‘One-to-one “shepherding” is a disaster waiting to happen’

In my brief editorial career (about seven years and one week) I had three male bosses and two female ones. (The rest of the 40+ years, I have been self-employed.) One of the male bosses was fantastic, the others were not; the same goes for the female ones. In the case of the bad female boss, she tore to shreds every article I wrote, and expected me to beg her for 2p pieces for the coffee machine. That was the one-week job; I walked out, having just moved into my own flat – not great timing.  

As far as indicating whether it’s better to work for a woman or a man, my experience really doesn’t lead to any clear conclusion. The campaigning group Global 50/50 has just issued a report showing that, at least in the health sector, under female CEOs the gender pay gap is significantly smaller, so financially it is clearly better to work for a woman. However, work is not all about money. Is it more rewarding, or at least less traumatic, to have a female boss than a male one?

Anecdotal evidence abounds. Women, many people’s experiences suggest, are more co-operative in their style of management, less high-handed and perhaps will be more accommodating to flexible working that allows for childcare and family emergencies. After all, they may have been there themselves (though many of the women who have managed to make it to ‘the top’ may have done so at the cost of not having a significant relationship or a family life at all). Men may not understand the complicated lives of women well (their wives may do the juggling act unnoticed). In situations like the boardroom, men often talk to each other and ignore any women present. And sadly churches are not exempt from this kind of phenomenon.

Discipleship within churches  

I have only ever been in one church where I felt I was really discipled at all (though I was there for 24 years) and in that case I felt it was the whole church that did the discipling, regardless of the gender of the leaders. Home groups were really the place where most discipling was done, and in that case we aimed to have a woman and a man leading each group, if at all possible. The congregation had been founded by a married couple who were without doubt the Priscilla and Aquila of the contemporary Church, with a unique style of preaching and teaching where they would speak together, each saying a sentence or two and then handing over to the other. This was both easier to listen to and gave a wonderfully creative dual perspective. And they provided the best possible model of equality and cooperation between the sexes.

She will know what it is like to seek to follow Jesus specifically as a woman – and it does make a difference

I can see that when it comes to personal matters, it is probably always wisest to have another woman to talk to. The current revelations of abuse in churches make it dangerous for a woman to make intimate disclosures to a male leader, though I don’t subscribe to the paranoid idea that a male leader should never be alone with a female congregant. (Does he have no self-control at all? Or does he see all women as likely to make up stories about his behaviour?) 

If we’re realistic, the dynamic of asymmetric one-to-one discipling creates an inevitable and sometimes unhealthy dependency in which the disciple may develop fantasies about the ‘discipler’ (I used to joke that I was a clerico-medicosexual – I fell in love with doctors and vicars). Far safer to stick to a relationship where (unless you’re gay) there is no potential sexual undercurrent. 

This aside, the best argument I can see for being led into spiritual maturity by another woman is that she will have more insight into what your life is like, whether as a single woman, a married one and/or a mother. She will know what it is like to seek to follow Jesus specifically as a woman – and it does make a difference.

Ultimately, however, my own experience suggests to me that one-to-one ‘shepherding’, whichever genders are involved, is often a disaster waiting to happen. Like the “nuclear” family, it can be an explosive situation. Discipling is best done by the whole church together, because, as our homegrown Aquila used to say: “Leadership is plural”. And, ideally, discipling should be mutual, not one-way. We disciple each other