I’ve got one more post in me regarding Missio Alliance’s August 13th link, 7 Questions All Pastors Need to Ask Themselves Post-Hybels I wanted to see if one (or more!) of the self-awareness questions was going to explore friendship as a foundation for egalitarian ministry. I was hoping to see if one of the self-awareness questions was going to explore mutual flourishing in friendship between the sexes in pastoral relationships.
I was immediately curious to see if they would start asking questions beyond the common evangelical “avoiding evil” strategy when it came to friendships 
between the sexes. I wondered if any of these self-aware questions was going to address the unacknowledged baggage of the evangelical purity culture still lingering among evangelical egalitarians. I was hoping for some soul-searching questions touching on the good news of sharing of egalitarian power and the flourishing of friendship between a man and woman with no one else present.
When I first read Chicago Tribune article came out in March, one of my first reactions was that I was shocked to see Hybels—and Willow Creek leadership supporting him—throwing Nancy Beach under the bus. I didn’t know the other women in the article but I knew Beach.
I didn’t know her personally but I knew she was a longstanding pastor at Willow with high credibility. I couldn’t imagine being in her shoes and having one of the most powerful evangelical egalitarian men in all the world, call you a liar. This was one of the most disturbing things to me in the hours and days after reading that first Tribune article.
Push the fast-forward button to August 13. After the New York Times posted new allegations from former executive assistant, Pat Baranowski, at least ten women had come forward. Missio Alliance publishes these seven questions by respected evangelical pastor Rich Villodas. "All pastors” need to ask after the entire meltdown/resignation of Willow Creek pastors and elders.
No doubt about it, the questions were good. Don’t misunderstand me. Missio Alliance does not put forth shallow stuff. But there wasn’t anything deeply egalitarian about the questions. Ed Stetzer could have asked the questions! They could have been asked by Tim Keller. Even a pre-March Bill Hybels could have been on board with the questions as I mentioned in my last post.
For me, these seven questions reflect this sub-culture's (Missio Alliance, CBE, The Junia Project, etc.) lack of self-awareness and social awareness among egalitarians about power and friendship in the highest level of leadership. It seemed to me that none of these seven get into the heart of the relationships Bill Hybels would have had with each of these women.
These questions don’t even begin to explore long-term mutual flourishing between male pastors and the individual women he calls friends—whether they be a fellow co-pastor, his executive assistant, a woman in his community, or someone else on his staff. Looking at this through a friendship lens, these women were friends of God. They deserved valuable, priceless, Christ-centered flourishing that Hybels never modeled to them. Back then, and up until now where he has never taken on the responsibility to attune to their personal flourishing.
Pastoral Friendship and Woman’s Flourishing Beyond the Evangelical Sub-Culture
For me, these questions reflect the biggest weakness in egalitarian theology among evangelicals: following the Bill Hybels-Willow Creek model for years: they lack a theology of friendship between a man and woman, alone together, flourishing as friends. Thirty years into Willow Creek egalitarianism. Years of Global Leadership Summit have not produced a theology of what it means for a man and woman to flourish together as friends, together alone. These egalitarians never joyfully put forward a theology of gospel friendship in either a full-length book nor a series of blog articles inquisitive men or women who are not evangelical could turn to for inspiration, hope, and flourishing.
Of course, prior to March of this year, Willow Creek egalitarianism was the best, safest, and healthiest thing going in the evangelical community! Bill Hybels was the leader for the annual Global Leadership Summit. Even though he never championed intimate friendships (shared relational power) between men and women, evangelical egalitarian women from all over the world looked to him as a beacon and guide for what healthy egalitarianism looked like in churches.
Even his daughter, Shauna Niequist, a popular author, would write eloquently about friendship in her books but she, like her father, could not embrace the gift and discipline of gospel friendship where sexual attraction might emerge.
Now on this side of the Willow Creek meltdown, we know why. Shauna did not observe her own father model a radiant, healthy flourishing close friendships with the sexes.
Willow Creek egalitarian “fruit” has been hunkered down in “avoid the appearance of evil” strategy. This was a mixture of following the Billy Graham rule and asserting safety/wisdom (for both men and women) in numbers. Authentic, mature, healthy connection happened between men and women in the safety of numbers bigger than two either in small groups or church gatherings. Part of “avoiding evil” has been the unacknowledged baggage of these egalitarian leaders still steeped in the evangelical purity culture which is loaded with toxic masculinity. We’ll get into that in a moment.
But ask any woman right now who is not an evangelical but an egalitarian—a follower of Jesus or an agnostic—if she would feel safe going to Willow Creek. Or she would feel safe within the evangelical egalitarian culture. Ask any morally sensitive egalitarian woman who has not been a part of the evangelical purity culture (including egalitarians) if she would feel safe immersing herself into that culture now.
One of the first women to inspire me and guide me to enthusiastically embrace flourishing in intimate cross-sex friendship was feminist theologian Cristina Traina. She was indeed a theologian. She was a committed feminist. But she was not an evangelical. She was never a part of the Willow Creek egalitarian sub-culture. As a Catholic ethicist, she inspired me to see that avoiding evil, or the minimalist strategy of do no harm, was woefully insufficient for mutual flourishing.
Love, she argued, promoted flourishing. Flourishing?? I imagine for some, “flourishing” sounds too abstract, nerdy, or academic. Out of touch with everyday life. For others, flourishing is an over-used word. Still, for others flourishing sounds open-ended fraught with too many loose ends and too many slippery slopes.
It’s impossible of course, to dive into what full flourishing in opposite-sex friendship looks like in a blog post. But she helped me to see there were virtues of one might call a positive psychology for shared relational power between men and women as friends when no else is around.
In the last ten years, I have longed for an egalitarian blogger or author with a “platform” (has a largely trusted audience-following a book publisher would crave for) to exude or relish about flourishing in an opposite-sex friendship. There has been no Cristina Perez joyfully claiming the egalitarian delight of having “friendship dates” with her long-time male friend even though both are married. There has been no Judith Orloff like evangelical female therapist gladly claiming intimate friendship with men.
There has been no Emma Thompson extolling the power of intimate trust with a male colleague in their friendship. There has been no highlighting the exuberance of a Leonardo DiCaprio-Kate Winslet kind of dyadic friendship among egalitarian leaders-pastors. There has been no Connie Zweig boasting of her intimate affinity and coffee dates with her male colleague even though they were happily married.
I could list other examples but what all these immediate examples share is this robust, radiant flourishing of an upward spiral of emotions shared between these opposite-sex friends who are therapists, authors, judges-lawyers, college professors, actors-actresses. All of the examples of long-term positive flourishing cross-sex friendships.
I don’t know now if I am connecting dots for you all, but these examples are powerful positive disruptions to the unacknowledged baggage of the evangelical purity culture among egalitarians. I specifically highlighted professional women who are all egalitarians but not evangelical egalitarians. In the evangelical sub-culture (Missio Alliance, The Junia Project, CBE, etc.) no professional woman who is married or single is joyfully permitted to claim deep positive emotions—exuberance, ecstasy, excess vitality, glowing radiance, or particular specialness—with another professional male colleague over their connection being alone, together.
Professional women who are evangelical egalitarians must be compliant with the unacknowledged, unaddressed shadows within the evangelical purity culture where toxic masculinity lurks right around the corner. It’s unacceptable for them to post physically close cheek-to-cheek pictures (like we saw with Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson) on FB as they meet with an opposite-sex colleague alone in an office, or at Starbucks or in a shared solitude kind of setting with no one else around. They can of course post deep affectionate pictures on social media of their female friends.
“Joy,” writes clinical psychologist Chris Meadows, “is the emotion which comes when one has grasped a good or fulfilled a strong desire that is crucial to a person’s own flourishing, the by-product of fulfilling his or her deepest yearnings. Invariably it comes to us without planning or effort, but in a situation which is a seed-bed for its bursting forth from the beauty of human relationships and nature. The experience of joy is a fundamental response to human possibility.”
In the evangelical sub-culture, professional women are not allowed to flourish with exuberant joy with deep gratitude, deep enthusiasm over an intimate dyadic friendship with a male colleague or trusted friend. They have to be compliant to the dictates of unexamined toxic masculinity within egalitarian leadership in seminaries and churches. Human flourishing—the shared relational power—in the dyadic quality of one-on-one friendship with the opposite sex has never matured or been liberated to mature in the evangelical sub-culture. They cannot exercise a woman's flourishing in the presence of another man without needing their husband to be hovering anxiously around.
In the evangelical purity culture, it is not just the risk of sex for a professional woman (or man) but it’s the ever-present pull of a negative cycle of emotions that will entrap her or her male colleague. If God is an egalitarian God, God is not pro-female flourishing in female-male spiritual friendships if you ponder the "fruit" of Willow Creek egalitarian power. I discovered outside the evangelical sub-culture that female flourishing—not just surviving in a male-centered community, not just “getting by” with “safe boundaries”—but a robust sense of female agency exercising self-awareness, discerning openness, relational maturity, emotional intelligence, and a wholeheartedness toward flourishing. Full stop. Imagine that! Women flourishing beyond the evangelical egalitarian purity sub-culture norms.
Love that promotes flourishing.
Perhaps evangelical egalitarians are reluctant to admit there is already a substantial conversation happening between pastors about power, sexuality, flourishing, love, and friendship. Cristina Traina gets into the heart of these issues (unlike any evangelical egalitarian book or blogs associated with Missio Alliance, the CBE, or The Junia Project) in two books for pastors. One is Professional Sexual Ethics: A Holistic Ministry Approach and the other is Soft Shepherd or Almighty Pastor? Power and Pastoral Care. I highly recommend both books as starters for a deeper egalitarian conversation happening outside the purity culture.
Intimate Prayer, Friendship, and Woman’s Flourishing
In the past sixteen years, I have had three long-term, intentional friendships with women where intimate prayer with and for one another was a part of friendship. One of those friendships, we are still intimately praying with and for each other after sixteen years! In another friendship, we started praying in 2008 together and it, too, is still powerfully alive, healthy, and flourishing. The other spiritual friendship lasted 9 years.
I will camp out here for the moment, just because I am comfortable in my own skin after praying alone together with a number of female friends over sixteen years. But understand I could make this point for a wide range of spiritual disciplines or practices: lectio divina, sabbath, solitude, hospitality, attentiveness—you name the discipline and practice—evangelical egalitarian pastors and theologians have not been on the frontlines as champions of mutual flourishing in the discipline of spiritual friendships.
Katelyn Beaty is a powerful voice for evangelical women. In a follow-up article after the Willow Creek meltdown, she felt it necessary for evangelicals to explore power: “But I’m not sure Willow Creek can honestly evaluate itself without having to completely recast the way it operates as a church. The Hybels story is, of course, about sex — how sexual desire, left unchecked, damages relationships, marriages and entire ministries. But it is, at a far deeper level, about power: how individuals wield it and how institutions protect it.”
One of her suggestions was, “Denominations should use vigorous, thorough psychological testing to weed out leaders who for various reasons can’t be trusted with that much power over people’s lives.”
Now, perhaps that is the way to go. But it doesn’t do justice to address mutual flourishing in cross-gender friendship with ordinary non-pastoral folk like me, or half the professional women I named earlier. Kate Winslet, Cristina Perez, Emma Thompson to name a few professional women who have discovered flourishing in intimate flourishing with male friends. Long-term intimate friendship flourishing.
It may come as a surprise to egalitarian evangelicals who have been immersed in the ethics and psychology of the purity culture to know there are women outside the culture who exercise their full agency in discerning full flourishing. They are not just dupes for sentimental gush in these cross-gender friendships.
Ever since I came across Cristina Traina’s argument that love promotes flourishing (probably around ten years ago), that has profoundly opened my eyes and shaped the way I pray for my female friend’s flourishing in their intimate hearing (no one else around).
I have known the joy and flourishing of mutual praying alone with female friends including female pastors. When we are friends of God, we pray for each other’s flourishing—obviously many times not even saying the specific word. In praying for each of my female friends over the years in their hearing, my attentiveness has expanded.
At the heart of those prayers had/has been my desire for my female friend’s flourishing. Not just surviving in a male-centered, male privileged world/communities, but flourishing. Not just “getting by” but flourishing—abundant life, well-being, delight, fullness, beauty, fullness of their human potential in relationships, voice, vocation. One could say that my theological telos of women’s flourishing has been radically altered as I have prayed with and for a female friend, alone, together over the course of days, weeks, months, and years.
Joining together in prayer with and for my female friends stirred a desire for abundant life and well-being in multiple contexts and in the changing seasons of their lives. But the ongoing and deepening desire in my prayers for them to see them flourish opened my awareness to larger social issues they and women were facing.
When evangelical egalitarians proclaim through their silence and avoidance that power and friendship don’t mix, how could strong women like Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, Judith Orloff, Cristina Perez ever be curious or attracted to remaining, unaddressed toxic masculinity within an evangelical purity culture?
Intercessory prayer writes evangelical theologian Wyndy Corbin Reuschling, “requires of us a willing attentiveness to how others in our communities and world are affected by such things as violence, economic instability, unfair practices, discrimination.”
She continues, “Intercessory prayer puts before God and other hearers the good and well-being of persons, believing that God is just as concerned about them as God is about us. Prayer draws us outward, and in doing so, it draws us into greater intimacy with those with whom and for whom we pray, perhaps even prompting us to act as an answer to prayer. If we see intercessory prayer as a form of speaking out for others, the connections with speaking out as an act of solidarity become clearer. Speaking out for others in public forums is a way of making visible what might be invisible, ignored, forgotten, or unseen in our contexts. It focuses on the good of others and appeals to hearers that the impact of our decisions and actions on others be noticed and taken seriously. It lifts up God’s desires for justice and contributes to speaking this kind of justice into existence in our communities by interceding for those whose life circumstances are constrained by our unjust and uncaring actions.”
Boy, if that’s the case, why aren’t we hearing more rich stories, radiant stories of special, close friendships, and shared history narratives from evangelical male and female pastors expressing heartfelt thanks about their intimate spiritual friendships with each other? Intimate prayers of mutual flourishing for their friendship and for woman’s flourishing?
