Randi Powell-Johnson—Serving the Lord

by Tina Picard

Anyone who has met Randi Powell-Johnson knows that she has joy in serving Chapel Hill as a member of the Elder Board. There is little doubt that she brings energy and passion to the position, traits she also sees and values in the pastors and staff she works with. Yet you will also find that she sees her service as an honor and a blessing.

Through her position she has come to "appreciate the wonderful system of governance in place for Chapel Hill." In addition to being able to help set goals while observing important guidelines that she feels keep CHPC operating in a healthy way, she finds working with the pastors and staff "a real treat."  She draws inspiration from their creativity and unique approach to outreach.

When Randi accepted her role, she had little idea of the amounts of time, prayer and spiritual discernment needed to fulfill her commitment, but has the blessing and understanding of her husband Dave and daughter Hillary. She has found that the number of meetings and the unique challenges the church has faced this year —"staff changes, budget cuts and changes in goals for the future direction of the church," were alleviated by the faith-filled approach of the leadership. She has been encouraged by the positive and active response of the church body, as the leaders seek God's will in all things. 

As one of the female elders on the board, Randi believes that she has been able to bring a compassionate voice to the table and has felt accepted in the role. She has served on the task force which guides the planning for leadership in all areas of the church. As she enters the second year of a three year term, she sees her personal goal of coming to better know and serve the Lord as part of the "fluid process" of leading with the other elders. She is pleased that the Session responded well to the voice of the church body when they asked for better communication in a recent survey. She also recognizes that more could probably be done—suggesting perhaps fireside chats or Sunday meet-and-greets. Anyone who has met Randi would find it an honor and blessing to meet with this Elder in either of those ways.

Karen Leland—Digging In

by Laurel Cleary

Karen Leland is really digging into the details of her new position on session at Chapel Hill. She’s been reading the Book of Order, a weighty tome that is teaching her about the church’s form of government, its directory of worship, and its rules of discipline.

“I didn’t know that we had rules of governance,” she says, “but I love the fact that the Presbyterian Church has a structure and order in place to keep us in line, to keep us orderly, as God intends the church to be.”

This is Karen’s first tour of duty on session, but she believes she was prepared to handle its responsibilities by the three-year term she held on the personnel committee at Sunset Pres. in Portland, which is a 4-person committee that exists solely to deal with staff issues at the church. It gave her a good understanding of what can happen and how a church staff needs to function to be effective.

Karen’s main area of service at Chapel Hill has been as part of the leadership team for TLC. She describes her leadership style as being a good delegator and a good listener. She’s comfortable, she says, in the leadership role. She had a little trouble, however, conceiving of herself as an elder—in particular, a woman elder.

“I really had a hard time with a woman being an elder and the whole 1 Timothy 3 teaching,” she says. She consulted three people before making her final decision to accept the position—her mentor Arlene Butchart, Pastor Mark, and her husband Doug.

All three gave her the okay. Pastor Mark in particular gave her a biblical exegesis of the passages that commonly cause people problems (see accompanying story), and his explanation made good sense to Karen. Getting the nod from all three of the people she trusted to advise her gave her the permission she needed to go forward. “I needed to have that permission before I could feel comfortable doing it,” she says.

Karen wants to be a conduit between women and the session. She feels she’s been given charge to understand the issues and to appropriately explain them to women—or anyone—with questions. “There’s a lot to learn,” she says. “The church is a microcosm of what’s going on in the world. But we have an opportunity to do it from God’s point of view, and I want to respect that.”

Diana Wimber—Willing to Serve

by Laurel Cleary

Diana Wimber never gave a thought to the possibility of becoming an elder—until she was asked.

Though she volunteered as a leader in the TLC program, and with the Purdy clothing closet and the Elizabeth Project, Diana gave up all her volunteer activities when her husband Paul began treatment for cancer. Recently, Paul having regained his health, she began thinking about re-entering the volunteer world and she began to pray: Okay, God, you open doors. That’s when the nominating committee called.

“I talked to my husband about it,” she says of her invitation to join session. “And I called Pastor Mark and told him all the things I couldn’t do. ‘That’s all right,’ he told me. ‘Those aren’t the things we need right now.’”

The one thing Diana had going for her is that she was willing. “If God calls,” she says, “He’ll help you do it. I love Jesus. I love God’s Word. If I can encourage people in their walk with God in this position, that would be my privilege.”

Chapel Hill is her “favorite church ever.” She has been involved in Women’s Ministries in one way or another most of the time since she arrived in January, 2003 and likes helping women grow in their walk with Jesus. “I love to encourage them to read the Bible, to pray, to take their next steps,” she says.

As an elder, Diana wants to continue to use her gifts of encouragement and faith. “I think I’m not a likely candidate for elder,” she says with a smile, “and yet in my quiet time the morning after I said yes, I really felt He did confirm me in it. That gives me God-confidence that there’s a reason I’m part of it.”

Diana wants to see the mission of our church become a reality, to see a good majority of its people finding a place to serve and making even more of an impact on our community. She wants to encourage the staff, the elders, and the body.

“I’m looking forward to serving,” she says, putting her willingness into words. “I’m just one part of the body, doing this job for this season. I want to do my part.”

Can a Woman Really Be an Elder?

I get this question on a fairly regular basis around here so I’m glad for this opportunity to share with the women of Chapel Hill in this issue of E-Relevant.

Here’s what I wrote to Karen when she asked me about the Biblical case for women being elders: One of the challenges of understanding scripture is context. The Bible was written 2000 years ago or more in a very different historical setting than today. So which biblical principles are timeless and which are bound to the culture?

Slavery is a good example. As you read from Old Testament to New Testament, you find a change, an increasing graciousness towards slaves, treatment of them as human beings rather than possessions. By the end of the New Testament, however, slavery is only “better;” it is not yet abolished. Yet very few Christians today would declare that Paul’s admonition about slaves being obedient to their masters should be understood as advocating for a return to the institution of slavery.

The same is true for women. At the Time of Jesus and Paul, women were horribly treated; they were the possession of their husbands and they were mistreated and derided by most men, including—especially, in fact—religious men. You may not understand it as you read the New Testament with modern eyes, but Jesus’ and Paul’s treatment of women was revolutionary! At a time when women would not even have been listened to by most men, the idea of sending out women apostles would have been unthinkable and ineffectual. Nevertheless, many women WERE in spiritual authority in the New Testament. Prisca, notably, was the primary teacher of Apollos. And Junias (unquestionably a woman’s name), mentioned in Romans 16:7, is called an APOSTLE, the highest appellation that can be offered in the scriptural hierarchy.

If one chooses to heed only Paul’s two admonitions about women keeping silence and not teaching, without understanding the context of those particular situations as well as the larger New Testament context which is, in fact, remarkably empowering and affirming of women and their gifts and roles, it is, frankly, bad hermeneutics.

Please join me in praying for the women who serve on our session, and for all of our elders.  Together they shoulder significant spiritual responsibility for our church.  I am grateful that they have agreed to serve.