Women have fewer opportunities to lead in Asian American churches, according to recent research. From 2022-24, the Innovative Space for Asian American Christianity surveyed nearly 360 churches (over 60% majority Asian American) on leadership, decision-making, conflict, and community involvement.
They found that women in Asian American churches had fewer chances for upper-level leadership, such as preaching or lead pastoring, than women in other churches. Men in Asian American churches tended to cite Biblical beliefs while women tended to cite overrepresentation of men and work-life balance as the main reasons for lack of women in leadership.
ISAAC’s PastoraLab program addresses these challenges. “Cognizant of the intersectional layers of Asian American women’s experiences and identity formation, PastoraLab invites participants to enter mutual learning engagement from their unique social location while considering the universal implications of their particularity,” said ISAAC’s Executive Director and Program Director Young Lee Hertig. The program offers regional mentoring cohorts, a podcast, and other resources.
I spoke with several PastoraLab participants on their experiences, challenges, and opportunities.
Ministry Challenges
In the survey, 66% of Asian American churches allowed women to preach at a main worship service compared with 85% of other churches, while 56% of Asian American churches allowed women to be the head clergy compared with 79% of other churches. Men and women in Asian American churches also gave different reasons for the lack of women in leadership. How do these findings compare with your experiences?
Cris Otonari, Family Pastor of Highway Church Community in the Bay Area: I have never attended or been on staff at an Asian American church. But from the outside looking in, I’ve had more opportunity at the pulpit and in other positions as a woman at white churches.
Jane Hong-Guzman de Leon, Director of Partnerships at a church curriculum company: I’m not surprised. For most men I come across, it’s a theological issue. But women are thinking of the practicalities. They don’t see the opportunities and are busy juggling varied responsibilities.
The higher I would go, from youth pastor to college to adult ministry, the more resistance I felt. It was theological but also cultural. Women and men don’t have the imagination that women can be in leadership because we don’t see it.
Leslie Cheng, worship pastor at First Baptist Church in Pasadena, California: I interned in graduate school at a complementarian Southern Baptist church. It was really interesting to see how they tried to skirt around very evidential gifting amongst the women.
I was also at a Korean church for a little bit (I’m Chinese). There was a lot of sitting down with me, saying things like, “You can’t do pastoral things. You’re strictly doing the music.” There was permission to do things but not under the office of pastor.
Ann Choe, pastor at Epicentre Church in Pasadena, California: I’m an anomaly. I’m at an Asian American church very supportive of women in leadership and ministry.
When we finally hired a woman pastor, I realized I had never seen a woman pastor in my life. We’ve had a lot of conversations asking questions like, “Why is it that men automatically get pastor titles while women are directors?”
Mary Chiang, Masters of Divinity student at Fuller Theological Seminary: I was overseas for 16 years as a missionary. I got to share my story whenever I came home, but it wasn’t called preaching. I never knew I could become a preacher as it was not part of my theological imagination. When I had to take my preaching class in seminary, I was terrified. To actually go through it was empowering.
What other challenges have you faced in ministry?
Hong-Guzman de Leon: At one church where I served, the pastor was supportive of women in ministry, but not sure about women lead pastoring or pulpit teaching. I was turning 40, had my MDiv, and years of experience. Other men on staff much more my junior kept getting more chances in preaching, networking, and ordination. I’m thinking, “I’ve been in the trenches for over 10 years, yet I'm being passed over.”
This is the sad reality. Women feel called to ministry but get burnt out and go into non-profit, teaching, therapy work, and counseling, because they can’t do what they’re called to do in the church.
It seems like there’s no clear pathway to ministry leadership for women, but lots of on-ramping opportunities for men.
Hong-Guzman de Leon: It’s true about the boys’ club. I saw that certain important decision-making didn’t happen in staff meetings, but happened during their outings together—having meals, coffee, playing sports.
Including Women Fully
What could it look like for women to be part of these decision-making processes?
Cheng: A lot of the ways community is cultivated is: “Don’t do anything with the opposite gender.” They call it the Billy Graham rule. It creates this cycle of men meeting with more men, with more men, making decisions for more men.
There are a lot of missed opportunities. Can we just make it safe for everyone to have an opportunity to speak their opinions and voice their concerns?
Chiang: It’s a theological problem too. The Pauline letters and Peter are often used to support the Billy Graham Rule and oppose women in ministry. I have not heard a strong and succinct theological rebuttal [to these interpretations].
The reason church leaders are skirting around the issue is they don’t fundamentally feel that conviction. We’re choosing to not feed our own children because of this. Now the daughters are leaving the church and feeding others. That’s why the church is shrinking. We’re not equipping half our population.
Hong-Guzman de Leon: That’s why we need strong champions including men who are mentoring and making room for women in leadership and teaching from the pulpit in support of women in ministry.
Otonari: A lot of this is also is rooted in a colonial mindset that has persisted through years. It’s not just the church but also the seminaries that have contributed to the disempowerment of women. I’m currently in seminary, and what I’m learning now is completely different than what they taught 20 years ago. One of the solutions is for white, able-bodied men who lead churches to go back and take some seminary classes and get trained by people who have some experience in decolonizing.
The thing I have struggled with more than lack of leadership opportunities is the lack of awareness of what it means to embrace my Asian identity in churches that are white-dominant. Once a pastor preached from Galatians 3:28 in a colorblind way, saying, “If you put any other parts of your human identity before your identity in Christ, that’s idolatry.”
I’m a Japanese-American female. God redeems all of that. I can’t separate that and say my identity in Christ is the most important thing about me.
The Role of Theological Education
How did you decide to pursue further ministry and theological training, and how has it shaped you?
Choe: It was suggested to me by a mentor during my college years with InterVarsity that pursuing further theological training would be important for me, particularly as a woman, if I was interested in pursuing full-time ministry. Getting my degree in Intercultural Studies at Fuller expanded my worldview and gave me more practical tools. I ended up also doing a bunch of theology classes and those combined with my intercultural studies degree have given me a much more robust worldview as I pastor today.
Otonari: The longer I was in ministry, the more aware I became that there was so much I didn't know that I didn't know. I'm currently in the Masters of Theology and Ministry program, with an Asian American Ministry concentration, at Fuller.
I pursued a seminary education after about ten years of volunteer ministry and eight years of paid vocational ministry. In addition to a desire to develop critical thinking and form a personal theology, I felt like seminary was necessary for me to be taken seriously and get promoted.
Hong-Leon de Guzman: I was told by multiple people from varying backgrounds that although men didn't need to have a Masters of Divinity to pastor at a church women definitely needed it. And even with an MDiv, there was no guarantee that women could pastor a church.
Besides covering Bible and theology, an MDiv allows you to study leadership, counseling, family and organizational systems, ministering to different populations of people, preaching, and more. When I was done with the degree, I felt like I wasn't a "master" of divinity. Rather, I just got a taste of what there is to learn and there's so much more!
A Two-Pronged Solution
ISAAC’s findings coincide with research by Debbie Gin and her team at the Association of Theological Schools. Surveying alumni from ATS schools, they found that the higher the leadership role, the fewer percentage of women in these roles. In their 2022 survey, they found the top three positions for Asian women graduates were administration, pastoral care and counseling, and associate pastor, whereas Asian men were most likely to be lead pastors. Surveying women leaders in the theological education field, Gin found patterns of racial inequity in expectations for women leaders. Asian and Latina women were criticized twice as much as their Black and white counterparts for not being feminine enough in their leadership style.
“In order for them to be seen as a good leader, Asian and Latina women have to be more feminine, nurturing, and do more hospitality tasks,” Gin said.
Gin sees the solution to the lack of women in church leadership as two-pronged: equip women in theological education with competencies such as active listening, administration, and spiritual disciplines for the roles they most frequently take after graduation, while also get women into more preaching roles.
“You have to change the canon, change the way it is,” Gin said. “At the same time, you have to train the existing people to be able to thrive and excel with the current system.”
Photo by Candace McDaniel on StockSnap
