Lack of fe­male chapel speak­ers raises ques­tions

The typ­i­cal Bethel grad­u­ate at­tends nearly 350 chapel ser­vices dur­ing their four years. Al­though each of the ser­vices pre­sents a unique per­spec­tive, tone and topic, there are a few sim­i­lar­i­ties which stu­dents now ex­pect: Shawn Holt­gren will keep wor­ship on-beat by clap­ping the mi­cro­phone; Den­nis En­g­brecht will close the prayer “in the strong and pow­er­ful name of Je­sus;” and the guest speaker will be ar­tic­u­late, evan­gel­i­cal and  … male.

Think about it: who was the last fe­male chapel speaker this year? If you did­n’t an­swer, you’re cor­rect! A woman has ac­tu­ally yet to take the stage this se­mes­ter and won’t un­til Oct. 24, when Suze Fair from Fel­low­ship Mis­sion­ary Church vis­its cam­pus. This year’s ra­tio ap­prox­i­mates a five-male-to-one-fe­male pro­por­tion, which is sur­pris­ing since 60 per­cent of Bethel stu­dents are fe­male. While this is­sue may seem like a harm­less de­tail, many stu­dents, pro­fes­sors and ad­min­is­tra­tors have con­sid­ered it.

Shawn Holt­gren, chapel co­or­di­na­tor and wor­ship leader, rec­og­nized that fe­male speak­ers bring a unique life per­spec­tive from which all stu­dents can learn. To em­pha­size one per­spec­tive over an­other short-changes the en­tire Bethel com­mu­nity. The em­pow­er­ing mes­sages of Mar­i­lyn La­zlo, Brenda Slater Mc­Neil, Jill Brisco, Lyn Hy­bols, JJ Heller and Oreon Trickey linger in stu­dents’ minds each time they exit the Ever­est-Rohrer stage.

“It’s in­ter­est­ing that a lot of the chapel speak­ers that I do re­mem­ber are fe­male,” said se­nior Jenny Re­ber. “Most of them have com­pelling sto­ries that I re­late to rather than just strong ser­mons.”

Ac­cord­ing to Dr. Tim Erdel, as­so­ci­ate pro­fes­sor of the Re­li­gion and Phi­los­o­phy De­part­ment, a male-dom­i­nant plat­form in evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tian­ity ex­ists “in the wake of tra­di­tion and gen­eral cul­ture,” not as a re­sult of care­ful bib­li­cal in­ter­pre­ta­tion.

“Christ cer­tainly in­cluded women in His min­istry and broke some so­cial taboos,” said  Dr. Eliz­a­beth McLaugh­lin. “And both men and women were cre­ated in the im­age of God. I think there has been an ad­min­is­tra­tive ef­fort (to sched­ule more fe­male speak­ers), but I won­der if it re­flects on larger sub-cul­tural is­sues of evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tian­ity.”

Kathy Grib­bin, vice pres­i­dent of  life call­ing and stu­dent en­rich­ment, shares McLaugh­lin’s per­spec­tive.

“To only show half is to only tell half of the hu­man story … no one’s telling the whole story,” she said. “And it’s not just a Bethel Col­lege is­sue or a Mis­sion­ary church is­sue; it’s an evan­gel­i­cal cul­ture is­sue.  The glass ceil­ing is very real to women in evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian lead­er­ship.”

Though an en­tire cul­ture may be re­spon­si­ble for this dis­pro­por­tion, its ef­fects can be ob­served even on Bethel’s cam­pus. Dr. Robby Prenkert is one of many pro­fes­sors on cam­pus who fears the “pow­er­ful psy­cho­log­i­cal mes­sage” that stu­dents re­ceive by see­ing so few women on stage. He said that it does­n’t only in­sin­u­ate male chau­vin­ism, pa­ter­nal­ism and con­de­scen­sion, it de­clares that min­istry, let alone the mi­cro­phone, is for men.

“Women seek­ing po­si­tions in min­istry need role mod­els,” said McLaugh­lin. “I be­lieve there are many women who have been called, ques­tion that call­ing with a lack of di­rec­tion and ul­ti­mately choose some­thing else.”

Dr. Erdel has seen this tran­spire many times in his de­part­ment.

“A lot of women be­gin in Chris­t­ian min­istries, but very few fin­ish. Many can’t vi­su­al­ize them­selves in this role (with­out a model),” said Erdel.

Dr. Erdel noted that, in ad­di­tion to ir­reg­u­lar fe­male chapel speak­ers, Bethel’s Re­li­gion and Phi­los­o­phy De­part­ment is com­prised of only male pro­fes­sors. Fe­male stu­dents seek­ing full-time min­istry are lack­ing ex­am­ples, men­tors and ad­vi­sors where they need them most.

Holt­gren un­der­stands the dan­gers of rep­re­sent­ing one per­spec­tive of min­istry.

“I want every­one who comes to Bethel to be able to see them­selves on stage,” he said. “I’m very aware that our women need to see mod­els of godly, faith­ful women of Christ.”

A lim­ited bud­get and pool of re­gional speak­ers make sched­ul­ing dif­fi­cult, but Holt­gren plans with strat­egy, pur­pose and per­spec­tive to achieve di­ver­sity and va­ri­ety.

While the fe­male-to-male speaker ra­tio is far from ideal to many on cam­pus, Holt­gren’s ef­forts have not gone by un­no­ticed.

“Bethel ad­min­is­tra­tion does an amaz­ing job bring­ing a va­ri­ety of speak­ers. Ninety-nine per­cent of our stu­dents will hear more fe­male chapel speak­ers in four years than in a life­time … of church on Sun­day morn­ings,” said Prenkert. “More women (should) start an­swer­ing the call to full-time pas­toral min­istry. Yes, our pa­tri­ar­chal church struc­tures have set up a lot of bar­ri­ers that make an­swer­ing that call dif­fi­cult … We need to change the struc­tures, but what good will that do if women don’t an­swer the call?”