I first met Carolyn Moore when I was invited by Chris Backert to a retreat center outside Orlando FL. Carolyn and I were both speakers. It took two minutes into her address to the church leaders that day to convince me that she had a special voice and a special calling for such a time as this. I began to follow her, and I have been on her podcast. When she wrote her book I was honored by her to write words of support in the book.
Carolyn Moore’s When Women Lead is exactly what we need. What we need is the story of a veteran woman planting a church. In her introduction she tells us that this is not going to be a book that defends women in ministry. That is, she's not going to engage in the debates and arguments, and try to prove something. Instead, she offers a vision: a vision of the Kingdom of God based on creation and new creation, rather than rooted in the fall and its impact on the relationship of men and women. Like others, more believes men and women are partners in ministry. In this introduction she tells her story, and her story is so clear and poignant, the rest of this post will be about her story. In her words.
“I graduated from seminary and moved with my family to Athens, Georgia, in the late 1990s to serve as an associate pastor in a large downtown church. A historic vaudeville theater stood just across the street from that church, and it seemed like a great place for contemporary worship, so I was charged with starting that service on behalf of the church. Who doesn't want to lead worship in a cool venue like that? I was smitten by the challenge.
The theater was beautiful. The people were treasures. The experience was miserable. I felt a little like the people who tried to put Humpty Dumpty back together. All the slick marketing and all the creative worship planning and all the sweat-producing sermon prep couldn't build a congregation. I had all the “want to” a person could bring to the task but found it impossible to reach critical mass in a 500-seat theater. I was completely unprepared for that kind of challenge. The worst of it was I didn't have the good sense to quit. I'm not wired to give up on a challenge. Also, I'd never been part of planting anything new before, so I had nothing against which to measure my progress. Bless the dear people who hung in with me through nearly five years of that painful experiment.
Even though that first dip into starting something new was a mostly miserable experience, I caught the bug from it. When I was offered a chance to start a church from scratch, I couldn't say yes fast enough. I've been itching to start another new thing for a while, but the regional church development officer of my denomination told me straight up that it had not been proven that women could plant churches. My hopes might have died there, if not for another denominational leader who found out about my interest. She asked if I'd be willing to plant a new church in Evans, Georgia. I realized this was probably my one shot at a new venture and, in the words of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Alexander Hamilton, (you’ve gotta see the Broadway show), I was not going to throw away my shot.
I moved to Evans with my husband and daughter in 2003. We were what you'd call in church-planting circles a “parachute drop,” which means we'd been dropped into a community with no team or resources beyond a starting budget and timeline. We had to be fully self-supporting within eighteen months. No one believes the parachute model is a sane idea anymore, but back then, it was how many new churches got started. So we began. The church, called Mosaic, met for a few months in our living room, then moved to an office complex before settling in a school auditorium. Eventually, we moved into the front half of a warehouse that we shared with a retired businessman who used the other half to store his antique cars.
This is the part where I tell you all the good things we've accomplished, because I am a pastor, and pastors have a spiritual gift for bragging on their churches. What we have built under the power of the Holy Spirit is a very sweet missional community that serves our little corner of the world well. Because it is who I'm wired to attract, many of the folks who attend Mosaic have fallen through the cracks of more traditional congregations. In fact, many are first-generation followers of Jesus. Some have come to us from prison, jail, or addiction. Half the women in our church (literally half) are single, many of them with multiple dependent children in their care. We are also home to young families struggling to make ends meet and single adults with addiction issues. We have a former felon on staff, and the current chair of our vision team is a recovering addict (and both are doing fabulous jobs as leaders). We have worked hard to develop healthy leaders from among those God has sent into our community, and I am proud of the integrity and humility with which our leaders lead.
Now, I'll be honest with you. I know that last paragraph sounds like we are being the church just like Jesus said the church ought to be. To mission-minded ears, our demographics make us sound glamorous, but I need to be transparent here. These weren't the people I set out to attract. I am as competitive as the next person, and I wanted my church to look like all the other seeker-friendly church plants my colleagues were planting in that season when it was the “thing” to do. What I mean to say is, I wanted my church to be big. I figured if I could do the things they did – and I could -- then I'd get the results they got. Never mind my gender. In fact, I was doggedly determined not to let my gender interfere with our ministry. I would serve Jesus and let him take care of our reputation. And Jesus, for his part, would give us big crowds with lots of people getting saved every week. That was the plan.
Or, at least, that was my plan.
I didn't understand how an inspiring vision plainly articulated would not yield the same results for me as it did for my male colleagues who were also starting churches. I did not take into account how hard it would be for a female pastor to attract leader-quality adults into our ministry. For that matter, I didn't realize how hard it would be to attract people period. (As my friend, Ben Witherington, said to me long after the fact, “What part of planting a church in the Buckle of the Bible belt didn't you understand?”) Nearly twenty years in, our weekly attendance still runs around 200, far less than what I set out to build. As I'll unpack in later chapters, this is a pretty strong attendance figure for a female church planner, but that doesn't make it any less frustrating. For years, I was tormented by the question of why we could not seem to make this church what I'd envisioned. As do so many other overly optimistic spiritual entrepreneurs, I had every expectation that with hard work and a strong vision, I could be the female version of the next Insert-Current-Rock-Star-Pastor-Name-Here. It never once occurred to me to plant a small church -- and failure was not an option.
In the absence of rapidly growing attendance, Mosaic grew deep in mission. We now worship in a warehouse that hosts both our church and a nonprofit we develop to house our local ministries. Our mission on the church side is to help broken people become whole, so we focus heavily on small-group discipleship, healing prayer, and recovery. Our nonprofit side is dedicated to building lives and breaking cycles. We host a thriving food pantry that serves veterans and low-and-no-income adults with disabilities; a full-time, professional therapeutic ministry for children with special needs; and a volunteer-led weekly recovery ministry. GED tutoring and mentoring for low-income women help us to cultivate a culture of empowerment. All of this helps us guard against navel-gazing. Serving is in our DNA.
Mosaic is a small but effective fruit-bearing church, one I am honored to serve today. But church planting turned out to be much more difficult than I expected. What I didn't understand -- and what coaches and colleagues around me were not able to articulate -- was the role gender played in creating barriers to achieving my potential as a leader. Even when I could acknowledge it, I still somehow thought that if I worked hard enough, worked enough hours, and worked every day most weeks, eventually I'd make it. I was wrong. I work sixty-plus hours a week for years on end and hit wall after wall. I signed up for every possible training opportunity. Nothing created the momentum I craved. I began to realize that a high-octane work ethic was no match for such barriers. Yet whenever I suggested that perhaps my challenges were at least connected to my gender (recognizing that male pastors have challenges, too), folks around me were quick to dismiss my hunches. “You’re great!” they’d say. “It’s not you! We love you!” As if that would make it all okay.
Her story has led Carolyn Moore to ask this question:
What barriers do women leaders face, and what strategies will equip them to lead past those barriers so they can lead effectively?
Whew, this hits close to home! As a female church planter this resonates so much. Church planting structures, networks, and coaching do not know how to factor in female planters. The standard models and practices don’t function with the same outcomes for female planters. Maybe that’s okay.
In fact, maybe that’s why God calls female planters in the first place. We’re going to have to plant differently. The female planters I know have less funding, leaner teams, and smaller churches. They have installed collaborative, polycentric leadership teams. They do more with less. They are focused on deep discipleship, dialogic teaching, and providing substantive service to their local communities. They invest in incremental growth rather than explosive expansion. We get creative with the funding we have.
I keep meeting women who were caught by surprise when God called them to start a church—they weren’t seeking this call. Which has led me to wonder if God isn’t up to something in this particular moment by calling women to this task. Perhaps the way forward for the larger church will require the kinds of skills these women are working out in small church communities right now.
Praise God for people like Carolyn Moore