All That Was Left Was the Letter "S"

By Jen Ellis

With 25 years in global missions leadership and first hand experience of moral injury, Jen Ellis works as a speaker and trainer, equipping healthcare and other frontline professionals to build trustworthy teams, navigate brokenness wisely, and lead with lasting influence.

Hindsight continues to be one of the most effective teachers in my life. Particularly as I grow older and have more of it available to me. Hindsight shows not only the outcomes of a singular decision, but it reveals patterns when viewing multiple past processes.

This dynamic has given me much to ponder in relation to the role and value of women in society, but particularly in the church. One of these hindsight moment started over a cup of coffee but ended two years later.

Having spent most of my adult life overseas with a missions organization, catching up with friends was a highlight of holidays in the USA. During one such time, my friend and I were joined by her husband for a conversation composed of the familiar and the funny.

At one point, her husband brought up the subject of their daughter and a workplace scenario. One of her co-workers, an older man, often made belittling comments about her capabilities because she was female. She found them frustrating and painful, and her father was particularly angry over this treatment of his daughter.

Conversation then turned to women in the church, specifically related to authority, leadership and public roles. The husband’s view was that women did not have the capacity to handle the financial, spiritual, and organizational decisions that a male elders’ group often consider. I wondered at the time whether he recalled his earlier comments about his daughter in her workplace…

Although I had an egalitarian mission career, I grew up in a complementarian church. I didn’t understand this biblical restriction on women in ministry and had questions about what I saw even as a child. I was twelve when I tried to find out why women were not allowed to collect the offering at a service, but they were allowed to do the work of accounting and bookkeeping for that same money. The leader I asked about the collection protocol mumbled for a while before answering “it just doesn’t look right.” Even then, I knew that looking right wasn’t a suitable reason for biblical imperatives.

The mission organization with which I worked welcomed any ...