For many people, the church is a refuge. It’s a safe place, somewhere they can always feel accepted and valued. But for women who want to take leadership roles in the congregation, especially women of color, the welcome mat is not always laid out.
That’s why Rev. Martha Simmons created the Women of Color in Ministry Project (WOCIM). The initiative began about four years ago, after Simmons encountered the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.
“I was attending the Hampton Ministers Conference, which is about 100 or so years old, it’s a historic gathering of African-American clergy, and they have what’s called the women’s hour,” she said. “I heard women ask questions, and as I sat there I said, ‘Wait a minute. These are the same questions we were asking 30 years ago.’ … I was stunned that the questions were exactly the same.”
Simmons noticed many of the questions went unanswered, and many of the “answers” to the questions were anecdotal and lacked substance.
“That was just it for me. I just said, we cannot be still here 30 years later.”
Simmons recounts the stir she made 30 years ago when she made known her intentions to preach.
“It was just shocking in the national Baptist church to have a woman say she wanted to be licensed to preach. It was chaos. People were losing their minds. Women from the church would come and say you’re going to split our church, you’re hurting our denomination.”
Simmons said she had some hurdles to clear. When she was ready to preach her trial sermon, an important step in the process, she said it was scheduled and canceled at least three times.
“And there were so few women I could look to as examples,” she said. “It was just extremely difficult to do.”
So now Simmons’ project seeks to provide those examples to women who want to join the ministry. WOCIM works with women of color, primarily Asian-Americans, African-Americans and Latinos, with four specific pillars in mind: advocacy, educational assistance, mentorship and job placement in ministry.
“We push for women to get ordained, we push for women to get equal treatment,” Simmons explained. “For instance, one case we’re working with now is a Korean woman who expressed she had been treated unjustly by the Presbytery of Atlanta, because she was fired and was never given a contract, although she requested one often. They denied her severance, which she was due. We’ve been working with her to get her severance.”
In terms of job placement, WOCIM aims to help women find higher quality opportunities.
“So many of the jobs they’re still relegated to are the lowest paid where you work the longest hours, or you can’t get a job period, so you end up working outside the church while working inside the church for free,” Simmons said.
Rev. Marion Miller, who has been a pastor at St. Luke’s United Methodist Church for about 16 years, came to the church with a unique perspective after 30 years working as a senior executive at Xerox.
“The glass ceiling (in the church) was slightly different than corporate America’s glass ceiling,” she said. “In corporate America, you have policies and procedures that are standard and provide guidelines and boundaries… In church, they are not that specific.”
Contributing to that lack of structure is the fact that policies and opinions on women in the church vary greatly across denominations and among individual congregations within each denomination.
“Even at the congregational level, if they are calling a pastor, they will probably take someone who is less qualified as a male before they would take a more qualified female,” she said.
Still, Miller knows many churches, including her own, are making strides toward being more inclusive.
“When I came to this church, there was no one who looked like me, but if you look at the congregation today … there is a lot of diversity within this church now,” she said. “They’ve also allowed me to create a multi-cultural service, which is very diverse, and we’re able to engage more persons of color, persons of different ethnicities, persons of different faiths, so forth and so on.”
Simmons said she can tell by reaction to the WOCIM project that it was much needed. The project gets emails daily from women of color in ministry across the country asking questions or seeking advice.
“The feedback has been great, because the need is great,” she said. “Women from around the country have said, ‘I can’t believe there’s something out here like this.’”
She said she does wish more Asian-American women would reach out, and she wonders if maybe they are misguided about the purpose of the project.
“I think some people when they hear the title “women of color,” they just think Black women, but we’ve always gone out of our way to include all women of color in everything we’ve done,” she said.
And Asian-American women, especially Korean women, face intense barriers when seeking pastoral leadership positions in the church. One Korean woman who has worked with WOCIM has been licensed and ordained for seven years, but she has still not been allowed to preach.
“Of course, that would never happen to a man. She has been paid less than the Korean men as well,” Simmons said. “What we found from working with this woman is this has happened to and is happening to Korean women around the country.”
But for all the disheartening tales from women across the nation, Simmons said there are success stories galore, and she knows WOCIM is making progress.
“I’m proud of every woman who gets helped, every woman who gets educated, every woman who has her consciousness raised. I’ve learned over time that every step for justice, every act of education, every act of consciousness-raising that you can do for a person matters, because you never know what that person is going to do.”
For example, one woman who got ordained with help from WOCIM immediately turned around and began helping others.
Among Black women, Simmons has noticed them “standing up and moving forward.”
“The big thing that is happening for more African-American women is they are just standing up and saying we matter, we will be counted and respected, and thanks to social media, they can get their voices out there and get their points of view heard.”
Simmons said the new generation of leaders — Millennials — are making a difference in the climate as well.
“Those women seem to have a greater sense that they are supposed to lead, whether they do it as senior pastors or in other ways. So they’re more willing to fight to get what they want. They are less concerned about barriers put up by denominations and men. They will start their own groups, they will get on social media, they will just go and do it. I am very heartened by the young women … they seem to be fearless.”
Rev. Rae Karim, pastor of Northwood Christian Church, is much newer to her leadership position within the church than Simmons and Miller are, and her perspective is different as a result. She said the so-called “good ol’ boys club” still persists, but she also shows that strength Simmons mentioned is apparent in younger women.
“There were definitely times I recognized that positions I applied for, I wouldn’t get them because I’m a woman,” she said. “The good ol’ boys club still does exist, however I believe as they recognize we women are not going anywhere … they either have to open up the doors or stand back, because we’ll kick them in.
“There is a growing sisterhood, not just among Black women but among women period, of women in ministry,” Karim said.
As a member of that sisterhood and someone who has found success at the head of a church, Karim said she strives to open doors for women who come after her.
“It’s not just about Northwood, it’s not just about me as a woman, it’s about me opening the doors up,” she said. “I have that opportunity to open doors and keep them open for women who are coming up in ministry. If there’s not room, we’ll make room.”
One of the people who helped Karim open her own doors, she said, was Marion Miller.
“She made sure the door would not get closed on me,” Karim said.
Miller continues to fill that mentorship role by working with students at the Christian Theological Seminary, where she’s mentored about 20 aspiring leaders. Miller said she pays attention to patterns in the church so she can share that information with the students.
“What I do is I look at patterns to see if the pattern is creating something that will eventually cause change to happen. In the Disciples of Christ denomination, women are accepted and ordained. In the United Methodist organization, they are accepted, ordained and appointed. In the Baptist churches, they are considering more women now than they have done in the past, particularly those who are interested in chaplaincy.
“That’s the pattern I’ve been watching to share with my students to let them know what they’ll be up against.”
The climate the new students will be facing is one that is improving, Karim said, even in the short time she’s been in the church.
“There was probably a point when I would have thought I was unique and rare as a woman in ministry, but thankfully that is not as much the case anymore,” she said. “I’m excited about the future of women in ministry. I believe we are about to take the city by storm. I’m thankful for those women who did have to struggle so that my challenges wouldn’t be as great.”
