And then I hear something like this, and I wonder if I’ve got it all wrong:
“I feel simply carried along each hour, doing my part in a plan which is far beyond myself. This sense of cooperation with God in little things is what so astonishes me, for I never have felt it this way before. I need something, and turn round to find it waiting for me. I must work, to be sure, but there is God working along with me. To know this gives a sense of security and assurance for the future which is also new to my life. I seem to have to make sure of only one thing now, and every other thing “takes care of itself,” or I prefer to say what is more true, God takes care of all the rest. My part is to live this hour in continuous inner conversation with God and in perfect responsiveness to his will. To make this hour gloriously rich. This seems to be all I need think about.”

I’m blown away by the last line of that journal entry:  “This [living in continuous inner conversation with God and in perfect responsiveness to His will] seems to be all I need think about.”  All those half-finished books behind me playing on my inadequacies?  Not important.  Those conferences that promise to raise my game to a higher level?  Not necessary.  Just one thing is needed – unceasing communion with God and a commitment to respond to what He reveals.  What would it look like if I truly believed this?

Now, before you dismiss Laubach as some wacko monk out of touch with the real world, consider his resume after embarking on this experiment.  Educated at Princeton and Columbia, Laubach spent much of his life as a missionary in the Philippines.  He is best known as the founder of the World Literacy Crusade and the developer of the “Each One Teach One” literacy program, which is responsible for teaching between 60-100 million people worldwide to read in their own language.  He lived among the Moros, a Muslim people who looked upon Christian Filipinos like Laubach as their enemy.  Although the Moros were almost entirely illiterate when he met them, by the time he left approximately half of the 90,000 people could read and write, preparing them for life in the modern world while helping them preserve pride in their people and their history.  In addition, he helped them develop industries, health services, and even introduced a better seed for their agriculture.  As a result, the leading Muslim priests in the region told their people that Laubach would help them to know God, calling him “A friend of Islam.”

I think we need to seriously consider Laubach’s experiment.  Jesus told his disciples to not run around anxiously chasing after things like food and clothing, but instead to “Seek first [God’s] kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matthew 6:33). Laubach found that as he devoted his energy towards continuous communion with God and submission to His will, he was “carried along,” part of a greater plan, with God working right along with him.  Listen again to more of his words:

All during the day, in the chinks of time between the things we find ourselves obliged to do, there are moments when our minds ask:  ‘what next?’  In these chinks of time, ask Him:  ‘Lord, think Thy thoughts in my mind.  What is on Thy mind for me to do now?’  When we ask Christ, ‘What next?’ we tune in and give Him a chance to pour His ideas through our enkindled imagination.  If we persist, it becomes a habit.”

And after reflecting on two months of his experiment, Laubach wrote: 

“This concentration upon God is strenuous, but everything else has ceased to be so. I think more clearly, I forget less frequently. Things which I did with a strain before, I now do easily and with no effort whatever. I worry about nothing, and lose no sleep. I walk on air a good part of the time. Even the mirror reveals a new light in my eyes and face. I no longer feel in a hurry about anything. Everything goes right. Each minute I meet calmly as though it were not important. Nothing can go wrong excepting one thing. That is that God may slip from my mind if I do not keep on my guard. If He is there, the universe is with me. My task is simple and clear.”

Two Sundays ago I stressed Jesus’ words in John 17:3 that eternal life, a quality of life beyond anything else one can experience in this world, is essentially a relationship with God.  Frank Laubach’s life is a testimony to this eternal life.  In His relentless pursuit of a relationship with God, he experienced a quality of life that is incredible to read about.  It wasn’t a quality of life marked by riches, possessions, or earthly comforts, but instead by wonder, beauty, significance, life transformation and eternal impact on the world.

Anyone up for the experiment?  Find a way to remind yourself to turn your mind to God as often as possible in the course of a day.  Put a rock in your pocket, or a cross on your computer, or a picture on your desk.  Do something that will help continual communion with and submission to God become a habit.  As Laubach put it, “this concentration upon God is strenuous.”  Don’t expect it to be easy, and don’t be discouraged if you only remember a few times a day at first to turn to God in communion and submission.  Just imagine what it would look like to be able to say, as Laubach did, “everything goes right,” or “I worry about nothing, and lose no sleep.”  Imagine what it would be like to see God using your life to affect 100 million lives the way he used an ordinary man like Frank Laubach.

There is a power available to you right now, a quality of life within your reach, if you would only turn from living for yourself and tap into it.  Turn to Jesus right now, and try the experiment for yourself.   

And then I thought… I’ll stop there.

It’s been a good deal of work pulling this together with some NewLife animal lovers, but I have a feeling it’s going to be an awesome event with a big crowd that will hopefully give us lots of opportunities to bless our neighbors.  I have found that I am not alone in my love for my pet, and that there are lots of people out there who love bringing their pets and/or their kids to events like these.

As excited as I am about the number of businesses who have jumped on board, the prizes that have been donated, and the NewLife people who have helped pull this off, I’ve been really looking forward to the Blessing of the Animals.  Not only will I have a chance to meet and pray for many pets and the families who love them, but I’ve been really enjoying my research into the life of Saint Francis of Assisi.  He’s best known for being the founder of the Franciscan order, with its emphasis on poverty and the simple life, and probably known next best as the patron saint of animals, birds, and creation.  He is also the author of one of the most phenomenal prayers ever recorded, which I think is worth some serious reflection today:

The Prayer of Saint Francis

“O Lord, make me an instrument of Thy Peace!
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is discord, harmony;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light, and
Where there is sorrow, joy.
Oh Divine Master, grant that I may not
so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand; to be loved
as to love; for it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.”

What an incredible prayer!  As I read and pray the Prayer of Saint Francis, I hear Jesus’ prayer to the Father in Matthew 6:10 that “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” echoing throughout Francis’ words.  I hear Yahweh’s words to Abraham in Genesis 12:2 that “I will bless you… and you will be a blessing.”  I hear Jesus’ words to His disciples in John 13:34 that “As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”  I see a person walking in the footsteps of Jesus, on a mission to heal and bless and love.  I see a church living out God’s mission of reconciliation, bringing God’s kingdom of love, peace, and justice to a broken and hurting world.  I see a church that trusts that God is enough, and believes that we are called and empowered to love and sacrifice and give in the same way that Jesus loved, sacrificed, and gave for us.  And I firmly believe that we can not pray this prayer hard enough or often enough.

There’s really not much more I want to add to Francis’ prayer, except an encouragement to keep his prayer at the forefront of your life.  I can’t wait to tell our community this Sunday about what Saint Francis has been teaching me about what it means to know God, and I can’t wait to pour out God’s blessing on our neighbors.  I hope I’ll see you there!

So what do we learn from the actual records of women in church ministry over the past 2000 years?  Does church history teach us that God blesses woman pastors and preachers, or is it clear that this is against the will of God?

My goal today is not to provide a comprehensive survey of church history – I haven’t researched it completely, and others have done a much more thorough job.  I would like to give a summary of an interesting take on this subject given by theologians Stanley Grenz and Denise Muir Kjesbo in their 1995 book, Women in the Church.  As they look at the history of women in ministry over the past two centuries, they see these trends repeating themselves in many spiritual movements:

   1) A renewal movement of the Holy Spirit causes people of all genders, races, and classes to be raised up for ministry and church leadership (a la Pentecost and Galatians 3:28)
   2) The denomination, Bible school, or ministry associated with the movement becomes more institutionalized
   3) As it institutionalizes, the denomination/Bible School/ministry begins to value theological training and cultural respectability more highly and begins to hire predominantly men

Read that one more time before we consider some historical examples.  If their assertion is accurate, then it would seem that history shows that when leadership involves the choice of God by the gifting of the Holy Spirit, women are included in ministry, but as factors such as education and respectability become more important, women are excluded.  Following the three stage model proposed above, let me give some of Grenz and Kjesbo’s examples of how this has played out in church history:

The early church: 

   1) Despite the patriarchal culture, there is evidence of some women acting in various leadership roles, including bishop/elder and deacon, and performing various ministerial activities, including administering the Lord’s Supper, teaching, baptizing, caring for the physical needs of the congregation, and leading in public prayers. 
   2) The church gained greater respectability and became more institutionalized
   3) Church councils, as well as bishops and popes, in the 300s and 400s produced statements restricting and prohibiting women from holding the offices they had held in earlier centuries.  As a result, many religious women (among them Catherine of Siena and Teresa of Avila) flocked to monasteries, where they could exercise more influence.

The Wesleyan Revival:

   1) A movement associated with John Wesley in 18th century Britain (also known as Methodism), it involved Spirit-gifted preachers who brought revival to the crumbling English church.  Wesley allowed women to participate fully and to serve as leaders, but gave them permission to give short “exhortations” and to call their meetings “prayer gatherings” so that no one would think they were female preachers leading congregations.  However, the success of these women’s led Wesley to conclude that if a woman was called to the ministry, then she needed to obey that call, and he eventually affirmed the right of women to preach, regardless of public opinion.
   2) The Revival eventually institutionalized into the Methodist Church.
   3) Women’s roles diminished quickly following Wesley’s death as the church gained greater respectability.

The Holiness Movement:

   1) Women such as Phoebe Palmer and Aimee Semple McPherson were leaders in the 19th century holiness movement that gave birth to or influenced denominations such as the Church of the Nazarene, the Christian & Missionary Alliance, the Salvation Army, and the Church of God.
   2) Some of these denominations continue to have women in leadership; others, like the Church of the Nazarene, have shifted as they gained more respectability. 
   3) Originally the Nazarenes recognized the right of women to preach in their original constitution, but now only 3% of their pastors are women, because of their desire to blend in with the evangelical mainstream.

Baptists:

   1) In the early Baptist movement in England and North America, women preached and served as ordained deacons. 
   2) Baptists moved from despised sect to established denomination in the 1800s.
   3) By the mid 1800s, Baptists questioned the right of women to vote in church conferences or to speak in mixed assemblies, and many churches did away with female deacons.  Today, many Baptist denominations such as the Southern Baptist Conference do not teach that the Bible allows for women to teach men or be pastors.

Moody Bible Institute:

   1) Dwight Moody, one of the foremost American revivalists, founded Moody Bible Institute in 1886.  In their early days, they actively promoted public church ministry for women, using women as evangelists, Bible teachers, and Bible conference speakers.
   2) The second and third generations of school leaders sought credentialing and respectability
   3) Women were increasingly excluded from positions of leadership and responsibility as theological education and ordination, unavailable to most women, became necessary.  Moody Bible Institute no longer teaches that the position of elder or pastor is open to women.

I believe the validity of this pattern is worth considering.  There is no doubt that cultural factors have always played into the question of women in ministry.  The only question is whether it is cultural forces that kept women predominantly out of ministry for 1900+ years (against the will of God) or whether it is cultural forces that are now causing churches and denominations to recognize women as pastors, elders, and preachers (against the will of God).  If we could only throw up our hands and declare that “we don’t know,” that would be simple, but there are women who feel called to ministry who are waiting on an answer. 

As I mentioned on Sunday, I believe that Galatians 3:28 – “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” may offer the clearest picture of what God intends his church to be like:  a community where people’s access to God and spiritual roles are not determined by the typical cultural categories of race, class, and gender, but by the salvation offered in Jesus Christ and the gifting of the Holy Spirit.  If this is true, then it means that if someone is a gifted leader or preacher, it doesn’t matter if they are a rich Mexican man or a poor British woman; they should use the gifts the Holy Spirit has given them to build up the church.

If you have any thoughts or comments to add, please post your comments so that we might all learn and seek the truth together.  May God grant us wisdom and discernment as we seek His will.

As an evangelical Christian, I believe that the Bible is the authority for faith and practice for believing Christians.  This is why I’ve been preaching through a series on what the Bible has to say about gender roles, so that our church leadership and our families might be line with God’s will on this issue.  However, as I mentioned last week, I also know that all theological conclusions are informed by three other sources besides Scripture – reason, personal experience, and tradition.  Last week I briefly addressed what my reason and experience tell me about the question of whether or not women should have equal access to church leadership roles.  Briefly, I believe that both reason and experience teach me that not only do we all have a lot to learn from a woman’s perspective on God and church, but that a church or any organization is stronger when men and women are working together, complementing each other’s gifts in leadership. 

But what about tradition?  What does church history add to the debate?

Last week I argued that many evangelical Christians assume the following three things about the history of the church on the role of men and women in church leadership:

   1) The church has traditionally held that only men can be pastors, teachers, and elders
   2) The increase in women pastors, elders, and teachers is due more to the influence of secular feminism than it is to Biblical scholarship. 
   3) Therefore, a Biblical church will resist cultural influence and allow only men to be pastors, teachers, and elders

Today I’ll address these assumptions.  Has the church traditionally held that only men can hold positions of authority or teach in the church?  And if so, is there a good reason for it?

The short answer is that for most of its history, the church has believed that God’s will is for only men to be in positions of leadership and teaching in the church.  And the increase in women in church leadership has coincided with the women’s movement of the past century, which fought for equal rights (like the right to vote and equal pay) and access to more opportunities for women.  All of which leads many to draw the same conclusion as #3 above, that the issue of women in leadership is more a cultural issue than something that is in line with Biblical teaching or historic Christianity.

So why do I disagree with 99% of church history?  And why am I not worried that I disagree?

The answer is that as I read the history of the church on this issue, I found that the majority of church leaders and theologians throughout history have believed and taught that women are inferior to men.  As they read the Biblical texts on the roles of men and women, they found support for what their reason and experience told them, that women were inferior to men, that they were more gullible, more sensual, too emotional, and that their place was largely in the home with the children while the men did the leading and teaching.  I believe that this fact could just as easily lead me to argue the following in regards to church history and women in leadership:

   1) The church has traditionally held that only men can be pastors, teachers, and elders
   2) The lack of women pastors, elders, and teachers was due more to the influence of the surrounding culture (which taught the inferiority of women) than it was to Biblical scholarship 
   3) Therefore, a Biblical church will resist cultural influence and will recognize that leadership & teaching roles in the church should be distributed to those with spiritual gifts of leading and teaching, not by gender

What do you think?

Let me just say before we look at some examples of what the church fathers have taught on the issue of gender roles in the church that whether or not you believe the Bible teaches that women should be in church leadership, that this is an area of church history of which the church should be ashamed.  I believe the clear teaching of the Bible, from the creation account to the actions and teachings of Jesus, to the teachings of Paul, is that men and women were created equal in the sight of God, and that the disharmony and imbalance between the sexes is a result of the Fall (see Genesis 3:16) and not something the church should ever be perpetuating.  The church fathers have influenced the church for good on so many areas of theology; however, the nature of man and woman has not been one of them.  Consider the following:

Tertullian, a 3rd century theologian who coined the word Trinity, developed aspects of the doctrine of original sin, and defended the dual nature of Jesus, wrote a treatise called “On the Dress of Women.”  In this treatise he told women that they needed to dress in humble garb, “walking about as Eve mourning and repentant, in order that by every garb of penitence she might expiate the ignominy of the first sin and the odium of human perdition.”  He continued with some harsher words, saying “You are each an Eve… the guilt must of necessity live with your sex.  You are the devil’s gateway; you are the unsealer of that (forbidden) tree:  you are the first deserter of the divine law:  you are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack.  You destroyed so easily God’s image, man.  On account of your desert – that is, death – even the Son of God had to die.”  In Tertullian’s mind, the Fall of man and the death of Jesus were all a result of woman’s sin, and therefore all women must live their lives in constant penitence.

Ambrose was the bishop of Milan from 374-397.  In “On Paradise,” he wrote “In fact, even though the man was created outside Paradise (i.e., in an inferior place), he is found to be superior, while woman, though created in a better place (i.e., inside Paradise) is found inferior.”  To Ambrose, it was a fact of nature that men are superior to women.

What about Augustine, probably the most well-respected and influential theologian of the early church?  In his “Literal Commentary on Genesis,” Augustine wrote “If it were not the case that the woman was created to be man’s helper specifically for the production of children, then why would she have been created as a helper (Gen 2:18)?  Was it so that she might work the land with him?… Yet for company and conversation, how much more agreeable it is for two male friends to dwell together than for a man and a woman!  I cannot think of any reason for woman’s being made as man’s helper, if we dismiss the reason of procreation.”  In Augustine’s mind, a woman existed for the purpose of making babies, and if you were to take away that ability, then you may as well have given Adam another man to have as a companion, since that would have been preferable.

Thomas Aquinas, another of the most influential theologians in church history, wrote that women are dominated by sexual appetite, while men are ruled by reason (many might argue the opposite today!).  Women, he said, depend on men for everything in life, while men depend on women only for procreation.  He even said that “Children ought to love their father more than their mother, because they are the more active principle, while the mother is the passive principle.”

And Martin Luther, whom I quoted on Sunday, said this in his commentary on 1 Timothy:  “Since therefore God added to the man an inferior aid, the Apostle justly reminds us of the order of creation in which the eternal and inviolable appointment of God is strikingly displayed.”  Luther was just another example of a theologian finding in his reading of the Bible justification for his belief that women were inferior to men.

The fact is that women in church leadership is not the only recent development possibly affected by cultural views; the notion of the equality of women is also a recent development, in society and in the church.  The complementarian (fancy word for those who limit the roles of women in the church) argument today comes to the same conclusion as the church fathers did, but uses a different means to get there:  instead of arguing that the nature of things proves that women are inferior and should follow the leadership of men, they argue that men and women are equal before God, but still should fulfill different roles in the church.  Therefore, it should be noted that NEITHER side – complementarian or egalitarian – is really following church tradition, since both have rejected the premise that women are an inferior gender.

So why in God’s name would we take as authoritative on the gender issue the views of men who saw women as inferior?  Would that not be akin to letting a racist inform our opinions on the superiority of the Caucasian race?  Complementarian theologians, however, are often not so discerning.  Listen to the theologian Thomas Schreiner in Two Views on Women in Ministry:  “I readily admit that those supporting the historic view have sometimes used extreme and unpersuasive arguments to defend their views, and that low views of women have colored their interpretations… (however) an interpretation that has stood the test of time and been ratified by the church in century after century… has an impressive pedigree, even if some of the supporting arguments used are unpersuasive.” 

My conclusion is that I see nothing impressive about misogynistic (if I dare to call them that) men concluding that women are inferior and therefore should contain themselves to the home.  I believe this directly contradicts the creation account and the actions and teaching of Jesus, and is not the way God intended for his church to be.  It is for this reason that I am not afraid to disagree with the church fathers. 

Next week, I will continue to examine what church history adds to this discussion by looking more closely at the last two millennia of women in church leadership.  In the meantime, if you have any thoughts or comments to add, especially if you have ever felt that the Bible or the church still treats women as inferior, please post your comments so that we might all learn and not repeat the mistakes of our fathers.  May God grant us wisdom and discernment as we seek His will on this matter.

We’re in the middle of a preaching series at NewLife on the Bible and gender, trying to understand what the Bible has to say about the role of men and women in the church, in marriage, and in society (you can listen to the sermons online at www.newlife-glastonbury.org).  If you’ve listened at all to the messages, you know that this is a complex issue that mature Christians have disagreed on over the years.  Our church believes the Bible is God’s Word and our authority for faith and practice, and so we take seriously what it has to say about men and women, from the Genesis creation account, to the way Jesus treated women, to the teachings of the apostle Paul on the subject, to the examples of men and women throughout the pages of the Bible. 

Even though we hold a high view of Scripture, there are three other voices that can inform a particular view on the Bible and gender.  The Wesleyan Quadrilateral, credited to John Wesley, the 18th century leader of the Methodist movement, is a model of theological reflection which theorizes that people of faith use four different sources in coming to their theological conclusions:

     Scripture – what does the Bible say about the issue?
     Tradition – what does the past two millennia of church history say about the issue?
     Reason – what does our rational thinking say about this issue?
     Experience – what has our personal experience as a Christian taught us?

This model can be helpful in understanding the differences between many strands of Christianity.  For example, Catholics place a high value on both Scripture and tradition, believing that the teachings of the Popes are just as important as the teachings of the Bible (which is why sometimes there is such extra-Biblical emphasis on things such as the saints, adoration of Mary, purgatory, sacraments, etc.).  So-called “liberal” churches place a high value on reason, which can lead to a downplaying of the miraculous elements of the Bible or an acceptance of cultural practices that may contradict the Bible.  Many Pentecostal churches place a high value on experience, believing that many manifestations of the Spirit are legitimate, even though they may not be found or emphasized in the Bible (e.g. holy laughter, being slain in the Spirit).  Evangelical churches like our own try to treat Scripture as of primary importance, and the other three sources as all of secondary importance.  In other words, we believe that we can learn a lot from tradition, reason, and experience, but if they contradict the Bible as we understand it, then the Bible takes priority.

All this introduction serves to bring us to this question:  what do we learn about the roles of men and women in the church when we take into account tradition, reason, and experience?  Recognizing that none of these trump Scripture, nevertheless, does looking at these three sources influence us in any way on the question of whether God’s will is for both men and women to fulfill all roles in the church?

I think I can deal with the “reason” and “experience” issues fairly quickly.  My experience, and that of many today, is that we have a lot to learn from both godly men and women, and that to silence the voice of half of God’s people in church or in leadership is to weaken the church.  Some may argue that their experience is that allowing women to be in leadership will cause fewer men to participate in church or to step up to leadership roles.  However, if men are insecure about sharing leadership with women or resort to passivity in the face of assertive women, that is hardly grounds for banning women from leadership.

As for “reason,” most rational thinkers would agree that men and women can complement each other well as leaders and teachers, having observed this in many secular professions.  In fact, many who believe that women should not function as pastors, teachers, or elders struggle to understand why God would make it this way when there are many women who are gifted leaders and teachers.  Therefore, I would argue that both experience and reason heavily support an egalitarian point of view, that church roles should be distributed on the basis of spiritual gifting, not gender.

The tradition issue (what church history has to teach us), of course, is much more complicated.  My hope is to raise the important questions in today’s post and then spend next week answering the questions, because I do believe we can learn something significant from examining church tradition.  I think this is a crucial thing to do in the discussion we’ve been having, because I would argue that many evangelical Christians assume the following three things:

    1) The church has traditionally held that only men can be pastors, teachers, and elders
     2) The increase in women pastors, elders, and teachers is due more to the influence of secular feminism than it is to Biblical scholarship. 
     3) Therefore, a Biblical church will resist cultural influence and allow only men to be pastors, teachers, and elders

Does this resonate with you?  Have you heard this argument before, or do you believe it yourself?  I have found that many churches and Christians, when faced with the complex issue of gender roles in church, would rather err on the side of “men only” leadership, because “that’s the way it’s always been.”

But is that the way it’s always been?  And if that’s the way it’s always been, are there good reasons that it has been that way?

Next week I’ll do a more thorough analysis on how church tradition has handled this issue.  In the meantime, I would love to hear your thoughts on how reason and experience influence your views on the roles of men and women in the church.  Bible and tradition aside, what has been your experience of “men-only” church leadership?  What has been your experience of men and women working together in leadership, whether in the church or in society?  Do you see any rational basis to exclude women from positions of authority or teaching in the church?  If you have any thoughts or questions, please post your comments so that we might learn from each other on this subject.