Little girls sometimes get labeled “bossy.” And Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Girl Scouts CEO Anna Maria Chávez are tired of it. So they have created the “Ban Bossy” campaign.
The campaign’s website reads:
“When a little boy asserts himself, he's called a ‘leader.’ Yet when a little girl does the same, she risks being branded ‘bossy.’ Words like bossy send a message: don't raise your hand or speak up. By middle school, girls are less interested in leading than boys—a trend that continues into adulthood. Together we can encourage girls to lead.”
They’ve received all kinds of responses in the media, some saying that girls need to learn how to deal with harsh words if they want to succeed, some agreeing that labels like “bossy” discourage girls from speaking up, some saying, “What’s wrong with being bossy?”
Given that we are entering an election season with both an assertive woman and a man who is a famous boss in the running for candidacy, we’ll be seeing more and more questions about what it means to be a boss and what it means for women to lead. The conversation also has great significance for the church’s conversations about leadership—for both women and men.
Feeling a passionate call to ministry and at the same time reading all the positions on women’s roles in the church, I found myself in a painful and frustrating place.
As a young woman in college, feeling a passionate call to ministry and at the same time reading all the positions on women’s roles in the church, I found myself in a painful and frustrating place. The way the culture had taught me to respond was to say things like “It’s my right!” and “It’s my turn!” I started to think men were having secret meetings to plot ways to keep me quiet and that the system was unredeemable and demanded an angry response.
Then I came across a lesson in the least likely place: the dreaded 1 Timothy 2:11-12 passage. A Greek word study pointed out that the word translated as “quiet” or “silent” (hesuchia) in the passage is not auditory silence but inner peace. In fact, the same root word is used earlier in the chapter and the section is usually translated as “so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life.”
What kind of cruel irony embedded this peace directive in the very source of my discontent? And so with some gritting of teeth, and although I didn’t yet have a resolution to all my questions (and wouldn’t for years to come), I decided that whatever the answer was, it had to come from a place of peace—peace that God is One, that the God who is in Scripture is the same God who is calling me to ministry. Peace that he would bring clarity from this mess and healing for my angst. And so for many years I just sat in the tension between what I felt and what Scripture seemed to say, waiting upon the God who is One, asking him to teach me hesuchia.
Many years later, as I prepared to step into the lead pastor role, I heard an unusual comment from several men. They all said something like, “I don’t actually agree that women should fill this role and I’ve always been against it, but when I see how you do it, I find myself in support of you.” I can honestly say that it was not great confidence or ability that they saw in me but a dedication to hesuchia.
Their comments revealed to me our culture’s messed up idea of leadership. In the “Ban Bossy” campaign, there doesn’t seem to be a distinction made between being bossy and being a leader, and the same misconception has crept into the church. I’ve come to see that those men who commented about my role had come from a culture which says, “To be a leader, a woman has to be ambitious and aggressive. That doesn’t seem appropriate for a leader of a church (male or female), therefore a woman can’t be a church leader. And I think the Bible says that anyway so that settles it.” But when these men were comfortable with the way I was learning to lead without ambition or aggression, I saw that this was about culture more than Scripture.
So a lot is riding on the attitude of any woman being considered for church leadership. We may say we’re looking at her ability or at what Scripture says about gender roles but without even realizing it, we’re also watching to see if she’s bossy or reactionary or insecure. We’re looking to see if she has hesuchia. And the challenge for women here is that they often have good reason not to have hesuchia, to have a chip on their shoulder or be lacking in confidence or to feel they have to work twice as hard to prove that a woman can do this.
In addition to all the unspoken mores of our culture, we have literally been told to be quiet, that God doesn’t value our input as highly as a man’s. Our ideas have been dismissed as too emotional or irrational, and our teaching is often seen as not good enough for an adult male audience. So for a woman to have hesuchia takes an incredible amount of spiritual work: healing, forgiving, trusting, discovering where her identity really lies and in whose power she trusts. If you are a woman feeling called to leadership, invest in those things. If you are raising a daughter or developing an emerging leader, help her invest in those things.
I was called “bossy” when I was a little girl. And I have a daughter who could definitely be called “bossy.” I don’t like the word but sometimes it has slipped out in my parenting of her. When it has, I’ve clarified to her that she is being bossy when she tells others what to do because she wants control. Bossy is how we act when we don’t trust that we have a voice or authority. I’ve also told her that she is a leader.
The lesson I’ve learned and the lesson I hope to pass on to my strong girl is: Find your voice and speak with grace. Add your part to the conversation, don’t dominate it. Listen even as you speak. Consider how your ideas and feelings can be expressed in a way that builds others up, for the good of the whole. There’s a difference between bossing people around for the sake of getting your way and leading people wisely for the sake of the mission and the organization.
It seems to me that’s good advice for any leader, regardless of their gender. Which helps me see that this is not about the difference between the way women and men lead but about the difference between leadership in the world—which seeks to dominate—and leadership in the church—which seeks to serve.
Mandy Smith is lead pastor of University Christian Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.
