wfn.org | ELCA Roundtable Celebrates Women in Church Leadership

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ELCA NEWS SERVICE

August 9, 2001

ELCA ROUNDTABLE CELEBRATES WOMEN IN CHURCH LEADERSHIP
01-CWA-08-FI/BW

     INDIANAPOLIS -- Almost 600 members of the Evangelical Lutheran
Church in America (ELCA) -- including 16 men -- met here Aug. 6-8 for
the first ELCA Women's Leadership Roundtable.  They celebrated the
growing number of women in positions of leadership across the Lutheran
church, including 30 years as clergy, and discussed ways of sustaining
that momentum.
     The gathering's "Lift Our Voice" theme brought emphasis to worship
and song, mentoring, leadership development, Bible study and enjoying
each other's company.  Sitting around more than 70 round tables
encouraged the participants to share their experiences and ideas across
any possible barriers of race or age.

SPEAKERS HIGHLIGHT WOMEN'S LEADERSHIP
     Recalling a time when only men were ordained as clergy and held
positions of authority in the church, the Rev. Barbara K. Lundblad,
associate professor of preaching, Union Theological Seminary, New York,
asked participants to imagine the thoughts of a young girl in 1960.
     The girl may not have dreamed that the Lutheran churches that
formed the ELCA would ordain  women in 1970 or that five women could
serve the church as bishops today.  The girl may not have pictured
African American, Latina, Asian or Native American women in "her
church," said Lundblad.
     "Women in leadership in the church is a theological issue," said
Lundblad.  Women and men are both created in the image of God, and
spiritual gifts are granted regardless of gender and regardless of
ordination, she said.  "To deny the gifts of God is to dry up the waters
of our baptisms."
     Many things the church considered "irregular" just a few decades
earlier are now accepted practice in the church, Lundblad said.  She
said many things the church considers "irregular" today are "a
wonderfully creative chaos" much like that which the early Christian
church experienced.
     Viola Raheb, director of Lutheran schools in Jerusalem and
Palestine, is a Palestinian Christian and a Lutheran.  She is the
youngest woman to be the director of Lutheran schools and the first
Palestinian woman to have a degree in theology.  She is the only
Palestinian woman who is publishing books and articles on feminist
theology from a Palestinian perspective.
     Through her work at the International Center of Bethlehem, Raheb
mentors both Muslim and Christian women.  She mentors other Palestinian
women who have studied abroad who have come back to Bethlehem so they
can also be voices of leadership and hope.
     Raheb shared with participants aspects of leadership qualities.
"Women's leadership has always been contextual," she said.
     She told the gathering:
     + Leadership equals liberation.
     + Leadership has to do with silent witness.  Real leaders are
those who make an impact on others without even knowing it.
     + Leadership has to do with daring to challenge.
     + Leadership has to do with planting hope in a time of despair.
It is very easy to be a leader in the 'well-off' context.
     + Leadership is overcoming bridges such as race and sexual
orientation.
     + Leadership is being willing to take risks.
     Using texts on biblical women -- Miriam, Esther, Deborah, and
midwives Shiphrah and Puah -- Dr. Jeanne Porter engaged Roundtable
participants in a Bible study of women leaders.  Porter is associate
minister of the Apostolic Church of God and associate professor of
communication arts at North Park University, Chicago.
     "Leadership must be about transformation," said Porter.
"Transformative leadership is the movement of people toward collective
and mutual goals of spiritual growth and higher purpose and
empowerment," she said.
     "Transformative leaders are visionary," she said.  They see what
others cannot see, move people to places and accomplishments they dared
not go, said Porter.
     "Leading ladies" move others toward collective purpose and
understand that movement toward collective purpose entails transition
and crisis.  They help provide meaning for the transformational process,
she said.
     "Leading ladies use 'celebration' -- the enactment of ritual and
spiritual symbols -- as part of the transformational process.  We take a
moment to not just 'smell the roses' but we start to talk about what the
roses mean and how do they give us more insight to who we are," said
Porter.
     "Leading ladies" understand the times.  They understand the link
between timing and transformation.  The transformative leader operates
within God's time frame and not her own, said Porter.
     Each participant received a "boomwhacker" -- a plastic tube, cut
from one to two feet in length to create one of six specific pitches
when struck.  Patricia Hickey, therapist and drummer, Rhythmos Seminars,
Grand Rapids, Mich., led the group in using the boomwhackers to create a
series of rhythms.
     Hickey noted that when two people walk together they create a
common rhythm.  "You will be getting in touch with your own rhythm," she
told the gathering.  "Then you'll be throwing that rhythm out into the
crowd and creating a team spirit."
     After leading the Roundtable in several group exercises, Hickey
encouraged participants around each table to create their own rhythms.
Then the entire group created a single rhythm and broke into song.

WOMEN SHARE LESSONS OF MENTORING
     "How would your life be different if, as a young girl, you would
have been invited to the table of women?" asked Charlotte D. Williams,
associate director for leadership development, cross-cultural advocacy
and budget, ELCA Commission for Women.  "God placed the ELCA in my
life," she said.  "Then I took the initiative" to find mentors.
     Katie Sorenson, youth and family ministry student, Augsburg
College, Minneapolis, recalled words of wisdom she gathered from two
women.  One woman did not know she was a mentor, she said, while she
intentionally asked the other to mentor her.
     The Rev. Diane Jackson, Redeemer Lutheran Church, Pearisburg, Va.,
shared stories she had gathered from other participants in which women
recalled being mentored as girls.  "It's more than your turn," she said.
"It's what we need to be about."
     Participants discussed several scenarios in which there were
opportunities for women and girls to mentor each other.  Several acted
out the scenarios in skits for the whole gathering.
     Participants were invited to meet in "mentoring rooms" to explore
opportunities for mentor relationships along certain categories: clergy
women, educators, global women leaders, healing-overcoming-recovery and
women's spirituality, "justice, peace and advocacy," lay church
professionals and social services, lesbian leaders and professional
women.
     The Roundtable had a goal that at least 30 percent of its
participants would be women of color or women whose primary language was
other than English.  Another goal was to have at least 30 percent of its
participants be women under the age of 30.
     Thirty-three percent of the participants were women of color, and
19 percent were women under 30.  While not a planned goal, 46 percent of
participants were women under the age of 45.
     Receptions were held to give the two groups time for fellowship
and sharing.  The women of color group used their time to share their
joys and pains of being leaders and women of color in the church.  The
women under 30, with the youngest being 16 years old, used a portion of
their time to share brief descriptors of mentors in their lives.
     The Roundtable preceded the ELCA's Seventh Biennial Churchwide
Assembly here Aug. 8-14.  Two of the women attending the women under 30
reception are voting members at the assembly.
     Members of the ELCA Church Council and Conference of Bishops
joined the Roundtable participants for Miriam's Feast, a gala dinner
based on a biblical reference in Exodus 15.  The dinner was punctuated
with toasts for all ordained women, "our elders," ELCA Presiding Bishop
H. George Anderson, all youth, "this diverse community" and the
Roundtable planners.
     The Rt. Rev. Catherine M. Waynick, bishop, Episcopal Diocese of
Indianapolis, addressed those attending Miriam's Feast.  The
Indianapolis Women's Chorus performed with song and dance.
     After each session of the Roundtable, Amy Grumm Friedrich,
national policy associate, Lutheran Volunteer Corps, Washington, D.C.,
and Christine H. Grumm, executive director, Women's Funding Network, San
Francisco, gave a brief response, summing up some of the ideas they had
gathered from the group discussions.
     Grumm and Friedrich asked participants to write words or phrases
on large, white, cardboard boxes placed by the doors to express some of
the ideas they had learned.
     To summarize the Roundtable, Friedrich and Grumm led a panel of
participants in presenting the words and phrases to the gathering --
stacking the boxes to create a wall of ideas.

GOD IS PRAISED FOR WOMEN'S GIFTS
     A lively opening worship service provided Roundtable participants
with an opportunity for song, dance and prayer.
     "Prayers for the People" were offered during the service in both
Spanish and English.  Prayers were offered for women leaders -- lay and
clergy -- in the ELCA and in churches around the world, for women and
children living in poverty, victims of domestic violence, families
dealing with AIDS and for all women according to their needs.
     The Roundtable closed with worship.  "Wanted: Women who take
risks" was the title of the sermon by the Rev. Ivette Salgado, Iglesia
Luterana Betel (Bethel Lutheran Church), Dorado, Puerto Rico.
     Salgado listed four qualities of a risk-taking woman: "a woman of
true faith that shares that faith; a woman who is willing to believe in
the Good News of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and in herself; a woman who
takes immediate action; and a woman who knows what the Holy Spirit has
imparted in her and is not afraid to share it with others."
     "Imagine that we are a box, open to receive gifts, and the Lord
will fill us with all that we need to be risk-takers in answering His
call," said Salgado.  "Receive the Lord's grace, an abundance of
blessings and favor with God and others."

For information contact:
John Brooks, Director (773) 380-2958 or NEWS@ELCA.ORG
http://listserv.elca.org/archives/elcanews.html