I’ve begun feeling a dearth of women leaders in the West Virginia Annual Conference.  This is all the more strange given my marriage to a female elder.  It’s not that they’re not out there…it’s that they’re so out there (or I’m so in here) that our paths only cross with strict intentionality.  My DS is a man.  My Bishop is a man.  My ordination mentor is a man.  All the clergy save two in my Cooperative Parish are men, and those two are associates.  Annual Conference preachers are almost always men.  Only one of nine District Superintendents is a woman…and she’s clear at the other end of the state.  Women leaders in the conference seem to be in specialized places.  We have a wonderful clergywoman as our Director of Congregational Development.  I have no qualms with my DS or my Bishop.  I guess I miss the variety.

I was invited into the ministry by a woman.  As a US-2 I was commissioned alongside 21 awesome women.  Most of my seminary training was under the tutelage of women professors and an all-female dean’s office.  I think it makes a difference.  If having gender balance on the Supreme Court makes a significant and beneficial difference, how much more important is it for the church to insist on just such a balance.  I fear that this lack of balance is causing us to miss something important.