Demographics of Network Leadership
I was curious about the overall demographics of network leadership, including Pastors, Support Staff, and Small Group Leaders, all of whom would typically be invited to the Network Leadership Conferences.
I went through each church’s website and tallied them to the best of my ability. I’ve looked at three things:
Race - categorized as “White”, “API” (“Asian and Pacific Islander”, mostly referred to as “Asian” in this article), “Black”, and “Hispanic”. Race is a social construct, and therefore lines are hard to draw. In this analysis, all I could go off was each person’s name (trickier for married women) and how each person appears to me in their photo and current commonly held definitions of race. If anyone has reason to disagree with the totals, please let me know and I will adjust.
Gender - categorized as “Male” or “Female”, consistent with how The Network would see people.
Married - I’ve tracked, only for pastors, whether or not they are married.
You can see all of my raw data in Excel. There’s a number of disclaimers at the top of the file. I also decided prior to collecting the data that I would publish it regardless of what I found (this is important when doing statistical work).
In this post, I am only evaluating The Network’s diversity in comparison to their own stated beliefs. Effectively, think of this post as asking: Is The Network successfully practicing what they claim to believe?
Follow-up posts will get into the actual beliefs expressed, and whether or not those are biblical, particularly with regards to gender.
Disclaimers
I had to manually count all of these. I’m pretty good at counting but not perfect. It’s likely I’m off in minor ways here or there, and I welcome corrections. All stories and quotes from The Network are either sourced or my best recollection. Take quotes as my best memory, not exact wording except where noted otherwise. I cannot speak for the intents of The Network, and have tried to avoid too much speculation below.
I am not an expert on Diversity and Inclusion. I have used words that I believe are commonly used, but I am not perfect and I ask for grace and correction if I have misstepped or used incorrect language at any point. Please remember: I’m not the one leading a church Network with thousands of people in it, nor am I even saying I’d be qualified for that job (I would not be!). My point isn’t that I’d do it better. My point is to show areas where they could and should do better given their stated mission.
A word on LGBTQIA+ representation: there are no people anywhere in Network leadership who are openly and actively practicing something other than cis-gender and heterosexual. This is a belief of The Network, that transgenderism and homosexuality are forbidden in the Bible. I do not know if any staff or leaders are openly same-sex attracted but abstaining from practicing that (also known as “Side B”). I have not heard of anyone who meets this description. As I said, in this post I am evaluating The Network based on their own beliefs.
Gender
The Network’s Beliefs
The Network states that the only position that women cannot serve in is that of Pastor/Overseer. All other positions are said to be open to both men and women according to their reading in the Bible. Interestingly, Luke Williams (Pastor of Vista Church) states in the following clip from the 2019 Membership Bible Training that biblically, women can serve as deacons, even small group leaders of mixed-gender groups. The short points are:
Women can serve as deacons (@ 1:15 in below audio)
Vista already has two women serving as deacons, including Steve Morgan’s daughter who occasionally filled in as worship leader in place of Ken Ohyama, who was the on-staff worship leader. The second was the kids director who also was leading a women’s-only small group. (@ 3:06)
He says that biblically there is no problem with women as small group leaders over mixed-gender groups. He says that attempts to have women lead a mixed-gender small group have previously ended up as women-only within a year. (@ 3:52)
-
Disclaimer: Transcription is best-efforts. I’ve used otter.ai for a machine-transcription, then gone through and edited by hand for accuracy. Punctuation is nearly impossible in transcription, I’ve done my best. Listen to the recording if you need the fully accurate version. Feedback welcome at not.overcome@outlook.com.
Luke Williams 0:00
And then we see as we look on and in the next part of these verses of qualifications for deacons. We see some more talk about leadership in the midst of the church. It says in verses eight through 13, "deacons likewise must be dignified, not double tongued not addicted to much wine, not greedy for dishonest gain, they must hold the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience and let them also be tested first, and then let them serve as deacons if they prove themselves blameless, their wives likewise must be dignified not slanderers, but sober-minded, faithful in all things. Let deacons each be the husband of one wife, managing their children and their own households well, for those who serve well as deacons gain a good standing for themselves, and also great confidence in the faith that is in Christ Jesus."
Luke Williams 0:49
Now, again, you've heard maybe heard me talk before at Vista, that word deacon, we use interchangeably with small group leader, or there's all sorts of different areas where we would describe it as a deacon leader. We'll talk more about that in a second. But as we look at these verses of how we understand leadership in the church, it seems to be very, very clear in the Bible, that the overseers are to be chosen from among the men. But it does seem possible and the Bible allows women to serve as deacon leaders in the midst of the church. Now, as we look at the Bible examples of this, it does seem to be less common, but in no way is it prohibited. And as we look at these verses, you may say, in one sense, so far, it sounds like deacon leaders have to be men too. I mean doesn't it seem like that where it talks about leading, leading their families or it talking about their wives must be dignified as well? It seems like that as we look at these verses, it seems to be just speaking to the men. But it's possible, as we look at verse 11, where it says their wives likewise must be dignified. It's possible and some, some theologians would say it's possible that it could be translated. [misspeaks] It's possible that it could be translated "and the women" instead of "their wives, likewise," I'm not sure if it's correct. But it may be that that's a good interpretation for it. And it may be that allows for this kind of role of women to serve as deacon leaders. We know this because of other texts in the Bible, like in Romans 16, where it says, "I commend to your sister Phoebe, a servant of the church. Now in Romans 16, where it uses that word servant, it's very similar to the word or it's the same word that is used for deacon. And it's possible but we're not for sure that it could be referring to Phoebe as a deacon leader in the midst of the church.
Luke Williams 2:44
Now for us here at Vista Church, we're very careful to not go further than what the Bible clearly says. And so for us here at Vista Church, we have women who serve in Deacon leaders or Deacon roles, all throughout the church. And this is something that we want to see Jesus call women to grow in and to serve in those areas.
Luke Williams 3:05
For us here at Vista Church, maybe two of the women who serve in a in a kind of more prominent way in that would be Ineui who is our kids director and is on staff and serves in a deacon role on staff or she also leads a small group or Kie who leads worship on Sunday where we which we would consider worship leader being another deacon leader role that deacons assist in the disciple making, Deacon leader could be something like a small group leader, a kid's director or worship leader, other kind of specialty roles on staff or serving in the midst of the church. Again, for us here at Vista Church, I suspect we will have more women deacon leaders throughout the years that serve as small group leaders, and it's something that I hope that we'll get to see more of.
Luke Williams 3:49
Again, throughout the years right now, Ineui is leading an all women's small group. It's not necessarily by intention that we've done that we've tried throughout the years to have women lead coed groups as deacon leaders. And we've we've learned throughout the years, it just it doesn't really work. Every time we've tried to do it, it always ends up becoming an all women's group. And I've helped with overseeing a ton of different groups and every time it's always ended up like this, after about a year or so and so doesn't have to be the case, but for right now, Ineui is leading an all women's group and it's why we have it that way.
I know the ending to that audio is abrupt. It ends abruptly because Williams abruptly transitions into something of a summary. You can listen to the full teaching on Gender Roles at the bottom of this article - the clip here starts at the 43:03 mark.
Clarification: Williams ambiguously says that “we” had tried to have women lead mixed-gender small groups. He has to have meant at Blue Sky as this never occurred at Vista. For the record, at least from early 2012, there were no women leading mixed gender small groups at Blue Sky that I recall.
Support Staff
To start with the good, 48% of support staff are men, while 52% are women. That’s a good start, but the breakdown is far more problematic.
100% of Kids Directors are women. There are 25 Kids Directors in The Network, and all 25, plus one Assistant Kids Director (High Rock), and she is also a woman.
100% of Worship Leaders are men. There are 24 Worship Leaders in The Network, and all 24 are men. There is one Part-time Worship Leader (Christland), and she is a woman. Vista, at least had a woman (Steve Morgan’s daughter) who would lead worship occasionally, but was not and is not recognized as such on the website.
77% of Bookkeepers are women (17 out of 22).
So, of the primary Worship Leaders and Kids Directors, both roles that The Network explicitly states are not biblically required to be men or women, The Network has 25 out of 25 Kids Directors are women, and 24 out of 24 Worship Leaders are men. The odds of that happening randomly are the same as flipping heads 49 times in a row, which is 1 in 562,949,953,421,312 (562 trillion). How does this happen? Is there not one woman who is qualified and called to lead worship? Is there not one man who would make a great Kids Director? (There was one man who was a Kids Director at Blue Sky. He moved to Hills, and I don’t know what happened to him after that.)
Let me say it again: according to The Network, Worship Leaders do not have to be men and Kids Directors do not have to be women. And yet, with the lone exception of one part time worship leader, there’s pure uniformity for each of those roles.
Bookkeepers are mostly women. Vista had three bookkeepers in my time there, and all three are women. I do not know the cause of this bias, but it’s statistically significant. The odds of bookkeepers being this skewed toward either gender is less 2%.
Small Groups
Ok, so now let’s talk small groups. As the clip above shows, The Network believes that, biblically, women can lead mixed-gender small groups. However, only 6% (20 out of 347) of all small groups in The Network are led by women, and all of them are women-only groups. Most if not all are for “students and young professionals”, meaning there is no women’s group for widows, single mothers, or women whose husbands are not believers. 13 of the 26 (50%) network churches do not have a single small group led by a woman.
Many churches have a “Mom’s Playgroup” at times throughout the year, but (at least at Blue Sky and Vista) it meets during the workday, so is inaccessible to working mothers. Also, of course, this is only for mothers of young children, excluding other women (though at Vista, some other women would attend at times).
Pastors
Finally, as expected, and consistent with their beliefs, The Network’s pastors are all men.
Race
Ok, this is thornier because I can only go off of names and photos and make my best effort. I will primarily focus on the split of white vs. non-white, but also include some stats about the Asian mix.
The Network’s Beliefs
Most, if not all, Network Churches, have the following or something similar on their values page (this one taken from Joshua Church on May 15, 2022).
Multi-Ethnic
We are a church committed to love and unity among people of many cultures, races, and nations together in Christ. Our command from Jesus is to reach “all nations” with the gospel so we seek to heal the wounds caused by the sin of racism and division. The church best represents Jesus’ intention when made up of every race and ethnicity in one unified family.
Steve Morgan would talk about the Taipei church plant needing to be roughly half non-Asian when it happens.
In the 2019 prayer for Black leaders at The Network Leadership Conference, Morgan made a comment about Blue Sky being worried that they might not be able to find a white pastor as the church skewed toward 70% Asian. He said he hoped that someday there would be churches in The Network that were predominantly Black that might have the same issue (his sentiment was that it would be an issue - I’ll let the reader decide if they agree).
At Vista, it was commonly said that there had been an early prophecy or promise from God that he would bring “first the Asians, then the Hispanics”. There were three Hispanic members of the plant team. None are still at Vista. A Hispanic man not on the plant team became a small group leader. He left the church as well. Sándor Paull, speaking to the small group leaders in April 2021, speculated that to bring the Hispanic community would require planting another church just for that (which, it should be obvious, would not actually result in the Hispanic community being part of Vista).
After the murder of George Floyd, churches in The Network praised themselves for having always had it right. Luke Williams also told me that he had spoken with each of the Black regular attenders of Vista and they said they thought Vista was doing great. Another major church in the area put up a page on their website saying they were committed to learning and growing in area of racial justice, and included a list of resources they’d found helpful. This is not an endorsement of that church.
Williams also once completely denied that it had ever occurred to him that he might consider ethnicity in picking leaders (summer 2020), and I think I remember him also saying he hadn’t realized that Vista had ended up with ethnically diverse leadership until someone pointed it out to him. Even when I told him that I’d spoken with people who assumed that he did consider that, he continued to deny it.
Sometime between 2018-2020: From Kelly P.’s story on Leaving the Network, “One Sunday, Steve Morgan shamed ethnically-homogeneous churches for being exclusionary and specifically mentioned the Black Church for being insular, insinuating that those in these churches should join “multicultural” churches like Joshua Church. The next Sunday he apologized from the pulpit and said he didn’t know that Black Churches were birthed out of segregation.” The fact that Morgan had this wrong for more than 20 years could easily have had an impact on The Network’s views of their responsibility in being welcoming to non-white people.in white churches. The fact that Morgan had this wrong for >20 years certainly would have an impact on the Network’s views of their responsibility in being welcoming to non-white people.
You can read more on Leaving the Network.
Contextual numbers
The United States is 60% White (Non-Hispanic) according to https://www.datausa.io. For Carbondale, Illinois, home of Vine Church, the birthplace of The Network, that number is 58%. Given these numbers, and the fact that every single Network church states a core value of being “Multi-Ethnic”. Percentages are hard to think about at times, and for context, it will help you to think of this as 40% non-white nationally, and 42% non-white in Carbondale, IL.
Network Leadership
100% white
The Network Leadership consists of six white men. Beyond that, Chris Miller and James Chidester are believed to be on the pay of the central Network General Fund, and are also white. So all eight members of the central Network Leadership are white men.
Lead Pastors
85% white.
22 of the 26 lead pastors are white. Two are Asian, two are Black. There are no Hispanic lead pastors.
If you exclude the six lead pastors who are also part of the NLT, you still have only four out of 20 lead pastors who are non-white. That’s 20%, against a national population of 40%.
Pastors
70% white
Pastors as a group are 70% white (30% non-white). The Network has 21 non-white pastors, while the 40% expected nationally would cause us to expect 28. If we exclude lead pastors, this number gets quite a bit better: 26 out of 43 non-lead pastors are white, which hits the expected 60% pretty much perfectly. But it also raises a concern: 48 pastors are white, of whom 22 are lead pastors - meaning 46% of white pastors are lead pastors. Meanwhile, only four of the 21 non-white pastors are lead pastors, or 19%. This mirrors what observers have seen in the corporate world - while representation of non-whites is increasing in the rank-and-file roles, representation in the highest levels of leadership is still lacking.
Of the 21 who are not white (30%), 10 are black (14%), 10 are Asian (14%), and 1 is Hispanic (1%).
Support Staff
80% white
66 of the 83 support staff are white, leaving just 20% non-white. At a 40% minority rate, you’d expect 33 non-white staff, but The Network has just 17. The contrast with the pastoral number, but consistency with the lead pastor number may imply tokenism, or the practice of putting minorities in visible positions for the purpose of appearing to care about diversity, without actually caring about diversity. This is frequently seen when minorities are placed in visible positions but not high leadership, which is exactly what we see here.
One particularly staggering example of this is Blue Sky. At Blue Sky, the lead pastor is white, the four staff pastors are non-white (3 Asian, one Black), and seven of the eight support staff are white. Even the Black pastor is the younger brother of David Chery, the lead pastor at Summit Creek in Eugene, OR - meaning he had a family connection. Meanwhile, only 10 of the 31 small groups have a white small group leader (19 are led by Asians). This indicates that the church is overwhelmingly Asian, but still has a white lead pastor (and has had two new lead pastors in the last five years, both white) and almost entirely white staff.
It could be explainable by other rationales. But when a corporation has similar numbers, they deeply investigate to figure out why. Is The Network investigating this? They claim it as a core value - shouldn’t these numbers concern them? Corporations and Academia talk a lot these days about unconscious bias, which is a proven phenomenon in which people are (among other things) more likely to hire people who are similar to themselves. Is The Network aware of this and working on it?
Finally: Of the 17 staff members who are non-white (20%), 10 are Asian (12%), 5 are black (6%), and 2 are Hispanic (2%). 12 churches have no non-white support staff. In fact, 12 of the churches have entirely white support staff, and only four of the churches have a support staff member who is not either white or Asian.
The orange tick mark is complicated here because of the small numbers. I’ve left it unrounded, so that a church like Rock River has an “expectation” of about half a person being white (San Marcos, TX is 46% white). It’s obvious that in case like this, the fact that the only staff person is white doesn’t mean much. Much more interesting are churches like Blue Sky where you’d expect only around four white staff members, but have seven. In general, The Network finds itself “rounding up” (over-representation of whites) rather than “rounding down”. In fact, just seven churches are have less white support staff than expected, while 15 have more.
Small Group Leaders
Corrections from original:
High Rock: 14 White (was 16), 2 API, 1 Black (was zero), 1 Hispanic (was zero)
Totals: 76% white (was 77%)
76% white
By my count, The Network has 347 small group leaders, 266 of whom are white. 81 are non-white. By the national average, you’d expect 139 non-white small group leaders. Of those 81, 21 are at Blue Sky, and 10 are at Roots. of the 23% who are non-white, 51 are Asian (15%), 24 are Black (6%), and 6 are Hispanic (2%). If you’re keeping track, there are at most 9 Hispanic pastors + staff + small group leaders in the entire network.
Remember, the small group leaders also form the pipeline for future pastors. So the whiteness of the SGL pool implies that the pastoral ranks may get whiter over time.
The graph below shows the percentage of small group leaders at a given church who are non-white (blue bar), and then the percentage of its home city’s population that is non-white (orange slice). Only six network churches have a higher percentage of non-white SGL’s than their home city’s population, and three of those are the churches with the fewest small groups in The Network — Vista (5), Valley Springs (5), and Stoneway (4).
Numbers in parenthesis are the count of small groups at each church. Only seven churches have more non-white small group leaders than you would expect based on the cities they are in. Vine Church, the oldest church in The Network, with the most small groups, is almost homogeneously white, despite living in the seventh least white city in The Network.
Cities
Of the 25 network cities that came after Vine, 19 are whiter than Carbondale, IL and the national average. Most of them are 70%+ white, and three are over 80% white. Why do I note this? Because an easy justification would be “but they just match the cities they are in”.
First, as shown, they do not. If each church matched the breakdown of the city they are in, there would be 25 non-white pastors and 125 non-white SGL’s. Instead, there are 21 and 83 respectively, meaning pastors are underrepresented by 16%, and SGL’s are underrepresented by 34%.
More importantly, The Network chooses the cities they plant in. Its affinity for cities that are whiter than where it started, and the country as a whole, is something that The Network has control over. Their choice of who to reach out to in the cities they are in is up to them as well. Much has been said about the classism and bias against certain cultures in The Network as well, so it’s also possible that non-white people generally don’t like Network churches. Whatever the reason, The Network is falling short of its stated goal of being Multi-Ethnic.
Corrections:
Previously said 81 non-white small group leaders, underrepresented by 35%. Updated to 83 and 34%.
Marriage
One quick note here, mostly because for statistical accuracy, it’s bad form to only report the things that looked interesting. 12% of pastors are unmarried, 88% are married. I have no comparison point to make any case that this is problematic.
Summary
In summary, The Network has representation issues when it comes to gender roles and race. While there are a couple of bright spots on race (Asian representation at Blue Sky and Vista, plus a plant in Taipei), there is a troubling underrepresentation of Black and Hispanic individuals across The Network, including in what cities they choose to plant in.
If they were a public corporation, it’d be expected that they would be discussing how to remedy this. And again, just as a reminder, this is a church network that states the following (or similar) as a core value at most if not all churches:
Multi-Ethnic
We are a church committed to love and unity among people of many cultures, races, and nations together in Christ. Our command from Jesus is to reach “all nations” with the gospel so we seek to heal the wounds caused by the sin of racism and division. The church best represents Jesus’ intention when made up of every race and ethnicity in one unified family.
Appendix: Membership Bible Training on Gender Roles
This is a portion of Session 6 of Membership Bible Training at Vista Church in 2019. Luke Williams is the pastor teaching it. The clip shared previously begins at just after the 43-minute mark. I’ve added an opening explaining the light editing I’ve done (for audio quality) on the recording.