David:     On our last podcast I ask you which would you rather read: an article about the sins of various religious leaders or an article about religious leaders acting the way they’re supposed to? And which would you most likely find featured on the cover page of a magazine or newspaper? I believe you know the answer.

Intro:      Welcome to the Before We Go Podcast featuring Dr. David Mains and his wife, noted author Karen Mains. Here’s David and Karen Mains.

David:     I’m asking Karen to continue reading an article she began last podcast. It hasn’t been submitted to magazines or newspapers at this point in time but as an encouragement to her I said this needs to be given full exposure and I know that you’ll listen very closely to what she has to say.

Karen:     So that evening after Deanery Day, Rick phoned tell me what a good job, Donna and he thought I had done and all I could do was respond by crying. I was so emotionally distraught. We had to discontinue the call. And while unpacking this incident with my husband I was still weepy. Perhaps I need to say here that there is no one who has been a bigger booster than David Mains. For me and countless of other women venturing into the dubious shoals of public leadership. In addition, my longest time booster, my dad, had recently died with a debilitating encounter with encephalitis which scrambled his intelligence and muddled his personality. Also, it is one thing to have a couples’ group member who you spend time with twice a month compliment your professional efforts. It is quite another thing when the Reverend Doctor, your parish priest, a spiritual tutor and confessor takes the time to not only compliment you on the phone but to make the effort to come sit in the pews beneath the pulpit and listen intently to what you have to say. And frankly I still feel overwhelmed even as I write this.

A couple hours later Rick phoned back. You know, sometimes when we get emotional, he said, “We just can’t say the things we want to say and the way we want to say them, I want to make sure you have a chance to do that.”

Okay that man scored 100 points in all categories across the board. And due to my own emotional disequilibrium at that moment I became acutely aware that the systemic misogyny inherent in my conservative system of evangelicalism had deeply wounded me. This misogyny had indeed become prejudicially theologized, i.e., women were not just as worthy, as gifted, as capable as men were for leadership function.

So, I had much work to do in the days ahead. The conservative church culture of which I was a part had damaged me more than I knew hence tears due to the honest compliment of one of its leaders, the Reverend Doctor. This man gave me a chance just to be a parishioner in his church. I’d been the pastor’s wife and many of the other churches we attended. In the little chapel at St. Mark’s, I worked out the grief of the loss of both parents. I came to the Wednesday morning early Eucharist and asked for prayer and anointing with oil before I left home to fly out from O’Hare Airport to speak at meetings. The two of us carved out a trusting collaborative working friendship. In a sense, Reverend Dr. Lobs said to me as he welcomed me into leadership and verbally appreciated my gifts and creative abilities. “You know, your gifts are very beautiful to me.” I felt, you are absolutely safe with him.

Tom Dunkerton was a man who really mentored both David and me without an official title as such. But did so through countless conversations that conveyed his interest in our thinking and his encouragement of our creative ideas. Some of them radical for the time.

Tom the quintessential New Yorker was a vice president at the large advertising firm Sachi and Sachi. And he was probably about 15 years older than David and 20 years older than me. We were the recipients, in more ways than I can mention, of his and his wife Shirlene’s beneficence. A little unknown young couple from Chicago with this crazy dream about church renewal with an interracial involvement in the empowering of the lay people we were taken under their wings. Theater in New York, family gatherings on Oak Island, museums, and outings for our four kids so we ourselves could do the city.

Dinners at quirky restaurants with well-known chefs, everything underwritten of course, compliments of the Dunkerton’s extraordinary gifts. Eventually Tom nominated me for consideration as a trustee of the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship Board which ushered me into eight happy years of service. Intervarsity is a national ministry and university campuses, and I never met a staff member who wasn’t intellectually engaged or didn’t exercise the capacities of creative leadership. I had no idea one of my gifts was to be a positive participant in a collaborative community of leaders. I think I was mainly invited to be at the table because I was not afraid to speak in a room with powerful men. Thanks to those homegrown Sunday dinner debates with my father, taking the part of the devil’s advocate and forbidding tears when I became frustrated.

Without Tom, I would never have experienced the synergy that comes when remarkable people donate their time and their competencies and for many their finances to steer major not-for-profit organizations.

So, I received board training. I was tutored in how to read a financial statement. I became friends with fascinating men and women. Without Tom, I probably would not have become board chair. It was Tom who coached me on board personship. Yep, it’s an awkward phrase. Catching me in the hallways and advising me, among other things. I’m projecting my voice at the table, a long table accommodating 20 some people.

“Those little guys don’t hear so well,” he said. Tom pulled me onto the IVCF annual executive performance review. And although I had never met such a beast before, we made a great team evaluated the staff. I went for the feeling, personal questions, and Tom went for the factual stuff relating to managerial function.

“Yeah,” he bragged me. “She asked them off to the wall question. The next thing you know, we got some guy tearing up and crying.” We were such a good team that when we went to compile a report to the rest of the trustees and Tom couldn’t transcribe his notes because he couldn’t read his own writing. I could read them. My background in writing helped me finesse the language. His experience made sure the reports were professional. And Tom played it straight. “You knew when you did well, and you knew when you blew it.” This forthrightness offset some personalities. But I, at the board table, just dished it right back to his delight. What Tom was often really saying was to me, “You got some good things going for you kid. In my book, you’re a real beauty.”

I surprised Tom by how easily I slipped into the function of a board trustee and finally chair. Most of all, I surprised myself. But then I had a really good mentor, a really good male mentor.

In October 2018, transcript of an interview with David Smith and Brad Johnsons, authors of Athena Rising, How and Why Men Should Mentor Women, this from the Harvard Business Review, makes a point of how important it is, particularly in traditional male organizations for men to mentor women. Guys need to be aware that when women are mentored by men, they tend to make more money, they get more promotions, they have clearly tangible career outcomes that are often better.

Is this because guys are better benders?

No. It’s simply because they have different kinds of positions and more power. In addition, mentoring women in these traditional organizations that are mostly led by powerful men, advantages the men who mentor. When a guy stands up and publicly promotes and sponsors a woman, we find research showing that his end of year evaluations actually go up. When a woman is a public sponsor for a junior woman, her evaluations are more likely to suffer. You know, she’s just viewed as showing favoritism. He’s viewed as a champion for diversity.

Hundreds of female leaders were interviewed as far as their experiences with male mentors. The two authors tell a story that illustrates how important it is for men to be promoters of gifted women. Cheryl Sandberg, a Facebook, told about her first mentor out of college being the secretary of the treasury. “This is Cheryl Sandberg,” he would say. “She’s a rock star. She was number one in economics at Harvard. I couldn’t do this without her.”

After the third or fourth time of this, Cheryl pulled him aside and told him to stop because it was embarrassing her. “Cheryl,” he replied, “This is how it begins. This is sponsorship. This is how things take off for you and you need to become more comfortable with me doing this.”

The author Smith and Johnson concludes, so the sponsorship piece is important. If you really want to be a mentor for anybody, but especially a woman you know ask yourself, “Are you talking about her when she’s not in the room? Are you her raving fan?” Guys need to take attention to that.

My years spent on the Board of Intervarsity were an incubation period for me as far as developing personally and professionally. Stephen Hayner became CEO of the organization about the time I joined the board. Another Reverend Doctor with a Master of Divinity from Harvard and a PhD from the University of Scotland. Stephen was really a man of the next generation moving away from the founder era of Intervarsity to a more progressive understanding of student ministry. I loved working beside him, but we were so philosophically aligned. He steered me in the appropriate functions of a board chair. For two years’ neck capacity, we talked in the phone weekly and met face-to-face monthly. Having been in ministry one way or another all my life and having witnessed two frequent marital wreckages, I insisted our conversations include a report on his personal growth and spiritual practices. The top tier of the Intervarsity Fellowship personnel all midlife was also instructed with their wives to choose a mentoring couple to meet with once a month. I, as chair of the board, didn’t need to know what was being discussed, but I did need to know that regular meetings were taking place.

Suddenly, I was becoming quite comfortable with the exercise of positional power. My own son said to me, on learning that I had been appointed as chair of the IV Board, “Wow, that means you now are the boss.”

Well, I had never once thought of my position in this way. I love the intellectual exchanges that occurred in our conversations with all the IV people. But Stephen Heiner’s personal integrity, the high value he placed on working across organizational lines; his understanding of the need to create a cross-cultural environment on the board and the organization, plus the fact he worked intentionally at being truthful about his own flaws, which created a wonderful, authentic humility. All this was a joy to tandem with.

In addition, Stephen, and I both believed the work of a Christian organization would best be accomplished by first building strong collegiality among its leaders. Stephen’s respect for me as a woman carving out new territory for herself and for an organization was palpable. I never once felt gender stuff from the man.

When heresy hunters had me in the cross-heresy, it was Stephen who went to bat for me with leaders of various organizations whose opinions on this controversy could adversely affect our national radio ministry, the Chapel of the Air. One of them told me that was none of his business. Stephen shot back that it was his business. Slander against me was a kingdom matter and more so, I was chair of his board. He knew me personally and could vouch for my spiritual credentials.

Well, the facts is worth lying. He might as well have said, “Karen Mains is beautiful in my sight.” Stephen went on to become the president of Columbia Theological Seminary and before he died tragically, early of pancreatic cancer, he had groomed and put in his place his successor, Dr. Leanne Van Dyke.

As a hindsight, 20 years after retiring from the board of trustees, I visited the Triennial Gathering of some 20,000 students at the Christmas break. This is called the Urbana Conference. There were as many women speakers as male speakers. The worship services were totally enculturated with styles and music and instruments from around the world and some 51% of the audience were students of color. Gone was the grand piano and the companion organ. “How did we get here?” I question tapping the shoulder of the gentleman sitting in the row in front of me. He is from Pakistan and was the international director when I was a trustee. He answered, “Well, you should know. You led the charge.”

I would say it was Stephen Hayner who led the charge. Changing a white majority culture to this extraordinary mixture of diversity in the auditorium now before me. But I definitely had the privilege of being his wing person.

My list of Christian men who blessed me by recognizing whatever God-given abilities I had and eased over to me in the most gentlemanly fashion, whispering one way or another, “You are beautiful to me,” seems almost endless. They were courageous. Writing in the cusp of alternate, more progressive understanding of traditional theology about women’s roles. They were all helping to redefine men and women’s functions in the church and within parachurch cultures in unprecedented but biblical ways.

As an antidote to the cultural perversion of sexism in all its forms, we need to remember there are good men. None of these men, those named and the dozens unnamed, was ever disrespectful to me. None of them ever spoke or acted in an inappropriate sexual fashion, not even hinted nuances. I loved and became friends with their wives. None of them felt the need to put me in my place or to make jokes about the woman in the room.

I know this is amazing to some. With all the discrediting that is occurring regarding men and ministry. And in the child sexual abuse scandal conducted by priests in Catholicism, God help us. It is time to offer an alternative narrative, the appropriate tension of another telling.

Yes, there are evil men who have lost their souls. But there are also holy ones filled with vision and often laughter, with purpose and a calling who understand that we cannot model the full nature of God unless men and women meet on equal terms. And say to one another, “Oh, I’ve forgotten how beautiful God made you to be.”

“So, God made man in his own image. In the image of God created he him. Male and female created he them.” Genesis 2:27. It is my personal understanding that the full image of God is not demonstrated to a watching world unless there is a collaborative mutuality between the sexes men and women created in and showing forth the image of God.

So right now, not as a rebuttal to the #MeToo movement, but as an anodyne for all the sorrow and pain caused by ill or immature or rapacious men. Let’s hear it. For the men who are actually heroic given the nature of our times. Let’s give a shout out to those who understand the powerful role of pastoring their whole congregation or of mentoring young, unformed friends, no matter the gender. Or of opening opportunities so women can function at their full God given capacity or of defending a woman being accused of heretical orthodoxy. Right doctrine by those who think nothing of using heretical orthopraxy. That would be right practice.

In the days that had let’s learn to say to one another again and again, “Whoops, forgive me dear friend, I’ve forgotten how beautiful you are. And in case I have not said it enough, dear husband, wonderful sons, favorite and only son-in-law, my brother, father’s, my grandchildren, friends, and buddies, working colleagues, you all, yes indeed, all of you are wonderful, most wonderful to me. Don’t ever let me forget how beautiful you are.”

Most of the men mentioned in this podcast are now gone. But I want to remember who they are and to say this publicly. “Thank you. Thank you for believing in me. Thank you for being my booster. Thank you for never embarrassing me for having stood beside me and other female leaders learning that they also had great gifts for leadership. Thank you for reconsidering your interpretation of scriptural guidelines and adapting your thinking to the evidence in hand strong and gifted women capable of grace and intelligence in collaboration with you in leadership.”

Indeed, I remember the gifts you extended to this one woman who is a storyteller. I want the generations to come to know that each of you in your own way made a place for us, female as we were and are you, all of you indeed, all of you indeed were, no, still are beautiful to me.

Outgo:     You’ve been listening to the Before We Go podcast. And if you would like to write to us, please send us an email at the following address, hosts@beforewego.show. That’s all-lower-case letters hosts@beforewego.show.

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