Unpastoral Pastors and Pastoral Women

I’m still mulling over the SBC decision that a woman cannot be any type of “pastor,” and I wonder if this could lead to a crisis of pastoral care where women are not able to exercise the office or role of a pastor.

My thesis is that women in general tend to be very suited to pastoral care roles and women are often ideal people to employ as pastoral care providers in churches.

Let me explain.

Believe it or not, but when I first started Seminary, my plan was to become a military chaplain, and then maybe at some point, transition into academic study and scholarship. I went to Seminary because I wanted to serve God, serve the church, and engage in mission. I loved theology and biblical studies too and I initially thought that these interests were going to be different phases of my life.

But it was while I was in Seminary that it became quickly apparent to me and to many others that my giftings were more on the academic side rather than on the pastoral side. The truth is that I am a little bit nerdy - in a Jason Bourne kind of way! I am fairly cerebral, but not a heartless son of a mother goat. I am more of a thinking than a feelings person. Also, empathy is probably not my strong point. I can do empathy, but I get to it by thinking through stuff and realizing how I need to behave before a person who is in distress.

As it goes, I do have a pastoral role at my college, with my students (before and after they graduate), towards my colleagues, and with many people who come across my path seeking some counsel, advice, encouragement, or a word in season.

But I’m not the guy you go to for several sessions of pastoral counseling and I am definitely not the best guy to talk to if you want to excavate your feelings and work some stuff out. I’m very uncomfortable around people who are crying. For me, the only times I cry are at funerals, standing on the top of Mount Cootha, and once when I bumped into Wally Lewis at the Redbank Plaza food court.

That’s why if I was a pastor of a church, I’d need a more pastoral person working beside me to balance the deficiencies in my pastoral care abilities.

And this is what leads to my main point. If I - as a man - am more cerebral, task-focused, and more oriented towards fixing than feeling, then it makes sense to partner with someone who complements my deficiencies. As it turns out, women do tend to be more nurturing, more caring, and generally better suited to pastoral roles as counselors, therapists, psychologists, and social workers. So it makes sense for my pastor-as-teacher role to be complemented by someone who is wired up for pastoral care. Ordinarily, this is a role for which women are perfectly suited.

Note, this is not to say that women cannot be intellectual, cerebral, and nerdy - I know several women who definitely are wired that way. I affirm as well, not every woman likes to talk about feelings or is suited to nurturing roles. Similarly, some men are very empathetic, very pastoral, and make terrific carers. I know female engineers and male nurses.

But in general, because of our bio-neuro differences, men are generally more likely to be engineers and women are more likely to be nurses. Our biological differences find sociological expression even in gender-equal societies. Men and women are different and those differences are complementary!

In which case, it means that employing women as pastors in pastoral care is going to be one of the best resources the church has. Again, to reiterate, I’m not saying women should do pastoral care instead of being the senior pastor, nor does it mean that any man engaged in pastoral care is womanish. I’m saying that women in general are particularly suited for pastoral care.

If one believes that men and women are different but complementary, and if that difference means women are generally better suited towards pastoral care, then it makes sense, even on a complementarian perspective, that one would look to women to exercise pastoral care roles in a church, and thus to be “pastors.” For me, as an egalitarian, that is not all women can do in church. But surely for a complementarian, that has to be something that they think women can do precisely because of the complementarity between men and women. To deny that, would be to deny the very premise of complementarianism itself, that men and women are different, and that difference is a gift to the church.

But that’s my thought for this week, what do you think? Am I overplaying the general differences between men and women? Should this be persuasive to complementarians?