Where have CRC women pastors gone?

Family, belonging, home. That’s what church meant to Amanda Bakale growing up in a Baptist congregation, and then for decades within the Christian Reformed Church (CRC). But now, Bakale says the CRC no longer feels like home.

Like a growing number of female pastors, Bakale asked for “honourable release” from ordination in the CRC, citing recent synodical decisions, including approval of a Human Sexuality Report (HSR) constraining who belongs and what they may believe. “In a denomination that says both ‘yes’ and ‘no’ to women in ministry, we women have known what it’s like to bear disagreement in our bones,” Bakale said. “But I found myself out of line with the CRC, and there was no space for disagreement, no space to breathe. I thought we as leaders really need to show what it’s like to lead when it costs you something.”

Sitting at the rear of the classis meeting last year as her name was spoken and her ordination in the CRC ended, Bakale mourned the cost of leaving. Her sobs echoed in the otherwise silent room, heard but not acknowledged. To her, it seemed no one cared. “That’s heartbreaking when you have belonged to a people,” she reflected. “Not just believed some stuff and thought some stuff. Belonged to a people and a story.”

A lopsided exodus

Concerned for other women exiting the CRC, but also for those remaining and for the entire denomination, Bakale wanted to know how many have left. Scouring CRC yearbooks, the denominational magazine and other sources, she found that the number of ordained ministers of the word who are women rose to a peak of 134 in 2023 and 2024 more than 25 years after ordination was opened to women in 1995, and then dropped to just 76 in the last two years. Nearly half (46 percent) of the CRC’s female pastors are gone, including denominational leaders and seminary professors – some retired, but many looking to serve elsewhere.

Men are also leaving CRC ministry, but at far lower rates. In 2024, the CRC had 1,913 ordained men, 14 men for every woman. Among the 148 active CRC pastors since released from ordination, 91 (61.5 percent) are men and 57 (38.5 percent) are women. Counting retired as well as active ministers, 208 pastors have been released: 72 percent men, 28 percent women.

“The exodus of women should set off alarm bells within the denomination,” Bakale said. “Even if you feel it’s better this way, there should be acknowledgement of this suffering, and lament and loss.”

Diminishing leadership

Ordained in 1998, just two years after the CRC began allowing ordination of women, Amanda Benckhuysen is one of the women whose departure is shrinking the denomination’s leadership pool.

Benckhuysen often attended synod as an advisor while a professor at Calvin Seminary (which she terms “a very difficult and lonely place to be as a woman”) and later while leading a denominational Safe Church initiative (where she saw energy shift from being a safe space to being doctrinally pure). She said denominational leaders increasingly wielded power as if the end justified the means, using (and allowing) tactics such as bullying, marginalization and untruths. “I didn’t feel like I could live out my calling in that space anymore,” she said. “I left my job, a huge financial sacrifice for our family. But ministering with integrity is way more important to me.”

Since then, she has begun teaching at Calvin University (not seminary) and pastoring a small United Church of Christ that has welcomed her unconditionally. “I’m excited about being in spaces where I don’t have to defend my gender before I do ministry,” she said.

Noting that her husband Martin remains a CRC pastor, Benckhuysen said she wishes the denomination well. “I continue to pray that the leaders who have crossed boundaries live out their faith with integrity. If you truly believe it is of God, then you don’t need to abuse your power to make it happen.”

At home in the CRC

Brittney Salverda stands among the shrinking number of women who remain ordained in the CRC. She applauds synod’s approval of the HSR. “If we hadn’t solidified this position, which I think is Biblical – challenging at times but good and true and beautiful as well – this might not be a place for me,” said Salverda.

Salverda and her husband David co-pastor a small CRC in Alliston, Ontario, where it’s said Brittney is “the feistier one” in the pulpit. Her stance on the HSR surprises some who link beliefs about God-ordained gender roles with opposition to women in church leadership. “I think the Bible allows and calls for women to preach and prophesy and have leadership positions if the Spirit allows them to do so, but I also think marriage should be between a man and a woman.”
Salverda recently launched a counselling practice, as part of the couple’s vision to earn some income outside the church. “We do feel called to small churches,” she said. “We don’t want to have this call attached to our financial security.”

Salverda foresees that adopting the HSR may lead the CRC to revisit whether women should be ordained. “I don’t find myself worried about the future in that regard,” she explained. “My ordination is a gift, but I hold the gift loosely. I have ministry work to do today.”

Given her local focus, Salverda said, “My female colleagues leaving has not had that much impact on me. But it has been really hard and sad for some who have stayed. I know they’re out there. I want to find them.”

As the network of female pastors shrinks, Bakale said, it becomes harder for those remaining to find and support each other. Women she has mentored are lonelier and lament lost colleagues. Whether women remain ordained in the CRC because their beliefs align with the denomination, because their role matches their calling, because they cannot afford to leave, because they’re near retirement or for other reasons, is hard to say. Still, some feel judged for their decision. Several pastors declined to be interviewed for this article.

Redefining the covenant

“I believe the CRC is squandering its opportunity to have a prophetic voice,” said Michelle Kool, who pastored Covenant CRC in Edmonton until it voted to remain in the denomination. Kool now pastors Gardens Community Church, a St. Albert, Alberta congregation that recently left the CRC. “This denomination was known for being a biblical and learned group that intentionally and consciously wrestled with hard issues together. Now we’ve come to a very significant difficulty, and suddenly those we’ve considered brothers and sisters are outside the covenant.”

As a woman in CRC spaces, Kool said her voice was tolerated but not always heard. “There was no standard of behaviour at those tables that would make it safe for everyone to be there. I could see that, moving forward, marginalization would happen of many who didn’t agree with a specific agenda.”

Seeking to stay within the reformed tradition but knowing that the RCA in western Canada does not ordain women in ministry, Kool moved her credentials to RCA Classis Schenectady, New York, a sanctuary for many displaced pastors. In the future, she hopes opportunities will open to bring her ordination back to Canada, perhaps through the Toward Canada network.

Leaving the CRC had repercussions beyond her imagining, Kool said. “It meant giving up my community, my church family, my colleagues, my livelihood.” Her husband was also without work at the time, adding to the financial angst. One couple who had gone through a similar leave-taking walked alongside the Kools, soaking up their pain. “That was key for us to stay faithful – our most authentic church at the time.”

Ministry on the margins

Loretta Stadt grew up in a family on the margins, with siblings challenged by schizophrenia and a father who felt free to stand up mid-sermon, rebuke the minister and herd his household out of church, setting his children up for bullying at school. “I know a bit about what it feels like to be on the outside,” Stadt said. That’s why, after decades of raising children, volunteering and later-in-life seminary training, Stadt began serving Avenue CRC, which collaborates with other faith-based ministries to be a presence in a complex Edmonton neighbourhood. A couple of years ago she urged its tiny congregation, still reeling from covid and the loss of a charismatic leader, not to ignore synodical decisions but instead to wrestle with whether remaining in the CRC would allow them to continue embracing everyone on the margins, even as the process led to her own burnout.

At the same classis meeting where Avenue Church disaffiliated from the CRC, Stadt left as well, feeling bruised and betrayed. “The human sexuality decision was a huge factor,” she said. “But the biggest factor was unwillingness to allow any diversity, any space for conversation, any space for people to work through things. None.”

In the audience at that classis meeting was a transgender youth who had grown up in Avenue Church, Stadt recalled. “It meant a lot to him that I didn’t just say, ‘I want to walk with you. I see you for who you are.’ That I actually gave something up to do it.”

Less than seven years after being ordained, Stadt has retired from the pastorate. “Ministry is my whole life. It’s in my blood. But I can do a lot of ministry and not be an ordained pastor,” she said. “It’s never been about the organization. It’s always been, ‘What does God want me to do?’”

Withdrawing from ordination in the CRC was not about being a woman, Stadt reflects. “I made a conscious decision long ago not to dwell on being a woman in the CRC; I’ve seen other women become resentful and bitter. But the reality is, finding a place to serve as a woman was difficult. I wouldn’t want to stay as a woman the way it is now.”