches this current pandemic as an opportunity to live into his congregation’s faith-based commitments in everything they do, fulfilling their God-given responsibilities with respect to how they engage their own faith community, how they serve their broader Virginia community, how they coordinate with other congregations and community-serving organizations, and how they interact with government.
I (Chelsea Langston Bombino) first met Pastor Bolds a decade ago when we were both participants in the Center for Public Justice’s 2010 Civitas summer program. Civitas was a leadership program CPJ provided for a number of years, offered to graduate students, Ph.D. students and other young adults interested in civil political engagement. At the heart of the program, academics and future church, policy and government leaders came together in community to learn how a public justice framework in the Kuyperian principled pluralist tradition shapes every area of life. Civitas provided a philosophical and theological framework for living out a public justice framework for how Christian citizens could engage in political community, and offered participants the opportunity to apply this framework to their own academic research or distinct roles in the varied vocational offices in civil society.
Sacred Sector is also a learning community within CPJ which empowers participants, in this case faith-based organizational leaders, to apply a public justice perspective to their specific context. Sacred Sector uses a holistic framework to empower faith-based organizations and their leaders to integrate their faith into everything they do: 1.) how to understand and respond to public policies that impact their faith-based work, 2.) how to implement organizational best practices to advance their faith-based missions, and 3.) how to publicly position their faith-based impact. Sacred Sector calls this framework the “Three P’s,” empowering its participants to incarnate their sacred institutional identities (both their freedom and their responsibilities) in six key areas: religious staffing, government partnerships, positive engagement in the public square, sexual orientation and gender identity nondiscrimination laws, advocacy and lobbying, and family-supportive workplaces.
This “Three P’s” framework and Sacred Sector’s resources are especially relevant in this moment of living into our faith during COVID-19, as Pastor Bolds highlights in our interview below. He emphasizes that while religious freedom is a foundational value, it is a false appropriation of religious freedom when churches claim that following public health guidance meant to protect all of our communities, especially the most vulnerable, is somehow a violation of that freedom. To the contrary, Pastor Bolds encourages us to use “Spirit-filled logic” in navigating when we ought to prudentially claim our religious freedom has been limited. Rather, he suggests that public policy, organizational practices and public positioning can all work together to strengthen an organization’s capacities to live out it’s religious responsibilities in this moment.
Pastor Bolds now is the lead pastor of Victory and a Ph.D. candidate at Stellenbosch University. I interviewed Pastor Bolds (abbreviated as “JB”) and Victory Church Mission Pastor Mark Shanks (abbreviated as “MS”), to reflect on how Sacred Sector and Victory Church are helping each other to mutually grow in their capacities to advance their ministry’s mission:
Chelsea Langston Bombino (CLB): Pastor Bolds and Pastor Shanks, tell me a bit about how you view your vocational office in this church.
Jamé Bolds (JB): I do three things: I envision; I teach; I form leaders (networking). I love my Victors (those who call Victory Church home) and I’m consumed with helping you discover Jesus in five areas of your life: Discover Jesus (Spiritual Formation), Discover Myself (Personal Wholeness), Discover Others (Healthy Relationships), Discover Purpose (Vocational Clarity) and Discover Work (Economics). We have a way to help you discover those things; we call it the Victory Way. In 2020, we’ll be driving down this discipleship path which will help you grow in every aspect of your life.
Mark Shanks (MS): I was in a Guatemalan jungle when God revealed to me that I was called to pastor missionaries and expose people to the global God of Acts 1:8.
Here at Victory, I’m the outreach champion, responsible for having our church act as a "neighborhood to nations" as we support the work of our missionaries. My heart is to spread the good news globally, caring for missionaries that may feel isolated or discouraged.
In this moment of COVID-19, we are exercising what we call "Spirit logic,” or being led by the Holy Spirit, to navigate our church-based roles and responsibilities. Our congregation has moved to remote work, but that is a (metaphorical) floor, not a ceiling. Our childcare is also suspended for now, for the health and safety of our families. But it is not enough for churches to stop at practicing public health guidelines. We are called as the body of Christ to carefully consider how we can offer spiritual, physical, and relational resources to our communities, in coordination with others. Our spiritual calling, and our freedom to serve, during COVID-19, does not change; what changes is how we are called to innovate in how we exercise our religious freedom in a way that helps and does not harm our communities.
CLB: Can you give a picture of what Victory’s past, present and future hold? How does this relate to how it continues to be a congregation that seeks to embody its sacred purposes in everything it does?
JB: We are a fifty-year-old Assemblies of God congregation who has moved in three different locations over the past fifty years. My predecessor was here for the past twenty-five years. Our previous pastor had a vision for what church life would look like in twenty years and I really believe God gave him the bigger vision of this ministry. I often feel like Joshua finishing Moses' work. Just in terms of numbers when [Mark and I] came in, we had 28 people. We were losing $100,000 a year, and the church's preschool was basically broke. The building was pretty much in disrepair. The church had $1 million in debt. When I started, my main resources available to me were spiritual resources: the Holy Spirit, God’s word, God’s grace, and a bunch of prayer! I knew when Pastor Jennifer and I came to Victory that God had called us to pastor a city, not just a church. Understanding your spiritual identity and foundational sacred beliefs are crucial. You can’t live out what you don’t understand and articulate. We had very little technique, but by God's grace five years later the building is completely rebuilt, we are at capacity in the preschool, we are 100% debt free, the congregation has grown by 300 percent and Pastor Mark has come on board as our Missions Pastor.
The theological and practical turning point to church revitalization was when we started to tithe to missions. We wanted to be a church that was embedded in our community. We now have a foundation that will keep the church going in perpetuity.
At a Christmas party, Mark walked up to me and said: "I want to be a Missions Pastor." So Mark came into a residency for two years and then became a Missions Pastor. The model of giving that Victory has undertaken is based on God’s word. We seek to embody the same values Sacred Sector espouses when you talk about incarnating your sacred texts and beliefs into your institutional practices. We think what we have could really be a national model for giving.
Acts 1:8 states: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” This is the vision of how we tithe, we believe our missions work must be investing in Jerusalem (local community), Judea (our larger region) and throughout the world. When we were putting this together, Mark and I came to the conclusion that it was really a team effort. Most churches would only give between $20-$50 a month per missionary. We know that it costs missionaries a multiplier by three to raise the money -- so it will cost a missionary 50 to 75 dollars to raise 20 dollars. We look at two things: (1) Do we have a relationship with you, and (2) are you effective? We want to build a relationship with you if you are effective. So we started to give a substantial amount of money to fewer missionaries who are doing what no one else does, and who know how to measure their effectiveness. We want to plant good seeds in the ground and it is not just going to help anyone just sitting at the church - the simple concept of sowing and reaping. We started applying sound neo-liberal economic theories to missions and developed a sustainable economic model.
During COVID-19, principled pluralism is a very powerful framework, and it guides everything I do, including how we prioritize missions during this time. If our congregation and our missionaries can understand the normative framework and the nomenclature of principled pluralism, they will be able to see why it is so vital during COVID-19 that they not just evaluate their own distinct God-given gifts and way they can serve in this moment as individuals, whether they are local, national, or throughout the world, but it is essential that they can have a vision for the institutions and communities of which they are a part, and those around them. Principled pluralism requires that missionaries navigating COVID-19, no matter where they are, think about how they can help their institutions develop and innovate new means and norms to live out their God-given roles.
Mark Shanks (MS): It was a walk of faith. It was a marriage basically. I had been in three different churches and I saw things that could have been improved about the outlook. Jamé started his career at a think tank, so he brings those economic and philanthropic ideas and things just started joining together. And then when I started really talking with missionaries and other churches, there was this difference that says "oh yeah, we give to missions." The radical element of change was Malachi 3:10 (NASB): “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in My house, and test Me now in this,' says the LORD of hosts, 'if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you a blessing until it overflows.” We started seeking the Lord to help us incarnate this vision of this verse in our congregational missions practices. We started asking, what does it look like to tithe your income to missions according to this verse? Why doesn't the church tithe to missions? They have an income coming in, don't they? Giving is a benevolence thing to do. Tithing is a faith thing.
JB: We look for creative innovation. We look to be strategic thought partners with the missionaries we support. We love missionaries who allow us to come to the table in thought leadership and strategic input. Our heart goes before the checkbook. With our missionaries, it is a culture of yes.
CLB: Besides Victory’s missions work, can you discuss how your congregation has lived out its faith-based mission?
JB: Especially with respect to COVID-19, there is a distinction between fear and caution. Fear is real, but we believe our Victors (congregants) don't give into a level of fear. And we certainly don't want to get into this whole "Well the government cannot tell me what to do because we are a church we can do what we want this is a religious freedom problem." Well, that is not accurate. This is not a religious freedom problem, unless the government singles out faith-based institutions. This is how the government is advising every institution in society. Christians should recommend their congregants be good citizens by following public health guidance and government recommendations.
For example, the local Baptist church is handing out lunches where we live. I called them up and asked, "how can we help?" The Baptist church told us what they were doing was unsustainable, that they could only serve the local kids for two weeks without community partners. They had not necessarily thought through how to coordinate with local government or with other congregations and community-serving organizations. We suggested, what if each congregational community and faith-based organization and local government agency could bring their distinct assets to the table, the things they are most strong in, and coordinate together to serve the community holistically? Our Baptist friends did an amazing job filling the gap between the private and public sector now the local schools were caught up in there lunch program.
Even before COVID-19, our congregational leadership has tried to live into this vision of coordinating institutions to live out their God-given roles. We have grown; we own over 20 acres, we have a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the YMCA. We are talking about a second site for preschool, and are in negotiation with an elderly care organization. As we have grown, CPJ’s philosophy has helped us navigate the interconnectedness between our ministry and the public square. We are living that out. We lost a deacon who said that churches should not have any community partnerships, and they simply did not support our collaboration with the YMCA. It was sad and we mourned the loss. The perceived sacred and secular divide is real and we simply believe that all of the created order is sacred. Every square inch.
CLB: By engaging in mutually beneficial strategic partnerships with groups like Victory, and with the strategic input you both bring, Sacred Sector will be able to more clearly integrate a biblically rooted framework into everything we do. Victory and CPJ share a vision of mutually refining one another through our collaboration with one another. We are engaging as co-investors and as co-laborers in catalyzing institutions and individuals with the capacity to engage in policy-shaping aligned with a principled pluralist framework. Through the process of shaping Sacred Sector’s resources to reflect a biblically rooted, principled pluralist framework, leaders will in turn be strengthened to engage more fully in both their own scholarship and citizenship in the support of a robust and diverse faith-based social sector. What can Sacred Sector keep doing to deepen our partnership with you and other congregational communities like yours?
JB: I would like to see more legal templates and case studies. I think we could develop more practical language for how churches can navigate this space. We really valued CPJ’s eldercare resource in 2019. We just launched an opportunity for a $31 million retirement community. CPJ's research, principles, and case studies on eldercare have really inspired us to keep pursuing this work.
The book of Habakkuk speaks all about disease and pestilence. And Habakkuk asks in the first two chapters: "Why does this happen, why?" And in chapter three God tells him he is going to write the vision for peace and redemption down, in the midst of peace. Principled pluralism gives us public language to speak to people. As a local church, what can we do to advance the common good? What is the common good? As Christians, that is a beautiful place to be, because you can't have the common good without the Good News. You can't have the Great Commission without the Great Compassion, it doesn't exist; it is contrary to the Christian faith.
______________________________________________________________
Jamé Bolds, Ph.D. Candidate (Universiteit Stellenbosch) is the lead pastor of Victory Church (Yorktown, VA).
Chelsea Langston Bombino is the director of Sacred Sector, an initiative of the Center for Public Justice.
BY JAMÉ BOLDS AND CHELSEA LANGSTON BOMBINO
Victory Church in Yorktown, Virginia is a congregation within the Assemblies of God fellowship whose mission is to “invite people to discover Jesus in everyday life.” This church emphasizes a holistic, incarnational gospel in its organizational core values to:
- Discover Jesus (Spiritual Formation)
- Discover Myself (Personal Wholeness)
- Discover Others (Healthy Relationships)
- Discover Purpose (Vocational Clarity), and
- Discover Work (Economics)
Victory Church is a 2018-2019 Sacred Sector Community participant, and has long shared a mutually beneficial relationship with the Center for Public Justice (CPJ), started through Victory Church Pastor Jamé Bolds. Through a mutually beneficial collaboration, Victory Church and Sacred Sector (an initiative of CPJ) strengthen each other as they seek, in community with other congregations and faith-based organizations, to live out their sacred animating beliefs, in every area of their organizational lives - even amid the current COVID-19 pandemic.
Lead Pastor Jamé Bolds, along with Missions Pastor Mark Shanks, approaches this current pandemic as an opportunity to live into his congregation’s faith-based commitments in everything they do, fulfilling their God-given responsibilities with respect to how they engage their own faith community, how they serve their broader Virginia community, how they coordinate with other congregations and community-serving organizations, and how they interact with government.
I (Chelsea Langston Bombino) first met Pastor Bolds a decade ago when we were both participants in the Center for Public Justice’s 2010 Civitas summer program. Civitas was a leadership program CPJ provided for a number of years, offered to graduate students, Ph.D. students and other young adults interested in civil political engagement. At the heart of the program, academics and future church, policy and government leaders came together in community to learn how a public justice framework in the Kuyperian principled pluralist tradition shapes every area of life. Civitas provided a philosophical and theological framework for living out a public justice framework for how Christian citizens could engage in political community, and offered participants the opportunity to apply this framework to their own academic research or distinct roles in the varied vocational offices in civil society.
Sacred Sector is also a learning community within CPJ which empowers participants, in this case faith-based organizational leaders, to apply a public justice perspective to their specific context. Sacred Sector uses a holistic framework to empower faith-based organizations and their leaders to integrate their faith into everything they do: 1.) how to understand and respond to public policies that impact their faith-based work, 2.) how to implement organizational best practices to advance their faith-based missions, and 3.) how to publicly position their faith-based impact. Sacred Sector calls this framework the “Three P’s,” empowering its participants to incarnate their sacred institutional identities (both their freedom and their responsibilities) in six key areas: religious staffing, government partnerships, positive engagement in the public square, sexual orientation and gender identity nondiscrimination laws, advocacy and lobbying, and family-supportive workplaces.
This “Three P’s” framework and Sacred Sector’s resources are especially relevant in this moment of living into our faith during COVID-19, as Pastor Bolds highlights in our interview below. He emphasizes that while religious freedom is a foundational value, it is a false appropriation of religious freedom when churches claim that following public health guidance meant to protect all of our communities, especially the most vulnerable, is somehow a violation of that freedom. To the contrary, Pastor Bolds encourages us to use “Spirit-filled logic” in navigating when we ought to prudentially claim our religious freedom has been limited. Rather, he suggests that public policy, organizational practices and public positioning can all work together to strengthen an organization’s capacities to live out it’s religious responsibilities in this moment.
Pastor Bolds now is the lead pastor of Victory and a Ph.D. candidate at Stellenbosch University. I interviewed Pastor Bolds (abbreviated as “JB”) and Victory Church Mission Pastor Mark Shanks (abbreviated as “MS”), to reflect on how Sacred Sector and Victory Church are helping each other to mutually grow in their capacities to advance their ministry’s mission:
Chelsea Langston Bombino (CLB): Pastor Bolds and Pastor Shanks, tell me a bit about how you view your vocational office in this church.
Jamé Bolds (JB): I do three things: I envision; I teach; I form leaders (networking). I love my Victors (those who call Victory Church home) and I’m consumed with helping you discover Jesus in five areas of your life: Discover Jesus (Spiritual Formation), Discover Myself (Personal Wholeness), Discover Others (Healthy Relationships), Discover Purpose (Vocational Clarity) and Discover Work (Economics). We have a way to help you discover those things; we call it the Victory Way. In 2020, we’ll be driving down this discipleship path which will help you grow in every aspect of your life.
Mark Shanks (MS): I was in a Guatemalan jungle when God revealed to me that I was called to pastor missionaries and expose people to the global God of Acts 1:8.
Here at Victory, I’m the outreach champion, responsible for having our church act as a "neighborhood to nations" as we support the work of our missionaries. My heart is to spread the good news globally, caring for missionaries that may feel isolated or discouraged.
In this moment of COVID-19, we are exercising what we call "Spirit logic,” or being led by the Holy Spirit, to navigate our church-based roles and responsibilities. Our congregation has moved to remote work, but that is a (metaphorical) floor, not a ceiling. Our childcare is also suspended for now, for the health and safety of our families. But it is not enough for churches to stop at practicing public health guidelines. We are called as the body of Christ to carefully consider how we can offer spiritual, physical, and relational resources to our communities, in coordination with others. Our spiritual calling, and our freedom to serve, during COVID-19, does not change; what changes is how we are called to innovate in how we exercise our religious freedom in a way that helps and does not harm our communities.
CLB: Can you give a picture of what Victory’s past, present and future hold? How does this relate to how it continues to be a congregation that seeks to embody its sacred purposes in everything it does?
JB: We are a fifty-year-old Assemblies of God congregation who has moved in three different locations over the past fifty years. My predecessor was here for the past twenty-five years. Our previous pastor had a vision for what church life would look like in twenty years and I really believe God gave him the bigger vision of this ministry. I often feel like Joshua finishing Moses' work. Just in terms of numbers when [Mark and I] came in, we had 28 people. We were losing $100,000 a year, and the church's preschool was basically broke. The building was pretty much in disrepair. The church had $1 million in debt. When I started, my main resources available to me were spiritual resources: the Holy Spirit, God’s word, God’s grace, and a bunch of prayer! I knew when Pastor Jennifer and I came to Victory that God had called us to pastor a city, not just a church. Understanding your spiritual identity and foundational sacred beliefs are crucial. You can’t live out what you don’t understand and articulate. We had very little technique, but by God's grace five years later the building is completely rebuilt, we are at capacity in the preschool, we are 100% debt free, the congregation has grown by 300 percent and Pastor Mark has come on board as our Missions Pastor.
The theological and practical turning point to church revitalization was when we started to tithe to missions. We wanted to be a church that was embedded in our community. We now have a foundation that will keep the church going in perpetuity.
At a Christmas party, Mark walked up to me and said: "I want to be a Missions Pastor." So Mark came into a residency for two years and then became a Missions Pastor. The model of giving that Victory has undertaken is based on God’s word. We seek to embody the same values Sacred Sector espouses when you talk about incarnating your sacred texts and beliefs into your institutional practices. We think what we have could really be a national model for giving.
Acts 1:8 states: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” This is the vision of how we tithe, we believe our missions work must be investing in Jerusalem (local community), Judea (our larger region) and throughout the world. When we were putting this together, Mark and I came to the conclusion that it was really a team effort. Most churches would only give between $20-$50 a month per missionary. We know that it costs missionaries a multiplier by three to raise the money -- so it will cost a missionary 50 to 75 dollars to raise 20 dollars. We look at two things: (1) Do we have a relationship with you, and (2) are you effective? We want to build a relationship with you if you are effective. So we started to give a substantial amount of money to fewer missionaries who are doing what no one else does, and who know how to measure their effectiveness. We want to plant good seeds in the ground and it is not just going to help anyone just sitting at the church - the simple concept of sowing and reaping. We started applying sound neo-liberal economic theories to missions and developed a sustainable economic model.
During COVID-19, principled pluralism is a very powerful framework, and it guides everything I do, including how we prioritize missions during this time. If our congregation and our missionaries can understand the normative framework and the nomenclature of principled pluralism, they will be able to see why it is so vital during COVID-19 that they not just evaluate their own distinct God-given gifts and way they can serve in this moment as individuals, whether they are local, national, or throughout the world, but it is essential that they can have a vision for the institutions and communities of which they are a part, and those around them. Principled pluralism requires that missionaries navigating COVID-19, no matter where they are, think about how they can help their institutions develop and innovate new means and norms to live out their God-given roles.
Mark Shanks (MS): It was a walk of faith. It was a marriage basically. I had been in three different churches and I saw things that could have been improved about the outlook. Jamé started his career at a think tank, so he brings those economic and philanthropic ideas and things just started joining together. And then when I started really talking with missionaries and other churches, there was this difference that says "oh yeah, we give to missions." The radical element of change was Malachi 3:10 (NASB): “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in My house, and test Me now in this,' says the LORD of hosts, 'if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you a blessing until it overflows.” We started seeking the Lord to help us incarnate this vision of this verse in our congregational missions practices. We started asking, what does it look like to tithe your income to missions according to this verse? Why doesn't the church tithe to missions? They have an income coming in, don't they? Giving is a benevolence thing to do. Tithing is a faith thing.
JB: We look for creative innovation. We look to be strategic thought partners with the missionaries we support. We love missionaries who allow us to come to the table in thought leadership and strategic input. Our heart goes before the checkbook. With our missionaries, it is a culture of yes.
CLB: Besides Victory’s missions work, can you discuss how your congregation has lived out its faith-based mission?
JB: Especially with respect to COVID-19, there is a distinction between fear and caution. Fear is real, but we believe our Victors (congregants) don't give into a level of fear. And we certainly don't want to get into this whole "Well the government cannot tell me what to do because we are a church we can do what we want this is a religious freedom problem." Well, that is not accurate. This is not a religious freedom problem, unless the government singles out faith-based institutions. This is how the government is advising every institution in society. Christians should recommend their congregants be good citizens by following public health guidance and government recommendations.
For example, the local Baptist church is handing out lunches where we live. I called them up and asked, "how can we help?" The Baptist church told us what they were doing was unsustainable, that they could only serve the local kids for two weeks without community partners. They had not necessarily thought through how to coordinate with local government or with other congregations and community-serving organizations. We suggested, what if each congregational community and faith-based organization and local government agency could bring their distinct assets to the table, the things they are most strong in, and coordinate together to serve the community holistically? Our Baptist friends did an amazing job filling the gap between the private and public sector now the local schools were caught up in there lunch program.
Even before COVID-19, our congregational leadership has tried to live into this vision of coordinating institutions to live out their God-given roles. We have grown; we own over 20 acres, we have a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the YMCA. We are talking about a second site for preschool, and are in negotiation with an elderly care organization. As we have grown, CPJ’s philosophy has helped us navigate the interconnectedness between our ministry and the public square. We are living that out. We lost a deacon who said that churches should not have any community partnerships, and they simply did not support our collaboration with the YMCA. It was sad and we mourned the loss. The perceived sacred and secular divide is real and we simply believe that all of the created order is sacred. Every square inch.
CLB: By engaging in mutually beneficial strategic partnerships with groups like Victory, and with the strategic input you both bring, Sacred Sector will be able to more clearly integrate a biblically rooted framework into everything we do. Victory and CPJ share a vision of mutually refining one another through our collaboration with one another. We are engaging as co-investors and as co-laborers in catalyzing institutions and individuals with the capacity to engage in policy-shaping aligned with a principled pluralist framework. Through the process of shaping Sacred Sector’s resources to reflect a biblically rooted, principled pluralist framework, leaders will in turn be strengthened to engage more fully in both their own scholarship and citizenship in the support of a robust and diverse faith-based social sector. What can Sacred Sector keep doing to deepen our partnership with you and other congregational communities like yours?
JB: I would like to see more legal templates and case studies. I think we could develop more practical language for how churches can navigate this space. We really valued CPJ’s eldercare resource in 2019. We just launched an opportunity for a $31 million retirement community. CPJ's research, principles, and case studies on eldercare have really inspired us to keep pursuing this work.
The book of Habakkuk speaks all about disease and pestilence. And Habakkuk asks in the first two chapters: "Why does this happen, why?" And in chapter three God tells him he is going to write the vision for peace and redemption down, in the midst of peace. Principled pluralism gives us public language to speak to people. As a local church, what can we do to advance the common good? What is the common good? As Christians, that is a beautiful place to be, because you can't have the common good without the Good News. You can't have the Great Commission without the Great Compassion, it doesn't exist; it is contrary to the Christian faith.
______________________________________________________________
Jamé Bolds, Ph.D. Candidate (Universiteit Stellenbosch) is the lead pastor of Victory Church (Yorktown, VA).
Chelsea Langston Bombino is the director of Sacred Sector, an initiative of the Center for Public Justice.
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Here's an excerpt from my paper, A Case Study in Practical Theology, Addressing Economic Violence Towards Women: Three Considerations, which will be presented at the Society of Pentecostal Studies, in Los Angeles.
A working theological female anthropology served as a theological motivation that calibrated our applied economic wisdom. Broadly speaking economist talk about the notion of homo economicus as a concept of viewing human beings as rational and self-interested individuals who purse wealth solely by maximizing outcomes. It is considered to be first used by John Stuart Mills in 1836, in an essay “On the definition of Political Economy and on the method of investigation proper to it". Where he states,
"[Political economy] does not treat the whole of man’s nature as modified by the social state, nor of the whole conduct of man in society. It is concerned with him solely as a being who desires to possess wealth, and who is capable of judging the comparative efficacy of means for obtaining that end." [1]
Adam Smith states, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.”[2] As much debated as this concept is and that many sociologist, psychologists and economists argue that there are structural impediments to why self-interest is not carried out or simply disagree with the anthropological construction. The reality is though most economic life is based on this notion.
A significant pastoral challenge arises when working with these women through an “economic salvation experience”, if you will, which is one moving them from homo economicus, “I work to survive” to a homo imago Dei reality of “I am made in the image of God and I have a part of a flourishing in this world”. Brian Fikkert, of the Chalmers Center states, “…Economic exchange is essential for human flourishing, enabling humans to specialize according to their individual gifts and callings in order to jointly steward God’s creation.”[3] Helping these three women to think deeply and spiritually about how they are made in the homo imago dei and the image contribution looks like in an economic exchange for their flourishing of their families. This has been a turning point not only in their practical economic life but in their spiritual formation.
"[Political economy] does not treat the whole of man’s nature as modified by the social state, nor of the whole conduct of man in society. It is concerned with him solely as a being who desires to possess wealth, and who is capable of judging the comparative efficacy of means for obtaining that end." [1]
Adam Smith states, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.”[2] As much debated as this concept is and that many sociologist, psychologists and economists argue that there are structural impediments to why self-interest is not carried out or simply disagree with the anthropological construction. The reality is though most economic life is based on this notion.
A significant pastoral challenge arises when working with these women through an “economic salvation experience”, if you will, which is one moving them from homo economicus, “I work to survive” to a homo imago Dei reality of “I am made in the image of God and I have a part of a flourishing in this world”. Brian Fikkert, of the Chalmers Center states, “…Economic exchange is essential for human flourishing, enabling humans to specialize according to their individual gifts and callings in order to jointly steward God’s creation.”[3] Helping these three women to think deeply and spiritually about how they are made in the homo imago dei and the image contribution looks like in an economic exchange for their flourishing of their families. This has been a turning point not only in their practical economic life but in their spiritual formation.
Much of our historical understanding of the imago dei has been built around male identity and then described in language of “subduing” the earth. This is been a pastoral blind spot for myself because I have never really thought about female notions of imago dei until I came to this point with these three women. This experience has forced me to think differently and see imago dei in terms of relationship. Megan DeFranza notes,
"Although he was not the first to do so, Karl Barth (1886-1968) is often credited for challenging the traditional interpretations of the imago Dei. Rather than understanding the image as the soul’s ability to reason, or human responsibility to rule over creation, Barth looked to the creation of Adam and Eve as a symbolic picture, an image of the Trinity. In Genesis 1:26, God said, “Let us make humankind in our image,” and then what does God make? Not one but two, a man and a woman, who are to “become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24 NRSV). Just as God is a plurality and unity, three in one, so humankind, created in God’s image, exists as two who are called to become one. Thus, after Barth, we find that human sex difference and human sexuality (the means by which these two become one) are being taken up into theological accounts of what it means to be made in the image of God.[4]"
Mary McClintock Fulkerson notes that the image of God is a weighty doctrine because “the image is a symbolic condensation of what in the Christian tradition means to be fully human. In important respects the imago Dei can serve as an index of whom the tradition has seen as fully human.”[5] Such a thought is a pastoral reality check and especially important for Pentecostal praxis in church life. As Joy Qualls, of Biola University recounts us, “In the early years, Pentecostalism was committed to all people as equal participants specially the marginalized. Women, the poor, those with little formal education, people of color worked and worship with people of financial means and cultural status. Each had a place in an obligation and spreading the Pentecostal message”.[6]
As we were given pastoral permission to be involved at a deeper detail of these women’s lives, we began to see the subversive nature of what we were attempting to do. I remember clearly there was a time in reflection where I came to grips that it is not enough to care for the spiritual and emotional life we must have direct intervention and these women’s economic life. One of the matriarchs of our modern Pentecostal movement Cheryl Bridges John’s notes that Pentecostalism is subversive and revolutionary movement, had a dual prophetic role: denouncing the dominant patterns of the status quo and announcing the patterns of God’s order.[7] These women benefited greatly when we begin to operationalize these new patterns of God’s order.
[1] Mill, John Stuart. "On the Definition of Political Economy, and on the Method of Investigation Proper to It," Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy.
[2] Smith, Adam. “On the Division of Labour,” The Wealth of Nations, Books I–III. 1986
[3] Brian Fikkert and Michael Rhodes, "Homo Economicus Versus Homo Imago Dei," Journal of Markets & Morality 20, no. 1 (Spring 2017
[4] DeFranza, Megan K. Sex Difference in Christian Theology: Male, Female, and Intersex in the Image of God, 2015.
[5] Mary McClintock Fulkerson, “The Imago Dei and a Reformed Logic for Feminist/Womanist Critique,” in Feminist and Womanist Essays in Reformed Dogmatics, 95.
[6] Qualls, Joy E. God Forgive Us for Being Women: Rhetoric, Theology, and the Pentecostal Tradition, 2018.
[7] Johns, Cheryl B. "The Adolescence of Pentecostalism: In Search of a Legitimate Sectarian Identity." Pneuma 17, no. 1 (1995)
"Although he was not the first to do so, Karl Barth (1886-1968) is often credited for challenging the traditional interpretations of the imago Dei. Rather than understanding the image as the soul’s ability to reason, or human responsibility to rule over creation, Barth looked to the creation of Adam and Eve as a symbolic picture, an image of the Trinity. In Genesis 1:26, God said, “Let us make humankind in our image,” and then what does God make? Not one but two, a man and a woman, who are to “become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24 NRSV). Just as God is a plurality and unity, three in one, so humankind, created in God’s image, exists as two who are called to become one. Thus, after Barth, we find that human sex difference and human sexuality (the means by which these two become one) are being taken up into theological accounts of what it means to be made in the image of God.[4]"
Mary McClintock Fulkerson notes that the image of God is a weighty doctrine because “the image is a symbolic condensation of what in the Christian tradition means to be fully human. In important respects the imago Dei can serve as an index of whom the tradition has seen as fully human.”[5] Such a thought is a pastoral reality check and especially important for Pentecostal praxis in church life. As Joy Qualls, of Biola University recounts us, “In the early years, Pentecostalism was committed to all people as equal participants specially the marginalized. Women, the poor, those with little formal education, people of color worked and worship with people of financial means and cultural status. Each had a place in an obligation and spreading the Pentecostal message”.[6]
As we were given pastoral permission to be involved at a deeper detail of these women’s lives, we began to see the subversive nature of what we were attempting to do. I remember clearly there was a time in reflection where I came to grips that it is not enough to care for the spiritual and emotional life we must have direct intervention and these women’s economic life. One of the matriarchs of our modern Pentecostal movement Cheryl Bridges John’s notes that Pentecostalism is subversive and revolutionary movement, had a dual prophetic role: denouncing the dominant patterns of the status quo and announcing the patterns of God’s order.[7] These women benefited greatly when we begin to operationalize these new patterns of God’s order.
[1] Mill, John Stuart. "On the Definition of Political Economy, and on the Method of Investigation Proper to It," Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy.
[2] Smith, Adam. “On the Division of Labour,” The Wealth of Nations, Books I–III. 1986
[3] Brian Fikkert and Michael Rhodes, "Homo Economicus Versus Homo Imago Dei," Journal of Markets & Morality 20, no. 1 (Spring 2017
[4] DeFranza, Megan K. Sex Difference in Christian Theology: Male, Female, and Intersex in the Image of God, 2015.
[5] Mary McClintock Fulkerson, “The Imago Dei and a Reformed Logic for Feminist/Womanist Critique,” in Feminist and Womanist Essays in Reformed Dogmatics, 95.
[6] Qualls, Joy E. God Forgive Us for Being Women: Rhetoric, Theology, and the Pentecostal Tradition, 2018.
[7] Johns, Cheryl B. "The Adolescence of Pentecostalism: In Search of a Legitimate Sectarian Identity." Pneuma 17, no. 1 (1995)
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For a decade, I have been a member of the Society for Pentecostal Studies and have enjoyed the unique mix that is church wo/men and traditional ivy league Ph.D. scholars. In 2020, the conference theme is "This is My Body": Addressing Global Violence Against Women, as I thought about the theme I began to realize that we at Victory Church live in highly military area and address this issue head on and we've had a few successes in this area.
I think and write on theology and economics not women's issues. Though I'm experiencing and seeing there's real economic violence towards women and I should probably explore this space...
I haven't written this paper yet but here's my opening thoughts. If you have any research on this I'd love to see it. Enjoy.
A Case Study in Practical Theology, Addressing Economic Violence Towards Women: Three Considerations.
Presentation Synopsis *
Statement of Problem. Modern pastoral leadership's portfolio has expanded immensely. Such expansion has exposed a gap in both pastoral leaderships economic wisdom, and a theological calibration as applied to economies of scale in public ministry. Ethnographically, women continue to be silenced victims of economic violence in that they are not included in market activities thus structurally isolated from participation.
Scope. This paper is a case study in applied practical theology toward economic violence to women. Over the past two years our church has learned lessons in applying theological reflection to three foundational economic principles: scarcity, efficiency and sovereignty in three different women's dangerous situations.
Discussion of Methodology. Reflecting on ethnographic "going native" methodologies, our church has seen women's lives in desperate need of theological navigation within the modern economic terrain. When employing scarcity, efficiency and sovereignty our church has been able to bring women out of economic exile where they are now market active.
Tentative Conclusion. Though we have been successful in three women's lives our church has learned that liberal economies of scale are unstable and fluid. When thinking theologically about scarcity, efficiency and sovereignty market forces can be anticipated but not in economies of scale. A contextualized theology of suffering has been discovered as we navigate creating markets of opportunity.
A Case Study in Practical Theology, Addressing Economic Violence Towards Women: Three Considerations.
Presentation Synopsis *
Statement of Problem. Modern pastoral leadership's portfolio has expanded immensely. Such expansion has exposed a gap in both pastoral leaderships economic wisdom, and a theological calibration as applied to economies of scale in public ministry. Ethnographically, women continue to be silenced victims of economic violence in that they are not included in market activities thus structurally isolated from participation.
Scope. This paper is a case study in applied practical theology toward economic violence to women. Over the past two years our church has learned lessons in applying theological reflection to three foundational economic principles: scarcity, efficiency and sovereignty in three different women's dangerous situations.
Discussion of Methodology. Reflecting on ethnographic "going native" methodologies, our church has seen women's lives in desperate need of theological navigation within the modern economic terrain. When employing scarcity, efficiency and sovereignty our church has been able to bring women out of economic exile where they are now market active.
Tentative Conclusion. Though we have been successful in three women's lives our church has learned that liberal economies of scale are unstable and fluid. When thinking theologically about scarcity, efficiency and sovereignty market forces can be anticipated but not in economies of scale. A contextualized theology of suffering has been discovered as we navigate creating markets of opportunity.
- Published on
Here's a talk that I gave on "Discipleship for Busy Pastors" for Dr. Svetlana Papazov, the lead pastor and founder of Real Life Church and Real Life Center for Entrepreneurial and Leadership Excellence. Dr. Papazov is also a City Leader for Made to Flourish, a network of pastors addressing faith, work and economics. It was a joy and privilege!
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The Pastoral Task
Thus far in 2019, I have considered one major question, "What is the task of pastoral work?" In other words, what should pastors be doing? Pastoral job descriptions are often thought of in three categories: the preacher, the counselor, and the leader. Which is fine but I think there's something more here.
Right or Wrong, I have come to the conclusion that the #1 task of a pastor is to love people. It's that simple and yet that powerful.
I often think of Paul in 1 Corinthians 3:1,"If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal." In short if pastors don't love people then they basically have lost their ministry. They can probably preach and lead well, but if they really don't love people, they really aren't leading people.
I am struck by the power of love. Love takes on many, many forms and shows itself in unique ways. I love public intellectual Charlie Self's definition of work, "All meaningful and moral activity apart from leisure and rest." When we think of work we often think of it as only narrow economic constraints of time traded for money. Though pastoral work goes beyond a paycheck. It's investing in people's lives.
Sometimes love is work and sometimes work is love.
Many times in pastoral "work" it's "work" to love people. Once in while you'll land in a great church were people are awesome, like Victory Church, my Victors are beautiful people. They love to be loved. I'm reminded of 1 Peter 3:8 when he states, "Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble." I've learned to give people the benefit of the doubt.
You really don't know the kind of pain that people are living in. Believe me it's a lot.
Thus far in 2019, I have considered one major question, "What is the task of pastoral work?" In other words, what should pastors be doing? Pastoral job descriptions are often thought of in three categories: the preacher, the counselor, and the leader. Which is fine but I think there's something more here.
Right or Wrong, I have come to the conclusion that the #1 task of a pastor is to love people. It's that simple and yet that powerful.
I often think of Paul in 1 Corinthians 3:1,"If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal." In short if pastors don't love people then they basically have lost their ministry. They can probably preach and lead well, but if they really don't love people, they really aren't leading people.
I am struck by the power of love. Love takes on many, many forms and shows itself in unique ways. I love public intellectual Charlie Self's definition of work, "All meaningful and moral activity apart from leisure and rest." When we think of work we often think of it as only narrow economic constraints of time traded for money. Though pastoral work goes beyond a paycheck. It's investing in people's lives.
Sometimes love is work and sometimes work is love.
Many times in pastoral "work" it's "work" to love people. Once in while you'll land in a great church were people are awesome, like Victory Church, my Victors are beautiful people. They love to be loved. I'm reminded of 1 Peter 3:8 when he states, "Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble." I've learned to give people the benefit of the doubt.
You really don't know the kind of pain that people are living in. Believe me it's a lot.
In an age when pastors are bombarded with organizational leadership and business culture, all of which is important, we simply cannot get in the way of real people needing real love. I'm challenged by Luke's words in Acts 20:28, "Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood." This scripture sits deep in me for a number of reasons here's three reasons why sometimes love is work and work is love:
Three Reasons Work is Love
1.) People Don't Know How to Love. I have come the conclusion that most people don't know how to receive love because they have never really been loved. It's really hard for people to trust others who are motivated by Jesus commandment to love one another (John 13:34-35). When people open their heart it's a sacred act and a real privilege for pastors.
2.) People are Broken. I continue to be amazed at the level of emotional heaviness that people have absorbed. I'm even more amazed how sensitive and how many trigger points people have due to unresolved unforgiveness and pain. I break when people have little to no tools to be able to address brokenness and loss. It's painful to watch. Scott Hagan of Northcentral University says it best, "The love pressing in must be stronger than the pain pushing out."
3.) People Need Attention. In our digital age of hyper-connectivity of social media its ironic that people have more "friends" yet more and more people are experiencing increased loneliness. People aren't craving click friends; people are craving attention from real people. Real relationships. Real friends. Real love.
I'm growing. I'm learning. I'm growing and learning that real work is real love. Sometimes love is work and I'm ready to work. A former professor of mine said it the best, "You can't lead the people if you don't love the people" (Cornell West).
Pastors let's get loving. I mean get to work.
PJB
Three Reasons Work is Love
1.) People Don't Know How to Love. I have come the conclusion that most people don't know how to receive love because they have never really been loved. It's really hard for people to trust others who are motivated by Jesus commandment to love one another (John 13:34-35). When people open their heart it's a sacred act and a real privilege for pastors.
2.) People are Broken. I continue to be amazed at the level of emotional heaviness that people have absorbed. I'm even more amazed how sensitive and how many trigger points people have due to unresolved unforgiveness and pain. I break when people have little to no tools to be able to address brokenness and loss. It's painful to watch. Scott Hagan of Northcentral University says it best, "The love pressing in must be stronger than the pain pushing out."
3.) People Need Attention. In our digital age of hyper-connectivity of social media its ironic that people have more "friends" yet more and more people are experiencing increased loneliness. People aren't craving click friends; people are craving attention from real people. Real relationships. Real friends. Real love.
I'm growing. I'm learning. I'm growing and learning that real work is real love. Sometimes love is work and I'm ready to work. A former professor of mine said it the best, "You can't lead the people if you don't love the people" (Cornell West).
Pastors let's get loving. I mean get to work.
PJB
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"May the favor of the Lord our God rest on us;
establish the work of our hands for us— yes, establish the work of our hands."
~ Proverbs 90:17
establish the work of our hands for us— yes, establish the work of our hands."
~ Proverbs 90:17
The more I pastor, the more and more it is becoming real to me that real life discipleship does not happen in our church building. Real life discipleship happens at work. (Sometimes it bothers me, because our church building is modern and gorgeous. Though we leverage it well as it is home to the Victory School, a selective preschool, that's all techie, fun and full of love.)
Here's some social media posts on a few of my Victors (what we call people who attend Victory Church) at work. As a pastor, it is vital to understand the context of how their faith is worked out in the day to day reality of where they spend their time.
Where's that? At work.
Here's some social media posts on a few of my Victors (what we call people who attend Victory Church) at work. As a pastor, it is vital to understand the context of how their faith is worked out in the day to day reality of where they spend their time.
Where's that? At work.
So what do I actually do when I am at work with them. If I can I actually work. I move stuff, grab paperwork, visit customers but mostly it's understanding the daily life of our Victors. At bottom, I'm watching God at work. Amen.
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Pastor Jennifer (Family Care & Worship) and Pastor Stephenie (Discipleship/Teaching) of Victory Church
In late January, Dr. John Piper argued that if the Bible doesn't permit women to be pastors, then they also shouldn’t be seminary professors. As an Assemblies of God minister, I’m shaking my head and asking: are we still having this conversation?
Pentecostals believe that God poured out his spirit on both men and women at Pentecost, inspiring both sons and daughters to prophesy (cf. Acts 2:16-8; Joel 2:28-29). We believe Scripture indicates women’s inclusion in the ministries of the new covenant age. Not only do we not have a theological problem with women in ministry in my denomination, but we fully embrace them.
But do we really embrace women in ministry? Do we hire them for teaching and executive leadership positions or do we throw up roadblocks and excuses for not passing the pastoral mantle to women?
I’ve observed that some of our best and brightest women have few options for upward movement from children and youth ministry, or after they return from the mission field—even in denominations that ordain women. Many women go into children’s ministry simply because they don’t have other options. But if we really believe that women should be in ministry, then the question becomes: why don't we see more women in executive and teaching ministry roles?
The philosophical usually plays out in the practical. And nothing is more practical than money.
Labor Economics for Women in Ministry
Here are two economic principles that help explain the absence of women in leadership positions in the church, and even in churches that ordain women: Taste-Based Discrimination and Time Value of Money (TVM). Taste-Based Discrimination is discrimination against a group of people that leads to inefficient allocation of economic resources to that group. Time Value of Money (TVM) is the idea that money available at a present time is worth more than the same amount in the future due to its potential earning capacity. I realize economic language can seem a little complex, but I’ll break it down.
Let’s take a look at the brutal economic reality and gender discrimination experienced by a hypothetical woman in ministry over a ten year period. We’ll apply these two economic principles over a decade of projected work life/income.
This is a potential Time Value of Money (TVM) trajectory for a female pastor, based on what I hear from other lead pastors. This is also where we see the insidious narrative of structural sin.
"Well, I'd hire a woman but I can't find a woman that is qualified."
Age 22—Called and Educated
A single (unmarried), female pastor is called to ministry. She earns a BA in ministry, but then can't find a job. Why? It's not that she's unqualified. She is just as qualified for an entry level ministry position as her male counterparts with BAs. It's because a forty-something, male lead pastor believes it's not "appropriate" to mentor a twenty-something, female pastor.
Age 28—Called, Educated, and Not Mentored
Fast forward a few years. Because our called female pastor can't find a paid position with a BA, she goes to seminary and earns an advanced degree. Yet, she still can't find a job because she is educated but has very little real and/or paid ministry experience.
A male, forty-five or fifty-something lead pastor says, "She’s educated, but she doesn't have the professional experience we need." She's passed over for an associate role.
What's really going on here? Many male lead pastors will say they don't feel "comfortable" hiring a twenty-eight year-old female with an MDiv. But when a male pastor cites “uncomfortableness” as the reason he won’t hire a female candidate, what’s often really at play is his own insecurity at the idea of mentoring a woman that is younger and more educated than him.
This is where we see Taste-Based Discrimination in labor economics.
Our fifty year-old lead pastor believes he would not be the "right person" to mentor an under-thirty, female pastor. He uses words like "uncomfortable," "inappropriate," "not the right fit," and other soft and polite language. He practically justifies the non-hire because the female pastor doesn't have the experience to win the post. He doesn’t recognize his own bias or consider the reason the female candidate might not have as much “experience” as a male candidate.
Age 33—Called, Educated, Not Mentored, and Unemployed
A decade has passed, and now the real TVM labor economic issue comes to bear. She can't find a job in ministry, so she goes to earn a DMin, thinking: Who wouldn't hire Dr. Me? Now she's a thirty-three year-old, possibly married with preschoolers. She holds an MDiv/DMin and has volunteer but no paid ministry experience.
So then a sixty-something lead pastor says, "Well, she's educated but 'young in ministry' with no paid experience.” She’s also now over-qualified and “too old” for an associate pastor role.
Now she’s ten years (TVM) down the ministry road and, since she never obtained paid ministry experience, she can't compete for a post that pays $50,000-60,000. If she could win a post, she can't afford to take that $28,000 entry level salary because she has student loans and perhaps also a family. Reality sets in. She lacks ministry experience, especially paid ministry experience. She’s loaded with educational debt. More importantly, she doesn’t have mentors and therefore, networking ability.
What happens now?
She becomes a "consultant" and "speaker." She never really fulfils the pastoral calling God has put in her heart.
But she has a great blog.
Female Pastoral Career Reality Check
Now, let's ask the obvious: why didn’t our hypothetical female pastor’s career ever take off?
Well frankly, it's because our hypothetical male lead pastor engaged in a Taste-Based Discrimination practice known as the "Billy Graham" rule. Our male pastor hid behind the "Billy Graham Rule" for a lifetime, all in the name of holiness. Justified or unjustified, he’s allowed his own bias to obstruct the careers of female pastors.
He will never hire a younger woman, nor a woman who is more educated than him. And he’ll justify it because those women don’t have professional paid ministry experience. Moreover, he’ll defend his action, citing a desire to "avoid the appearance of evil" (I Thess. 5:22).
Our talented female pastor is now pushing forty. She’s never had space and freedom to discover "God's will for her life." She’s never been mentored. She’s never been hired. She’s over-educated, in debt, and working as a "consultant and speaker."
Sad.
A result of systemic sin.
And yet, this happens to women in ministry all the time.
Final Thoughts
What can we do about this? Here's a few thoughts, mainly for male church leaders and pastors who theoretically support women in ministry:
- Interrogate your own response to women pastor candidates. Are your concerns legitimate? Are they informed by what you know about systemic bias and Taste-Based Discrimination?
- Understand and trust that most women pastors are not predators or threats; acknowledge that it’s wrong to treat them that way.
- Be comfortable and confident in your own marriage (if married) and make sure your sexuality is in a healthy place before mentoring anyone else or serving as a spiritual leader/counselor.
- Ask a team of spiritually mature Boomer/Gen X women to mentor younger women pastors on any issues that you aren’t equipped to advise on: sexuality; how to break the glass ceiling; pregnancy and motherhood; etc. Use common sense, respect boundaries, and don’t speak on topics you experientially can’t understand.
- Don’t make a fuss about riding in a car with a female pastor. It’s offensive and demeaning to assume that her femaleness makes car-pooling dangerous/taboo.
- Work in teams with other women; intentionally point young women pastors who you’re mentoring toward other professional role models who are female.
- Don't be stupid. Leave the doors open in your office. Meet in public places. Don't get in a hot tub. Exercise non-discriminatory and reasonable caution.
- Most of all, ask any young women you’re mentoring what they feel comfortable with: "Would it be okay if we went/did ______?” Let her say "Yes” or “No." Empower her by giving her an opportunity to articulate what she needs to feel safe and respected.
- I should not have to say this one, but: simply respect and treat her like the professional that she is.
- Pray for her, like you would any person who has been entrusted to you and who looks to you for spiritual guidance.
- Published on
According to the New York Times, the rally on Saturday, August 12th was organized in opposition to a plan by local officials to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee, the Confederacy’s top general, from Emancipation Park in Charlottesville.
On Sunday the 13th at Victory Church we spoke about these Neo Nazi actions as demonic and anti-gospel. We spoke about Charlottesville out of the context of oppression in
Micah 2:1-2:
"Woe to those who scheme iniquity,
Who work out evil on their beds!
When morning comes, they do it,
For it is in the power of their hands.
They covet fields and then seize them,
And houses, and take them away.
They rob a man and his house,
A man and his inheritance."
Micah warns about those who plan and execute evil. The natural contextualization of scripture to culture is obvious -- this kind of blatant Neo Nazi racism is demonic.
On Sunday the 13th at Victory Church we spoke about these Neo Nazi actions as demonic and anti-gospel. We spoke about Charlottesville out of the context of oppression in
Micah 2:1-2:
"Woe to those who scheme iniquity,
Who work out evil on their beds!
When morning comes, they do it,
For it is in the power of their hands.
They covet fields and then seize them,
And houses, and take them away.
They rob a man and his house,
A man and his inheritance."
Micah warns about those who plan and execute evil. The natural contextualization of scripture to culture is obvious -- this kind of blatant Neo Nazi racism is demonic.
Though, I find myself being a bit leery when I see many churches, frankly pastored by "elite white men", releasing "official" statements condemning these actions. At some level, it's an indictment. It makes me ask questions like why do we have to release a statement? Doesn't the culture know where the church stands on race? Shouldn't we be preaching on the sin of racism regularly? One could see such public statements as a token nod to our African-American citizens or worse simply disingenuous -- "I have a black friend therefore I condemn this action".
(Side note: As a Tex-Mex, my latin heritage comes from the Spanish colonization of Mexico so I have some sense of what racism looks like. I too have stories.)
It causes me to ask self penetrating questions like:
"Do I read, listen and teach about what the 'new' Jim Crow looks like in American life"?
The answer to these questions is "Yes" but not nearly enough.
It just seems too convenient to jump on the social justice train and a little opportunistic. Though if "white elite pastor's" don't say something then do they / we / I are accused of "the silence is defeating" motif. What to do?
It seems one answer is message consistency --
being consistent on the sin of racism brings a level of credibility.
Here at Victory Church, we released an official statement calling for a time of confession and repentance (James 5:16) over the sin of racism. Why? Because we understand the sins of our fathers. We regularly address and live with the historical issue of racism.
We live in York-Poquoson in the Chesapeake Bay area of Virginia. We fully understand the diabolical history and live with the residual effects of the structural sin of racism. It is estimated that 127,200 slaves were brought through the Chesapeake Bay. Every time I go to the store, the golf course, a restaurant or coach one of my 7th grade soccer players. I'm keenly aware of our collective heritage. Our heritage is slavery.
The answer is not to take down statues and flags one answer is to humble ourselves, pray and confess and repent from our wicked ways so God will indeed heal our land (2 Chron 7:14). We cannot rewrite of history but we can call for a reassessment of history. Instead of looking at these monuments of pride we should view these monuments as a reminder of our misguided past.
We have to tell the truth. It's not pretty. It's not easy.
We must confess & repent of racism then go and sin no more.
(Side note: As a Tex-Mex, my latin heritage comes from the Spanish colonization of Mexico so I have some sense of what racism looks like. I too have stories.)
It causes me to ask self penetrating questions like:
- "Do we actually believe that all people are made in the image of God?"
- "Do we preach repentance of the sin of racism regularly?"
- "Do I directly talk about it even when it doesn't come up?"
- "How do we even know how to talk about 'southern pride' when we see a rebel flag?"
"Do I read, listen and teach about what the 'new' Jim Crow looks like in American life"?
The answer to these questions is "Yes" but not nearly enough.
It just seems too convenient to jump on the social justice train and a little opportunistic. Though if "white elite pastor's" don't say something then do they / we / I are accused of "the silence is defeating" motif. What to do?
It seems one answer is message consistency --
being consistent on the sin of racism brings a level of credibility.
Here at Victory Church, we released an official statement calling for a time of confession and repentance (James 5:16) over the sin of racism. Why? Because we understand the sins of our fathers. We regularly address and live with the historical issue of racism.
We live in York-Poquoson in the Chesapeake Bay area of Virginia. We fully understand the diabolical history and live with the residual effects of the structural sin of racism. It is estimated that 127,200 slaves were brought through the Chesapeake Bay. Every time I go to the store, the golf course, a restaurant or coach one of my 7th grade soccer players. I'm keenly aware of our collective heritage. Our heritage is slavery.
The answer is not to take down statues and flags one answer is to humble ourselves, pray and confess and repent from our wicked ways so God will indeed heal our land (2 Chron 7:14). We cannot rewrite of history but we can call for a reassessment of history. Instead of looking at these monuments of pride we should view these monuments as a reminder of our misguided past.
We have to tell the truth. It's not pretty. It's not easy.
We must confess & repent of racism then go and sin no more.
As a pastor who leads a faith community who's mission is to "Invite people to discover Jesus in everyday life" it is obvious to me that we simply are not praying, teaching and repenting enough. The "white church" allowed this worldview to continue not only a few hours away but these kinds of attitudes exist in our own communities.
I love Virginia, and I want it to be "for lovers" though we as a faith community have a long away to go towards repentance and loving those whom we have robbed a man, his house, and his inheritance." Micah 2:2
I love Virginia, and I want it to be "for lovers" though we as a faith community have a long away to go towards repentance and loving those whom we have robbed a man, his house, and his inheritance." Micah 2:2
- Published on
Numbers are People, Too
I'm sitting in a boardroom a few days ago thinking with my team on how to financially reengineer a large and expensive ministry that we lead. An associate of mine and I determined a course of action that creates a revenue source and serves double the amount of people. In my neoliberal economic way of thinking it was a no brainer. Double the money and double the impact in peoples lives -- duh -- let's go!
Then one of our directors said in her stern and soft feminine way, "I'm unsettled, numbers are people too".
That simple comment put me in conflict with myself. The internal economist & ethicist had a quarrel in my heart. Such a simple comment had me thinking that to simply trade services from one population to another other population is flawed ministry thinking.
The people we serve now, matter just as much and need us to sustain their livelihood. Plus we have our employees that matter just as much to us and rely on us for their livelihood.
Cost of Ministry
I have learned in ministry there are two major (there's many more) equation costs: money and relationships.
A typical MBA (I'm an MPA, so I hope I have some social conscience) would look at the cost of labor and their ability to create revenue. Textbooks say you take the total labor hours (sometimes called direct labor) in a pay period (that's your time). You add up those hours, times their pay (labor rate) that will give you the cost of your good or service some call it a manufacturing cost (you can play around with the index and adjust it for your ministry https://www.bls.gov/ect).
Once the labor costs are discovered then a decision making process starts to ask, "What's the real cost of doing ministry?" Though the money may fund the ministry what's the cost of those relationships? The undeniable reality in economics is that when a decision "A" is made it triggers a decision "B". When you push a button you simultaneously pull a lever -- it's called trade offs and oppournity costs. Essentially, what's a cost of making decision A or decision B?
These decisions are tough because this is real life with real people. This learning process has caused us as a team to work hard to do the best for everyone and all parties even though there may a financial cost to our ministry.
Why?
Because, "Numbers are people, too".
