Interviewing 1st Woman Pastor on TWR

Women are not just there to warm church pews. Unfortunately in many faith communities, women are given no or little value. The largely male-centric leadership often uses the Bible or Quran to defend their position on many things which demean women and girls. For instance, most of the mainline churches in Malawi do not ordain women. And where they have started to, the environment for ensuring that the ordained women take leading roles is not that conducive. A case in point is in the Presbyterian and Baptist churches where recently women ordination has started. While this is commendable, the action to affirm women leadership remains a dream. Such ordained women are merely given supportive ministry roles-sometimes which any other lay person does and can do. At the 10th World Council of Churches Assembly in South Korea in 2013, women from over 145 churches in over 110 countries appealed to the global church leaders to give very intentional support to the ordained women. It was noted that while access by women to theological and pastoral training has improved lately, that has become the end in itself. I should add that it is during this Assembly that further encouraged this journalist to address more of the issues of women ordination in the subsequent editions-see additional programme recorded during the assembly and subsequent ones on request. TWR Malawi therefore has been involved in profiling the positive role and value women have in society and the church. This has been through its weekly Our Guest programme which features prominent persons and those of influence in society. The journalist has been the brainchild for the programme since 2005 but significantly the programme started highlighting the status of women in 2010. As a non-denominational radio network with long history of church involvement, it intentionally started featuring women leaders and pastors in its various programmes. This has included giving airtime to women pastors to run own programmes or featuring them as guests in its weekly guest programmes. While the immediate impact of these efforts cannot be easily observed, it has become clear to TWR listeners that women pastors are able to produce and deliver content in very much the same manner or even better than their male counterparts. Of course TWR received a couple of comments from male listeners who negatively spoke about or denigrated contributions from women pastors. However this has been seen as part of the reaction to the developments. It has to be noted that the inclusion of women pastors on some key programmes on TWR has been a big development in the last three years. This is a departure from the tradition of having male pastors only on those programmes. The radio programme therefore allows for space to carry conversation, profile and influence the involvement of women pastors on TWR and the church at large in Malawi

Audiovisuals

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