Comments on: drinking the company kool-aid

By: Els

Els — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 11:59:36 +0000

Amen to that Kathy!

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By: kathyescobar

kathyescobar — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 19:00:08 +0000

restoringtheheart - sorry for my late response here & sorry i missed the point somehow but yeah, it is sometimes really hard to do online, isn’t it? glad you are reading and happy to connect anytime. peace to you!

ruth – “hierarchy of weasels” oh that one made me laugh out loud. sorry for my late response! yeah, the fear one is the one that got me, too. i mean come on, you’ve got to be kidding me. but then, i looked back on a long time ago when i was living in a weird state of doing-everything-i-was-supposed-to-do-and-never-rocking-the-boat and i sort of think you are right, i never did much that was very scary or stretching. i colored in the lines and kept the peace. the whole thing is kind of weird and we’ll never fully know the ins and outs of the study but i unfortunately do think it’s indicative of much of the typical good-christian-woman culture that is more pervasive than many of us would like to think. thank you so much for sharing, i really appreciate you taking time to comment. peace to you guys in the wor that you do up there!

paul -thanks for the links!

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By: Wednesday Link List « Thinking Out Loud

Wednesday Link List « Thinking Out Loud — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 09:30:56 +0000

[...] Pam Hogeweide has an interesting perspective in Happy Christian Women, which Kathy Escobar then picked up as a natural lead-in to three(1) more(2) posts(3) which deal with “Spiritual Refugees;” [...]

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By: Ruth Wilkinson

Ruth Wilkinson — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 01:11:43 +0000

The word that comes to mind on reading these stats is “bizarre”. The closest I’ve ever come to support from a senior pastor is “I’d let you preach if it were up to me, but it’s against the bylaws, and they require a 70% vote to change. The board isn’t ready to present it to the membership yet.”

A hierarchy of weasels.

But the one that gets me upset is the one about fear. To me, it implies that 71% of women are a) not being challenged or stretched, and/or b) doing things that don’t matter. At least not to them.

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By: restoringheart

restoringheart — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 20:50:24 +0000

Thank you for your reply Kathy. It didn’t quite answer my question, but like you said it might be better asked in a face-to-face setting. I appreciate what you did share as it fleshes out some other things.

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By: kathyescobar

kathyescobar — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 04:59:32 +0000

just catching up a bit here…

joel - okay that made me laugh. and honestly is a a perfect analogy for this!

sage – yikes. but learning more about those interviews is frightening. i

brambonius - thanks for sharing & for reading. kingdom grace was one of the first blogs i read 4+ years ago…you hit upon something when talking about the difference between churches & ministries and gender–women leaders at camps, for example vs. pastoring churches. so many leadership roles are more and more acceptable but when it comes to “pastor” that sometimes changes things. i always like to hear what some of this stuff looks and feels like in different cultures, thanks for sharing….

katherine – always good to hear from you. oh the smell of “God will tell me what you need to know…” always makes me cringe. i have been thinking so much about freedom lately & how the body of Christ should be the free-est place in town. and how if we were really as secure as we say we are as “the church” then we sure wouldn’t be acting so controlling. i believe underneath all that control is some serious insecurity. peace to you on this path toward freedom..

liz - thanks for the links, always appreciate your thoughts..

sherie – thanks for sharing honestly. oh there are so many different thoughts on this and i can only share from my perspective on this. i believe ultimately God is our covering and that we cover each other in community but not with one who holds all the power and others without it. i do feel “covered” in all kinds of ways as a leader in my community but not with a male “over me.” we are side-by-side. i don’t think this unprotects me or my community because we are submitted as best we can to God, not at all unprotected or alone. at the same time, i do feel deeply dedicated to doing my part as a shepherd of my community to love and care for my friends but not as their “sole protector” but as their pastor & friend & partner on the journey . i also believe strongly in shared leadership to guard against potential abuses of authority & the “the buck stops with me” kind of mentality. scripturally, i can’t say enough how good the resources on christians for biblical equality are in terms of fleshing out out some of these issues of gender equality that go beyond just leadership (www.cbeinternational.org). i really appreciate your question; sometimes it is so hard to respond in a little comment & these are the moments i always wish we could be sitting face to face with a cup of coffee and a few people in the conversation! but we’ll do the best we can here.

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By: restoringheart

restoringheart — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 21:24:26 +0000

Kathy,
This post stirred up a lot of things inside of me, and I am realizing it is because I have not settled on what I believe and see scripturally. I am at a place where I fall between others in certain areas which leaves me feeling stuck between a rock and a hard place.

I am writing because this came up somewhere else too, regarding the topic of spiritual covering. I would love to hear your opinion/views (and those of other’s also). While I realize covering has been mistreated and abused in certain groups like the Shepherding Movement, is there bibical truth behind this concept? Do pastors/leaders have a guidance for their flock that is a covering? Do husbands lead their families with a covering? Or does The Church have a mixed up theology about this, and if so how can we figure out what to believe to fix that?

Not meaning to stir up more on this post, but I really would love to hear from a few people and it seemed in a way to fit with what you and your readers have been discussing here.

Thank you,
Sherie

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By: Three Things Tuesday – Emergents Retreating?, Christian Women Oppressed and the PCUSA 219th GA GA « Grace Rules Weblog

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 16:09:45 +0000

[...] Hogeweide and Kathy Escobar have written posts in response to a recent Barna survey of Christian women requested by Jim [...]

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By: Katherine Gunn

Katherine Gunn — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 04:53:00 +0000

Hmm… when I was drinking the company Kool-ade, I actually believed the freedom & opportunities were there. I thought that when I was ready to be “promoted”, God would tell my pastor. I thought that if pastor was refusing to use me, it was because God told him I wasn’t ready.

I know – sick.

Of course, what I needed to do to fix why I wasn’t up to snuff was always a little vague… plus the underlying decdeption (in order to control) that God wouldn’t tell ME when I was ready. well…sigh.

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By: brambonius

brambonius — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 21:21:15 +0000

I don’t really know how exactly the situation is, evangelicalism is marginal over here, and fragmented and not very aligned with the rest of society most of the time. 2 weekends ago I was in a wedding in a pentecostel church where a woman preached, and woman do have lots of other roles. (I don’t know any female senior pastor, but there are some top leaders of youthwork ministry and stuff) and on the other hand: this weekend I was in a small camp for evangelical youth (around age 18) to speak where there was a lot of discussion about the subject. which was funny because 2 of the girls had organised it, and I can already see them both functioning as pioneers and leaders, but maybe that’ll only possible in a newer context than the churches one of them comes from…

So it’s varying depending on the church, and my opinion is colored anyway since my father has always been a very pro-woman-leaders pastor so I’ve always found the idea natural, and a lot of people I knew when I was younger in pentecostel and vineyard groups did too. But I know people who don’t, especially more conservative evangelicals… (though I know some stong patriarchal pentecostels too!)
And I know people who are hurt by evangelicals who were trying to push women into gender roles that may have even come from the US… My wife is even totally allergic to those things by the way…

For the other question: I just came to your blog from a link on the Kingdom grace blog which I’ve been reading for a while now.

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