• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Wednesday in the Word

what the Bible means and how we know

  • Home
  • Bible Studies
    • New Testament Bible Studies
    • Old Testament Bible Studies
    • Topical Bible Studies
    • What is the Gospel?
  • Study Help
    • Resource Library
    • Resources by Book of the Bible
    • Bible Study 101: Learn to Study the Bible
    • Bible Study 201: Learn to teach the Bible
  • Articles
    • Theology
    • Faith & Life
    • Family
    • Women’s Ministry Resources
    • Most Popular
  • What is WitW?
    • Meet Krisan
    • What We Believe
    • Looking Back
  • Contact
You are here: Home / Ministry / Are older women invisible in the church?

Are older women invisible in the church?

September 14, 2013 by Krisan Marotta

WomaninPew-580

In the introduction to our study of 1 John, I referenced a July 2013 post on the Christianity Today Her.meneutics blog concerning how “youth focused Christianity may be sidelining the gifts of older women.”

Below is the section from which I quoted:

But one theme emerged that I hadn’t expected: women in the middle of their lives who felt invisible and ignored by the church, the same way they feel invisible or ignored in our culture.

These are women of my mother’s generation, maybe 10 or even 20 years on either side. I heard their hurt, sorrow, and stoicism about life within the church. In a sea of artful hipsters and energetic young people with self-promotion apparently engrained into their DNA, they feel invisible and overlooked.

One woman told me about how she had led worship at her church for years. But when a new young pastor was hired, he wanted a cooler band to get more young people in the door. First thing to go? Older women. “No one wanted to see middle-aged women on stage,” she wrote candidly, and so she was replaced with young women in their late teens and early twenties.

Another woman told me she had very high levels of education, a seminary degree, a long history of teaching with many beloved students, but every teacher at her church’s education program was a young, charismatic man with half her education, let alone experience. The church’s “official” position welcomed women in ministry but in practice, it wasn’t actually happening. She believed it was because she did not fit the expected look or personality or gender of their education program.

Another woman shared about how she has welcomed the shift in the churches of her context towards women in leadership and ministry even though they are all young and beautiful with identical outgoing and big-smiling personalities. The glass ceiling remains for her because she doesn’t fit the preferred look or personality but she cheers on these young women anyway. Her view is that at least women are in public ministry now, in a way that the young women of her generation couldn’t be.

You can read the entire post “The Invisible Generation” by Sarah Bessey here.

More resources for Ministry Leaders

Photo Cogitation in the Chapel taken by Small-Realm and used here under Flickr Creative Commons.

(This article has been read 503 times plus 3 today.)

Related posts:

  1. 5 passages on women in authority in the church
  2. Breaking the Women’s Ministry stereotype?
  3. What church positions are open to women?
  4. Should women have authority in the church?
  5. Why have a women’s ministry?

Filed Under: Ministry, Ministry Philosophy Tagged With: age, hipster, philosophy of ministry, women's ministry

Primary Sidebar

Footer

Find the podcast on:


  • Facebook

  • Instagram

  • Google Play

  • iTunes Podcasts

  • Apple Music

  • Pinterest

  • SoundCloud

  • Spotify

  • Stitcher

  • TuneIn

  • iHeart

  • Email

  • RSS Feed

Wednesday in the Word is the podcast about what the Bible means and how we know.

Contact us

Privacy Policy

Legal Disclaimers

Copyright © 2023 · Krisan Marotta, WednesdayintheWord · Log in