ELCA reports survey results on gender issues in ministry

by Frank Imhoff, ELCA News Service

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and its
predecessor church bodies began ordaining women in 1970. On the
35th anniversary of that event, ELCA Research and Evaluation
conducted a survey "to describe differences and similarities in
the ministerial experiences between rostered men and women." A
"rostered" leader of the ELCA is an ordained minister or a
professional lay minister -- associate in ministry, deaconess or
diaconal minister. ELCA Research and Evaluation issued a 41-page
report on its "35th Anniversary of Ordination of Women Rostered
Leader Survey 2005" in September 2006. The report focused on the
experiences of 1,625 clergy respondents.

"The central hypothesis of this study was that there are
differences in ministerial experiences and that gender is the
primary factor related to these differences," the report said.
Those differences are more pronounced when comparing responses
according to the gender and the race/ethnicity of the respondent,
it said. Some differences are related more to the age of the
respondent or when the respondent was ordained.

The report drew some conclusions from the surveys. Slightly more
than half of both women and men waited one to four months after
completing the ELCA candidacy process before receiving a call to
ministry from a congregation. White clergy were more likely to
receive calls to rural or small-town settings, while clergy of
color were more likely to receive calls to large-city settings.
Whether the person was ordained before or after 1990 made the
primary difference in their compensation. Female clergy,
especially women of color, were more likely to be single than
their male counterparts.