Soft Skills, Big Impact: How Women Shape Faith Through Pilgrimage
When my husband asked me what my dissertation was about, I found myself in a familiar position: explaining my leadership research to the man whose support makes my work possible, even as I study women who lead without formal recognition. I tried to explain: “You know how some churches do not ordain women to be pastors? I’m studying women who organize trips to Israel for their churches. They’re not officially ‘leaders,’ but they’re leading in huge ways.” It’s quiet, relational, and happens outside official structures. Yet it shapes entire communities.
To be clear, I am Orthodox Jewish, not Christian, and I study comparative religious practices as an academic researcher.
Recent historiography has broadened the definition of pilgrimage. This expanded understanding recognizes both physical travel to sacred events and “mediated pilgrimage” meaning the participation of distant audiences who access a ceremony’s transcendent meaning through various media forms. Pilgrimages, whether undertaken individually or collectively, whether to traditional religious sites or to events imbued with sacred or transformative significance, fit within this broader conceptual framework.
The Paradox of Pilgrimage Leadership
In complementarian Christianity, women are theologically barred from ordained ministry. The doctrine teaches that while women are equal in worth, certain leadership offices (pastor, elder, authoritative teacher) are reserved for men. Yet many of these same churches enthusiastically support women who organize Holy Land tours and international pilgrimages.
This creates a fascinating contradiction. These women plan complex international travel, manage budgets, coordinate logistics, teach biblical history on-site, guide spiritual formation experiences, and create memories that shape congregational identity for decades. They exercise real authority, yet not the kind their theology officially recognizes.
At the beginning of my research into women’s pilgrimage leadership in complementarian churches, I am a PhD student in leadership studies with action research methods that analyze informal authority and organizational decision-making. I have been an active member of the Orthodox Jewish community for over twenty years, which gives me deep knowledge of navigating gender-differentiated religious roles and the complex negotiations women make within traditional frameworks. I study Christian complementarianism as an outsider to that tradition but an insider to questions of women’s religious authority under orthodox constraints.
Questions About Women’s Collaboration
One dimension I’m particularly interested in exploring is the social structure of pilgrimage planning itself. While complementarian churches maintain heterosocial norms in most settings (men and women working together), I wonder whether pilgrimage planning might create distinctive spaces for women’s collaboration.
Do women organize these tours primarily in all-female planning teams? If so, do these groups function as sites of peer mentorship and leadership development? Could they represent a parallel leadership ecosystem that strengthens women’s organizational capacities while remaining theologically permissible?
At left. These questions are important, but they’re beyond the scope of my current project. Future research will need to examine the actual composition and dynamics of planning teams to understand whether and how women’s homosocial collaboration contributes to their leadership development in these contexts.
Why This Matters: Authority in Liminal Space
Pilgrimages occupy ambiguous categorical space. Are they ministry? Mission? Spiritual enrichment? Outreach? This very ambiguity creates room for women’s leadership. Because these tours fall outside traditional “church service” categories, women can assume planning, coordination, educational, and spiritual guidance roles without triggering complementarian restrictions.
This leadership memorializes the past through story and ritual. Meanwhile, it accompanies present-day travelers on their pilgrimages. Yet it also envisions and constructs shared futures. This research elevates future imaginaries to analytical equivalence with empirical evidence. These temporal dimensions converge at the liminal threshold of leadership.
An Appreciative Approach
I’m using David Cooperrider’s appreciative inquiry methodology, which focuses on existing strengths rather than analyzing deficits.1
The research questions focus on discovery (what strengths make these journeys successful?), imagination (what futures do these women envision?), design (what structures could better support this leadership?), and sustainability (how can positive impacts be tracked and celebrated?).
Instead of asking “What’s wrong with churches that don’t have women pastors?” I’m asking: “What are these women already doing extraordinarily well? What gifts do they bring? How can their strengths flourish?”
Bridging Traditions
While Christian orthodoxy typically maintains heterosocial public norms, Jewish orthodoxy often employs homosocial arrangements, and Islamic orthodoxy may structure women’s public presence monosocially. Yet across these traditions, women find ways to exercise meaningful religious influence within structural constraints. Studying one tradition’s negotiations may illuminate others.
This chart examines subsets of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam identified by each tradition’s own indicators of orthodoxy. These communities often maintain gender-distinct roles in public and religious life, where authority and responsibilities differ between men and women. These traditions typically do not ordain women as clergy. The chart provides an overview of common social norms.
Individual practice varies, but the table captures broad institutional patterns without stereotyping.
What I’m Learning
This research treats pilgrimage leadership as applied religious decision science. It analyzes how women assess theological and logistical risks, mobilize resources, coordinate complex actors, and project spiritual outcomes under institutional constraint.
But more fundamentally, I’m learning that leadership isn’t only about titles and organizational charts. It’s about the quiet, faithful, relational work that actually holds communities together, shapes belief, and creates lasting transformation.
- 1. David L. Cooperrider, Diana Whitney, and Jacqueline M. Stavros, Appreciative Inquiry Handbook: The First in a Series of AI Workbooks for Leaders of Change (San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2003). ↩︎