Category: Personal

Audio of my wife Amy Rowell preaching on suffering in Taylor University Chapel

Post author By Andy Rowell
Post date October 6, 2006

My wife, Amy Rowell, spoke in chapel Wednesday at Taylor University. I introduced her. Amy has her Masters of Divinity degree from Regent College in Vancouver, BC and has served on church staff in a number of capacities including pastoral care, children's ministry, adult education, women's ministry and preaching. Like me, she is serving as a professor of Christian Educational Ministries at Taylor. She and I share one full-time position and take turns hanging out with our one-year-old Ryan.

The text she chose was Mark 5:21-43 which includes the healing of the bleeding woman and the daughter of Jairus. Through expositorily preaching this narrative, she outlines a realistic and robust theology of suffering. She specifically reflects on the untimely death of her mother in April. She had three main points. Here is my paraphrasing of them: (1) Jesus is compassionate and has the power to heal. (2) Sometimes Jesus doesn't heal at the time we'd like. (The daughter of Jairus died when Jesus stopped to heal the bleeding woman). (3) But Jesus walks with us on the road and heals when we eventually arrive home.

The mp3 and streaming audio are available at Taylor's website here. Sadly, the video folks had the day off so didn't get her filmed.

This is a photo of us after a wedding in August 2006.

Being a pastor’s wife is sometimes the only way a woman can be involved in church leadership

Post author By Andy Rowell
Post date August 12, 2006
3 Comments on Being a pastor’s wife is sometimes the only way a woman can be involved in church leadership

Another outstanding piece from Lauren Winner at Leadership Journal's Out of Ur blog.

Married to the Ministry: has the pastor’s wife’s role changed for better or worse?

She says that some women who were not allowed to pastor themselves, married pastors and thus found some fulfillment by engaging in the limited amount of pastoral work expected of a pastor's wife.

I have also seen extremely competent pastorally gifted women who have found their way into roles as "administrative assistant" or church secretary. In another setting, these competent gifted women may have considered seminary and become outstanding pastors themselves. Interestingly, according to 2005-2006 report by the Association of Theological Schools, there are almost as many "Black" women pursuing their Masters of Divinity degree these days as men (2,366 Men and 2,330 Women). However, for "White", the numbers are still quite far apart: 16,268 Men and 6,791 Women.

Other pastorally gifted women have gone into "Christian Education," chaplaincy, or counseling as the acceptable approximations for church ministry. And others struggle wondering what to do with their pastoral gifting when they haven't met the right man and what to do with their time when they are struggling with infertility. (See the journeys of Carolyn Custis James and Gretchen Gaebelein Hull as told in their books).

Sadly for many of our young women growing up in evangelical churches, becoming the pastor's wife still seems like their best shot at being involved in church ministry. The number one nonfiction book on the Christian Bestsellers List for September 2006 is Captivating by John and Stasi Eldredge. As a professor at Taylor University, an evangelical Christian college, I can tell you that young Christian women are reading it in droves. Unfortunately as Agnieszka Tennant points out in her Christianity Today article "What (Not All) Women Want: The finicky femininity of Captivating by John and Stasi Eldredge", the Eldredge's advocate a "tame idea of beauty" – one exemplified by "Pioneer women [who] brought china teacups into the wilderness." There are other ways of being beautiful. I know because I have a pastor's wife who has her MDiv just like me. I'm thrilled to be a pastor's husband.

Lauren Winner is great. My wife Amy uses her book Real Sex in the Personal Foundations for Ministry course. Lauren came to Taylor this spring to speak as well. She is married to a friend of ours from Regent College.

See my post about Captivating here.

Blogging Personal

Why I redesigned my blog

I added the explanations to the right about how to use this blog after talking with various people who are new to blogging and therefore gave me the honest "the emperor has no clothes" feedback that

a) they thought my old Blogger site looked better and was simpler and less busy and

b) that they had no idea what a blog was for and that all the features are confusing. What the heck are categories?

Therefore I tried to make sure there is more "white space" and tried to think "less is more" in designing. One thing I got rid of was the second picture of me on the same page. (See below middle snapshot). My wife thought it was definitely too much and when your wife says that . . . 🙂 She hasn’t looked at the new site and I’m not holding my breath. I think she has read under 5 posts ever. She is interested in the subject matter. (She has her MDiv, has pastored, and also teaches Christian ministry at Taylor). She simply would rather talk to live human beings than read blogs. Can you believe that? 🙂

Here are printscreen ("prt sc") snapshots of the the three versions: old, initial typepad, present.