One specialist who studies sermons as communication – her name is Valerie Hobbs – has shown that men preachers tend overwhelmingly to preach to men about men things and tend to tell stories about men. A brief sketch of one of Hobbs’ researches is found in Aimee Byrd’s Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (pp. 143-144). I have known about Hobbs’ works for several years and every study I read of hers was convincing.

What’s the point?

This tendency of preachers to address men more than women is a blind spot that needs to be dealt with. I am happy to say that some are doing just that. I’ve twice been invited to speak to a Communications and Preaching class at Reformed Theological Seminary, DC, on this very topic of preaching to women. While introducing me, the professor who invited me explained to the class that he had invested five years in his own preaching before he realized that he wasn’t really preaching to the women. Now he is also a professor who is being proactive about this blind spot.

What can men preachers do?

Interestingly, these young pastors in training were taking notes on small, practical tips as I spoke, such as making eye contact with women, not using gender-stereotypical illustrations, using more feminine pronouns in illustrations that describe an intelligent or perceptive person, stimulating women to think during the sermon, and asking them good questions during the week to gain insight while preparing sermons.

Leaders are affirming Aimee and her points of view – which ought to be taken very seriously and turned into concrete sermon changes.

This isn’t the only time I have worked on this blind spot with pastors and elders. I am being invited more and more to speak with church leaders on the topic of equipping women well in the church as competent allies to the men. The responses to these talks often validate my passion to talk to church leaders about this gap in communication ro men and women.

A story:

One more experience that stands out was when I was invited to talk to a Presbyterian Church in America presbytery of about eighty pastors and elders, a room full of men. I did not know how my talk was going to be received, as I was pretty blunt about the poor condition of women’s ministries and how women are often kept at arm’s length from the church. This made me nervous about the Q&A that followed the talk. Hand after hand was raised, with pastors connecting the dots between what I taught regarding their responsibility to both equip and listen to the women in their church and the level of damage control they had been dealing with in different women’s ministry situations.

Image: Cover Photo

This is the kick in the shins point:

One pastor raised his hand and said, “I am in my midfifties. In all my years of seminary, pastoring, and presbytery training, I have never heard this before. Thank you for being so brave and passionate to come talk to us.” His comment was extremely validating and yet so utterly revealing.

Why does this happen when more than 50% of our churches are women?

Why isn’t there more proactive training for pastors about how to minister to and better equip the women in their churches? How much interaction are they having with women academics or even popular female writers? Why are many pastors so terribly unaware of the marker of poor theology being sold to women in the form of “Bible studies” and topical studies for women’s ministry? … But in peeling back the yellow wallpaper, pastors need to be asking themselves how they are preparing both the men and women for eternity through the proclamation of the Word and the fruit of that ministry in their church.