<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The PCNSW’s WHS consultation on the proposed change to restrict future eldership to men closes on 8th June (extended from the original 25 May). I have submitted my response. Many of you reading this also have — and many of you reached the survey, directly or indirectly, through something I wrote.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I want to use this space to do three things. To thank you. To say where I’ve landed. And to be honest about what this season has cost, both for me and for the people who have walked through it.</p>
<h2 class="wp-block-heading">To those who engaged</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If you responded to the survey because the companion guide helped you see why it mattered — or because someone you know read it and brought it to you — thank you. I am genuinely grateful. Many women in leadership roles across PCNSW churches told me directly that they only knew the survey existed because of something I wrote or shared. I know the actual reach has been much wider than that, because resources have a way of travelling further than their authors ever see. To everyone who engaged, in whatever form that took: thank you.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I want to acknowledge something specifically. Many of you responded at real cost. You have told me that you wrote things in the free-text fields that took a long time to put into words, and that were difficult to commit to a survey form, even a confidential one. Some of you took the risk of being honest about your own experience of leadership in our churches, knowing that the data would be read by people you don’t know, and presented to an Assembly you may not feel knows or sees you. That took courage, and I do not think I have to tell you that. I think you know.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Whatever the Committee does with the submissions, what you wrote matters. It will continue to matter after 25 May. You said the thing. The thing is now on the record. That is not a small thing.</p>
<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Where I have landed</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The companion guide was an attempt to set out the evidence fairly. I think it succeeded at that. But the survey response I submitted was something different — it was an attempt to say what I actually think. And I want to say some of that here, because anyone who took the guide seriously deserves to know where its author ended up.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I have landed in this place: we are already poorer as a denomination for how we treat women.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Not because of the proposed change, which has not yet been made. But because of patterns that already exist in our churches — patterns I have seen with my own eyes, and patterns I have heard about from people I trust enough to listen to. I have heard from women who have brought serious things to their sessions and been told to get over them. I have heard from women whose ministry pathways have narrowed rather than widened, not through any single decision, but through a steady pattern of opportunity going elsewhere. I have heard from women who have been told their opinions don’t matter, sometimes in words and more often in the structural shape of how a meeting was run. I have heard from women who have had unwanted pursuit by men in our churches and not heard well when they raised concerns about it. It is not my place to share any of those stories in detail, because they are not mine to share. But they are real, and there are more of them than I wanted to see. The cumulative weight of them is something I am still sitting with.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The academic literature describes more or less exactly what I have been hearing. The Royal Commission described it nearly a decade ago. Professor Tuckey’s research describes it. Our own PCA’s 2020 survey described it. We have not lacked the evidence. We have lacked the willingness to receive it.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The proposed change does not create these problems. It formalises them. That is the frame I would want people to hold as they wait for the Committee’s report. The question is not “what risk does this change create?” The question is “what is already happening in our churches, and does this change help or does it make things worse?”</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">My honest answer is that it makes them worse. I cannot see the mechanism by which closing the formal possibility of women on session improves women’s confidence to bring difficult things forward. I cannot see how it improves the quality of governance in sessions that are not currently well-governed — and as someone who sits on boards in business and not-for-profit contexts, I can tell you that most boards are not well-governed by default. They get there through the kind of scrutiny that comes from having voices in the room that ask the questions no one else will ask. I cannot see how the change improves our witness to people watching us from outside — and people are watching, more carefully than we sometimes notice.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The Reformed tradition has always known that authority without accountability is dangerous. The Reformers did not consolidate authority and design accountability afterwards. They built the accountability first. If this change proceeds — and it may — it has to be done in that order. From the public material I have seen, we are not yet doing it in that order. The conditions that would need to be in place — binding alternative participation mechanisms for women, independent evaluation of our safeguarding training, complaint pathways trusted by the people who would need them — are not yet there. We are being asked to make the structural change without the structural supports. That is not how the Reformers would have built it, and I do not think it is how we should be building it now.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I have had multiple conversations with my non-Christian friends and coworkers about the Church’s position on these, the debate and the overall way that their attitude to women is seen. I hope and pray I have been able to do some work to repair the perception they have of how our church loves the people who are part of it.</p>
<h2 class="wp-block-heading">On Breaking the Silence</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I want to be clear about one thing, because it has shaped how I have thought about all of this. Breaking the Silence is excellent. It has helped me understand power and abuse and the responsibilities of leadership; it has given me a framework to process things I have needed to process; and I think it is one of the best resources of its kind in the Christian church anywhere. I am one of its strongest advocates.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">When I was assaulted last year, the framework I have – that started with the training Breaking the Silence gave me – was materially necessary in helping me understand the nature of what happened, my response to it, and the nature of abuse. It has helped me identify patterns and temptations in my own leadership and to materially change them; and to help make and shape decisions in areas where I am involved to choose to do the safe, caring and God-honouring thing, when otherwise we might not have.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But after twenty-eight years, the denomination should be able to demonstrate — publicly — that the training actually changes the way leaders behave, not just that it has been delivered. I can say it has changed me, but I regular see places where it has not changed others. We can teach a leader what to do when something hard comes up in their congregation. We cannot, by teaching them, make them want to do it. You can lead a horse to water, as the saying goes. The training exists. The question of whether it has produced the heart and culture change it was designed to produce is a separate question, and I do not think we have asked it carefully enough.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Whatever the Assembly decides about the overture, an independent external evaluation of Breaking the Silence needs to happen — and it needs to be public, and it needs to happen within a defined timeframe. The case for that evaluation does not depend on the overture. We should have started it years ago. Linking it to the overture now risks making it look conditional on the vote. It cannot be.</p>
<h2 class="wp-block-heading">On what comes next</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The consultation closes on 8th June (extended). The Committee will summarise the responses and report to the Assembly. The Assembly will debate, and a decision will be made, and that decision will go to the presbyteries under the Barrier Act. Many people much more qualified than me will speak to that process from inside it.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I want to say to people on every side of this debate: the conversation does not end on 25 May. It does not end when the Assembly votes. It does not end when the presbyteries ratify or reject. The work of being a denomination that treats women as co-image-bearers — which is what the rest of Scripture asks of us, whatever we make of the disputed passages — continues regardless of which way the vote goes.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If the overture passes, the church will need to do urgent and serious work to build the structural protections that should have been built first. If the overture fails, the church will still need to do urgent and serious work to address the patterns that this whole process has surfaced — because I am sure that the responses being submitted right now, in whatever form they are summarised, will tell us that those patterns are real and that they will not be made better by leaving things as they are.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I have heard, in the past few weeks, from people on every side of this. From women who said thank you. From women who were angry — sometimes at me, more often at the situation. From men who engaged carefully and seriously with what I wrote. From men in positions of authority in our denomination who responded to careful, prayerful arguments in public forums by adding a laughing emoji. I think one of these responses is more pastoral than the other.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">This has not been an easy season. I have written more than I expected to. I have listened to more than I expected to. I have sat with more than I expected to. I am thankful that my own local church has been willing to sit with this seriously, and I am aware — painfully — that not everyone reading this has had the same experience in their own congregation.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">To those who have not — I am sorry. The fact that you took the time to respond to a survey from an institution that did not, in your experience, make space for you to be heard, is worth more than you may ever know.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">We are praying, all of us, for an outcome that honours both Scripture and the people Scripture describes. Whatever happens on 25 May and after, that prayer continues. So does the work.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">As always, the errors and judgements are mine.</p>
The PCNSW’s WHS consultation on the proposed change to restrict future eldership to men closes on 8th June (extended from the original 25 May). I have submitted my response. Many of you reading this also have — and many of you reached the survey, directly or indirectly, through something I wrote.
I want to use this space to do three things. To thank you. To say where I’ve landed. And to be honest about what this season has cost, both for me and for the people who have walked through it.
To those who engaged
If you responded to the survey because the companion guide helped you see why it mattered — or because someone you know read it and brought it to you — thank you. I am genuinely grateful. Many women in leadership roles across PCNSW churches told me directly that they only knew the survey existed because of something I wrote or shared. I know the actual reach has been much wider than that, because resources have a way of travelling further than their authors ever see. To everyone who engaged, in whatever form that took: thank you.
I want to acknowledge something specifically. Many of you responded at real cost. You have told me that you wrote things in the free-text fields that took a long time to put into words, and that were difficult to commit to a survey form, even a confidential one. Some of you took the risk of being honest about your own experience of leadership in our churches, knowing that the data would be read by people you don’t know, and presented to an Assembly you may not feel knows or sees you. That took courage, and I do not think I have to tell you that. I think you know.
Whatever the Committee does with the submissions, what you wrote matters. It will continue to matter after 25 May. You said the thing. The thing is now on the record. That is not a small thing.
Where I have landed
The companion guide was an attempt to set out the evidence fairly. I think it succeeded at that. But the survey response I submitted was something different — it was an attempt to say what I actually think. And I want to say some of that here, because anyone who took the guide seriously deserves to know where its author ended up.
I have landed in this place: we are already poorer as a denomination for how we treat women.
Not because of the proposed change, which has not yet been made. But because of patterns that already exist in our churches — patterns I have seen with my own eyes, and patterns I have heard about from people I trust enough to listen to. I have heard from women who have brought serious things to their sessions and been told to get over them. I have heard from women whose ministry pathways have narrowed rather than widened, not through any single decision, but through a steady pattern of opportunity going elsewhere. I have heard from women who have been told their opinions don’t matter, sometimes in words and more often in the structural shape of how a meeting was run. I have heard from women who have had unwanted pursuit by men in our churches and not heard well when they raised concerns about it. It is not my place to share any of those stories in detail, because they are not mine to share. But they are real, and there are more of them than I wanted to see. The cumulative weight of them is something I am still sitting with.
The academic literature describes more or less exactly what I have been hearing. The Royal Commission described it nearly a decade ago. Professor Tuckey’s research describes it. Our own PCA’s 2020 survey described it. We have not lacked the evidence. We have lacked the willingness to receive it.
The proposed change does not create these problems. It formalises them. That is the frame I would want people to hold as they wait for the Committee’s report. The question is not “what risk does this change create?” The question is “what is already happening in our churches, and does this change help or does it make things worse?”
My honest answer is that it makes them worse. I cannot see the mechanism by which closing the formal possibility of women on session improves women’s confidence to bring difficult things forward. I cannot see how it improves the quality of governance in sessions that are not currently well-governed — and as someone who sits on boards in business and not-for-profit contexts, I can tell you that most boards are not well-governed by default. They get there through the kind of scrutiny that comes from having voices in the room that ask the questions no one else will ask. I cannot see how the change improves our witness to people watching us from outside — and people are watching, more carefully than we sometimes notice.
The Reformed tradition has always known that authority without accountability is dangerous. The Reformers did not consolidate authority and design accountability afterwards. They built the accountability first. If this change proceeds — and it may — it has to be done in that order. From the public material I have seen, we are not yet doing it in that order. The conditions that would need to be in place — binding alternative participation mechanisms for women, independent evaluation of our safeguarding training, complaint pathways trusted by the people who would need them — are not yet there. We are being asked to make the structural change without the structural supports. That is not how the Reformers would have built it, and I do not think it is how we should be building it now.
I have had multiple conversations with my non-Christian friends and coworkers about the Church’s position on these, the debate and the overall way that their attitude to women is seen. I hope and pray I have been able to do some work to repair the perception they have of how our church loves the people who are part of it.
On Breaking the Silence
I want to be clear about one thing, because it has shaped how I have thought about all of this. Breaking the Silence is excellent. It has helped me understand power and abuse and the responsibilities of leadership; it has given me a framework to process things I have needed to process; and I think it is one of the best resources of its kind in the Christian church anywhere. I am one of its strongest advocates.
When I was assaulted last year, the framework I have – that started with the training Breaking the Silence gave me – was materially necessary in helping me understand the nature of what happened, my response to it, and the nature of abuse. It has helped me identify patterns and temptations in my own leadership and to materially change them; and to help make and shape decisions in areas where I am involved to choose to do the safe, caring and God-honouring thing, when otherwise we might not have.
But after twenty-eight years, the denomination should be able to demonstrate — publicly — that the training actually changes the way leaders behave, not just that it has been delivered. I can say it has changed me, but I regular see places where it has not changed others. We can teach a leader what to do when something hard comes up in their congregation. We cannot, by teaching them, make them want to do it. You can lead a horse to water, as the saying goes. The training exists. The question of whether it has produced the heart and culture change it was designed to produce is a separate question, and I do not think we have asked it carefully enough.
Whatever the Assembly decides about the overture, an independent external evaluation of Breaking the Silence needs to happen — and it needs to be public, and it needs to happen within a defined timeframe. The case for that evaluation does not depend on the overture. We should have started it years ago. Linking it to the overture now risks making it look conditional on the vote. It cannot be.
On what comes next
The consultation closes on 8th June (extended). The Committee will summarise the responses and report to the Assembly. The Assembly will debate, and a decision will be made, and that decision will go to the presbyteries under the Barrier Act. Many people much more qualified than me will speak to that process from inside it.
I want to say to people on every side of this debate: the conversation does not end on 25 May. It does not end when the Assembly votes. It does not end when the presbyteries ratify or reject. The work of being a denomination that treats women as co-image-bearers — which is what the rest of Scripture asks of us, whatever we make of the disputed passages — continues regardless of which way the vote goes.
If the overture passes, the church will need to do urgent and serious work to build the structural protections that should have been built first. If the overture fails, the church will still need to do urgent and serious work to address the patterns that this whole process has surfaced — because I am sure that the responses being submitted right now, in whatever form they are summarised, will tell us that those patterns are real and that they will not be made better by leaving things as they are.
I have heard, in the past few weeks, from people on every side of this. From women who said thank you. From women who were angry — sometimes at me, more often at the situation. From men who engaged carefully and seriously with what I wrote. From men in positions of authority in our denomination who responded to careful, prayerful arguments in public forums by adding a laughing emoji. I think one of these responses is more pastoral than the other.
This has not been an easy season. I have written more than I expected to. I have listened to more than I expected to. I have sat with more than I expected to. I am thankful that my own local church has been willing to sit with this seriously, and I am aware — painfully — that not everyone reading this has had the same experience in their own congregation.
To those who have not — I am sorry. The fact that you took the time to respond to a survey from an institution that did not, in your experience, make space for you to be heard, is worth more than you may ever know.
We are praying, all of us, for an outcome that honours both Scripture and the people Scripture describes. Whatever happens on 25 May and after, that prayer continues. So does the work.
As always, the errors and judgements are mine.