Commission on Biblical Gender Equality

Rev. Rebecca Poor (Becky) is ordained to Word and Sacrament, has an MDiv from North Park Theological Seminary, and is the Senior Pastor at Saranac Community Church, a small rural town in western Michigan. Becky is the Great Lakes Conference Liaison for Advocates for Covenant Clergy Women (ACCW) has a passion for sharing Christ’s love and hope with our hurting world!

The Evangelical Covenant Church affirms “…the biblical basis for service in the body of Christ is giftedness, call from God, and godly character-not gender “(*Called & Gifted, p. 2). As a woman who has been gifted and called by God, I’m truly thankful for the Covenant’s position on women in pastoral ministry! I don’t think I realized how important this affirmation was until January 2011, when I formally entered the call process.

Prior to that I had served as the Pastor to Youth and Families at Bethany Covenant Church in CT for 11 years. Feeling very affirmed in my calling there, and seeing a good balance of men and women in my seminary classes at North Park Theological Seminary, I admit I never really thought about the barriers that might exist as I sought a new calling. However, as I began interviewing for a lead pastor role, I began to understand that not all churches affirmed female pastors, even in the Covenant. In fact the church in which I now serve had previously questioned the role of women in lead pastoral roles (women had served on the Church Council and in supportive ministerial roles).

Knowing the rich faith heritage of our congregation, I understand their concerns were not due to closed-minds, but a strong commitment to God’s Word and will. They honestly wrestled with difficult texts which led them to question the Biblical role of women in pastoral leadership. Yet they decided not to dismiss the tough questions. Fully embracing their adopted ECC identity they chose to ask “where is it written?” Continue Reading »

Report This Post

Corrie Gustafson is an ordained minister currently serving as an interim chaplain at Punahou School in Honolulu, Hawaii. She is the Pacific Southwest Conference Liaison for Advocates for Covenant Clergy Women (ACCW) and a Regional Coordinator for Advocacy for Victims of Abuse (AVA). She blogs regularly at pastorwithapurse.

I grew up in an evangelical denomination that limited its female members to a narrow list of roles in congregational life. Women could run the community preschool, oversee and teach Sunday school, VBS and Awana, and organize potlucks and special events. Don’t get me wrong, these are all important ways to serve, but when I left for college and joined a Covenant church, I began to see my heritage through a different lens. I wondered, were these few roles fulfilling to all women? Was every woman able to use her spiritual gifts? (And for that matter, was anyone encouraging the women to discover and use their spiritual gifts?) How many of the women realized that their gifts were better suited to roles other than the nurturing and teaching of children or event planning? And how did those women handle the tension between their gifts and the roles they were allowed to fill?

During the 9 to 5, the women I looked up to were nurses, bank VPs, teachers, attorneys, artists, sales reps and accountants. They were devoted followers of Christ, competent and respected leaders in the community and corporate world, educated, well-spoken, talented and creative, yet at church they were not permitted to lead any part of the worship service, serve communion, usher, receive the tithes and offerings or speak in any way from the stage or pulpit. The only exception was during our biannual missionary week when one of our many female missionaries would testify from the pulpit about the ministry she was doing abroad. No one ever spoke about the great contradiction we embodied by commissioning women missionaries to lead abroad even as we limited the mission of the women in our local churches. Continue Reading »

Report This Post

Pastor Catherine Gilliard and Pastor Tim Rodgers serve as co-senior pastors of New Life Covenant Church, a multi-cultural congregation in Atlanta, Georgia. Catherine is ordained to Word and Sacrament, holds an MDiv from North Park Theological Seminary and is a candidate for a Doctor of Ministry in Preaching from the Association of Chicago Theological Schools. She currently serves as president of Advocates for Covenant Clergy Women (ACCW).

When I enter into the pages of scripture, I see a model of discipleship that is rarely duplicated. It is our call to ‘make disciples.’ In most parts of the business world this is called, ‘mentorship.’ I define it as the journey you take with another person to grow deeper in understanding — a journey of transforming you into a new way of ‘being.’ Throughout scripture, we witness this transformative journey as Jesus walked with disciples moving through each day with a heightened awareness of God’s priorities in their world. When we enter into discipleship and mentorship relationships, we, too, are able to walk together with new understandings and a deeper sense of urgency and call. The process of being transformed will always mean being challenged and constantly changed — and change is a difficult process for us all. Sadly, I believe comfort is something rarely found in discipleship and mentoring relationships.

Whenever I have entered into discipleship relationships with other men and women, I have been changed by their story, as they are also changed by mine. We are each also changed by the Word of God as we are led by the Holy Spirit to follow Christ’s example of challenging systemic structures of prejudice, oppression and abuse, inside and outside of the church. It is in walking together that I discover your heart’s longings, while you encounter mine. We are changed, because we have intentionally chosen to walk into places of challenge together: listening, talking, sharing, and seeing the world and one another, differently. New models aren’t needed for transformation. To truly be transformed, we need to be ‘with’ each other more – and not through technological devices, but in our walking together. As we listen to one another we can discover God’s voice in the midst of those issues we name as places of struggle for us. Continue Reading »

Report This Post

Julie Jane Capel serves as secretary of Advocates for Covenant Clergy Women ministerium board. She is a recent seminary graduate of North Park Theological Seminary and hopes to use her MDiv. as an associate or solo parish pastor in the near future. Currently she is working as a chaplain at a trauma one hospital on the west side of Chicago – where she sees the Holy Spirit show up every time she walks into a new hospital room.

In Detroit, fifty-three weeks ago I sat in the lobby of the hotel that the 128th Annual Meeting was held at. My roommate’s flight had been delayed and I was unable to get into our shared room. So I sat in the lobby in a relatively comfortable, overstuffed chair with my bags at my feet – unsure what my next move should be.

A few Covenant men and women (an assumption made because of their nametags) saw me and waved me over to their restaurant table. I vaguely recognized only 10% of the people but I still sat down. At their invitation, I told them about myself, my pastoral call and where I would hope to minister. Only after my monologue did I realize this was a gathering of the Covenant Executive Board – the women and men who cast mission, vision and action for our denomination as our elected officials. (Explained in http://covchurch.tv/am2013-ex-board/)

Fast forward a year and a few days to the Gather14 (129 Annual Meeting) when a woman came up to me and asked, “do you remember me?” I exclaimed, “Of course!” Here was the woman who had invited me to the table. She again asked where I was in the pastoral search and promised to be my advocate throughout the rest of the annual meeting. I laughed. But she meant business.

Over the next few days, she and another man from the Executive Board, made it their personal mission to introduce me to people I would otherwise not have had access to. They used their social capital to vouch for me because they believed in me, in North Park Seminary’s training, and in the Covenant pastoral call process. In my opinion, these Executive Board members enacted out the mission of the Commission for Biblical Gender Equality.

As I have reflected further I realize that this is what Jesus does for us. Jesus brings us to the Father and uses his social capital (as the Son) to vouches for us. (1 John 2:1) He advocates for us and sets an example for us to advocate for each other. I am deeply grateful that our Executive Board has done that for me. Will you follow suit, and use your social capital for someone else?

Report This Post

Jean Cheng Gorman currently serves as the Vice-President of Advocates for Covenant Clergy Women and as Associate Pastor at Covenant Grove Church in Modesto.  She is married to a wonderfully supportive physician and is a mother to three active children and a divinely-guided dog.

While doing research for a seminary paper on the ordination of women, I read an article written in 2009 by a professor who is devoted to God and passionate about truth.  Along with other points made against the ordination of women, he also argued that it was harmful to evangelism:

Getting men involved in church is particularly difficult. Why should we think that men who typically live in tension with their wives in marriage are going to subject themselves to the oversight of women ministers? To put the matter bluntly: in many marriages, wives try to control or at least change their husbands, and men refuse to be bossed. Unchurched men in particular are not apt to look favorably on ecclesial practice that puts women in the same position over the household of faith that they chafe against in their everyday home lives. They will simply avoid the church even more than is already and tragically the case. This may be a factor in the dramatic shrinkage of mainline denominations that has been underway for several decades.[1] Continue Reading »

Report This Post

Lisa Sundell Olsen has been a member of the BGE commission for 6 years. She is the senior high youth director at Covenant Church of Thomaston in Connecticut. Lisa and her husband, Reverend Timothy Olsen’s daughter Maja, will be getting married next month. Their son John Alrik is in his last year at North Park University.

One year ago, on Easter Sunday, my dad announced to our family “What do you think of a trip to Israel this time next year?” Shouts of enthusiasm and a few questions followed. On May 15th, eleven of my family members boarded El Al flight 002 to Tel Aviv from JFK. We spent 10 full days traveling, learning, seeing, hearing and tasting our way through The Holy Land.

We learned as much about the history, culture and politics as we did about the sites Jesus walked. Our guide, named Beja, told us a lot about the Israeli army and it’s people. We met many of them since they are everywhere. When we got to Haifa, Beja introduced us to a some women who were in the special forces of search and rescue. He went on and on about how difficult it is for anyone to achieve membership in this unit because of the sheer physical strength needed. I was so proud of these women and got my picture taken with one of them. Every 18 year old woman and man, if they are a citizen of Israel, joins the army for 3 years. Continue Reading »

Report This Post

Dominique DuBois Gilliard is a graduate of North Park Theological Seminary where he also served as an adjunct professor. Dominique currently serves on the CHIC council, is the director of the Journey to Mosaic Squared, and is an ECC pastor in Oakland California. In addition to his work within the ECC, Dominique is an active member of the Christian Community Development Association, serving on both the association’s national theology task-force and its faith and public education council. You can follow Dominique on Twitter: @@WEB_DuBois_Ture 

How does one best care for marginalized people, those who have been isolated from community, stigmatized by society, and even neglected or wounded by the Church? This question has dwelt within my soul. It has inspired me to study the Bible in deeper, more focused ways. It led me to seminary and while there, it lingered on. It led to me taking courses which explored issues of individual and social brokenness that bred marginality and isolation. I asked hard questions within these courses, inquires which could not be pacified by the prototypical Sunday school responses. I read, researched, and wrote on these issue, all in a diligent pursuit to answer this one question.

Along the way, I had a few revelatory moments, but I also became intrigued by a biblical character who I believe personifies everything I was wrestling with, the nameless Canaanite woman of Matthew 15: 21-28. While theologians have correctly articulated how her interaction with Jesus foretells the gentile inclusion into the mission and kingdom of God, this text has more to say to us than just this. First, a close reading of the text mandates that we ask a few questions; what are the scriptural implications of being a Canaanite, nameless, and the parent of a demon possessed child? Continue Reading »

Report This Post

My name is Drusilla (Dru) McLeland and I serve as the Central Conference Liaison to the Board of the Advocates for Covenant Clergy Women.  My husband, Paul, and I have been married 27 years and we have one daughter, Katie.  In response to God’s call to pastoral ministry, I am pursuing a Master of Divinity degree at Northern Theological Seminary.  I am currently in Clinical Pastoral Education with the Adventist Midwest Health System.  I want to be a gracious woman, who becomes more and more like my Heavenly Father who is Home to all prodigal daughters and sons.

Sometimes I overlook people who are marginalized. This disturbs me.  It goes against my core belief in the value of every person.  I want my actions reflect my core beliefs and it bothers me they are incongruous.  There are some Old Testament characters I’ve overlooked.  One of these is Tamar the wife of Er (Gen. 38).

Jacob’s son, Judah, moves and marries Shua, a Canaanite woman.  They have three sons; Er, Onan and Shelah.  Er marries Tamar.  He is wicked, so God kills him.  There is no male hair carry on Er’s legacy and Judah tells Onan to go to Tamar, perform his duty as a brother-in-law and produce an heir.  Onan knows the child won’t be his so he spills his semen on the ground.  The Lord is not pleased with this and puts Onan to death.  Judah sends Tamar to go back to her father to wait until Shelah is old enough to marry.  But really he has no intention of giving Shelah in marriage to her.  He’s afraid Shelah will die if he is associated with Tamar. Continue Reading »

Report This Post

Ironically, this article was published exactly one year ago by Corrie Gustafson on her blog.  She has given permission to repost it in its entirety. Corrie has served 6 years in young adult ministry, 2 years in hospital and hospice chaplaincy and 3 years as the Care Pastor at Hope Covenant Church, Chandler, AZ. In June she will be Ordained to Word and Sacrament and also begin working as a chaplain at the Punahou School in Honolulu, Hawaii. She blogs regularly at http://www.pastorwithapurse.com

Report This Post

Submitted by:
Rebecca Worl

The elderly woman caught my attention as I was exiting the church. She gave me a smile and waved me over. Her eyes glistened a bit as she grabbed my hands and put them between her own.

“Hello dear, I just wanted to tell you, that I was so moved by your… talk today, it was one of the best – you know, I ever heard in all my 80 years… “

I smiled as I could tell she was struggling with the words, I offered a little help,
“The best…Sermon?” I volunteered.

“Well, I wasn’t going to say THAT, you know, after all, at my age I can’t change my spots!” She laughed a little under her breath.

I was puzzled. “Sorry, what spots do you refer to?” Continue Reading »

Report This Post