Chapter 33: Documenting Australian Women’s Church Ministries

I began this blog to record my Church ministry saga, and those of other Australian church women, and found myself embroiled in church controversies about the role and extent of church women's ministries in Australia.  These distracting spats take attention away from where it should be - on the laudable achievements of the many past and present women ministers of the Australian Church, such as Abbess Benedicta Phillips, Elizabeth Fry, Catherine Chisholm, and currently, Dominican Sister Trish Madigan and Anglican hymn writer Rev. Elizabeth Smith of Western Australia, now ministering in the outback city of Kalgoorlie. 

The stories of many great Australian Church women ministers, and the way they've shaped the worship, mission and work of Australian churches, are not well known or publicised. Australian Church men are encouraged and assisted by their male church sponsors to blow their ministry trumpets loudly, and they do so, but Church women often sink into oblivion because they have not bothered to record or document what they and their ministry sisters do. No matter how maddening or hilarious women's church ministry experiences are, they make wonderful journalistic press when well researched and well told. Consider, for instance, the ministry story of Daisy Bates, Kabbarli, the great but maligned Christian missionary to the Aborigines, recognised as a saint in her time by indigenous and settler Australians, and well documented, but consigned to grudging token recognition in church histories written by men. The history of church women's ministries should not consist of an obituary list of under-recorded names and dates. One way of informing the public about church women's ministry is to provide online links to their stories via social media like Blogger, Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest. More and more church women are doing this: if every church woman posted one story about past or current female church ministry per week, it would focus greater media attention on the achievements and value of church women's ministry. Recently I published a Pinterest Board on women ministers, and another on women church musicians, and many people reposted my links - much information is already on the Internet, so why not make it better known? 

Lots of Australian girls and women work as unofficial ministry volunteers in Australian churches, but few are paid or even acknowledged. Even in denominations ordaining women, the percentage of Church women whose names and work are praised and accurately recorded in church bulletins, archives and histories us lamentably low. Yet Australian churches would close without their female workers. And time after time on the Internet I've received reports of church women being undervalued by male clergy, exploited, bossed around as if they were children, actively denigrated, and denied full liturgical roles, commissioning and recognition. 

Well, now we have a remedy. Don't wait for your clergy to document your church ministry - do it yourself, online. You'll be surprised at the breadth and quality of your ministry achievements. Take the recalcitrant Australian Church bull by the horns and guide it gently into the waters of eternal life - the fruitful and flourishing ministries of Australian Church women.