Abelard and Héloise in debate, a common depiction of a medieval religious woman instructing a man.
Depending on whom you ask, it’s the hot topic in the Church these days.
What are we to do with the women?
Whether it’s long and ridiculous lists outlining what constitutes an important enough position in a church to determine if a woman should be allowed to fill it or a much more thoughtful series of reflections, such as that being hosted by Ed Cyzewski, the blogosphere has done nothing but exacerbate our collective access to every opinion under the sun as to how we are to actually read Corinthians or Timothy or what culturally historical position should be taken to reinterpret into today’s context or … and it goes on.
And I must confess to you, I’m not sure which camp I completely fall into.
I have written in the past some particularly pointed posts in which I advocate a strongly feminist position, if we are going to define feminist as someone who recognizes a woman to be in fact human, moreover made in the image of God. Indeed, many of my friends around the blogs are women who have no qualm asserting themselves as egalitarian.
And I love them, I love what they do, I love how God works through them.
But today I want to come clean.
I want to confess to you that I haven’t fully made up my mind. I still need time to think and pray. For I am at heart, I think, a complementarian. At least in so far as I think men and women do have complimentary roles to one another in marriage. Now if that means that I have to say only women should stay home or that a man is the only one allowed to work, then cast that label aside and find something else to call me. But if egalitarian means that anything a man can do a woman can do with no qualification whatsoever …
Part of me cries YES! and part of me cries NO!
I am not the person who has read an NIV version of Corinthians and Timothy and made a case for gender roles in church based on translation. I have read the Greek, I have read under people who read the Greek from both sides of the camp, and I am still pondering and praying it out.
But I can tell you what I do know. At least, what I know right now. I can share some of the threads that weave my soul.
Growing up in a Baptist church meant that a woman was never considered to be a senior pastor. In all other forms of service, including leading worship or heading the education ministry or anything else, there was never an issue. Having her speak to the congregation, to effectively preach to the congregation as a guest, that wasn’t a trouble either. Yet, to serve as the senior pastor, to have the most authoritative role in the church, this was not considered tenable to the claims of Scripture.
And I think I still agree with this.
When I lived in England for two summers, I met a share of Baptist pastors and deacons alike who happened to be women. Historically speaking, Britain went through a period when it sent the majority of its men to war and left a number of women behind. The churches needed leaders and, like Lottie Moon telling the International Mission Board to send a man to be a missionary to China if they were so concerned about her being a woman, the women stepped up and rightly so. Over time, the role stuck. Cultural custom became theological position, at least, that’s one way to read it.
And I know I respect this.
When I came to Baylor, I met Christina May Gibson, whom I believe has been gifted to preach better than most people I have ever had the privilege to hear, male or female. I will always hold close my conversations with Chris, the ways she has taught me to love God, to see His creation, to desire holiness in a lived and embodied way.
And I know I love this.
When I began attending St. Paul’s, where I journeyed between being Baptist and leaning hard into being Anglican, while finding myself for a time quasi-Episcopalian, I arrived when Father Chuck shared duties with Mother Andrea. And I tell you, for the first time in my life, I didn’t feel anything strange about a woman leading the service. The point of a service in the Anglican and Episcopal tradition is little to do with the role of the priest as the authority. The priest, fully and truly, is the one by whom God reveals grace and mercy through Communion. Male or female it does not matter, the point is ultimately Christ.
And this, this is what seems right to my soul.
It’s several years later now, and though my theological training has included a survey of the tradition as a whole, my specialty has largely been in two areas: the place and role of art; and, the medieval period of about the late 9th century to the early 14th, in particular the Anglo-Norman world. What this means, ultimately, is that I spend a good deal of my time mining the thoughts of those in transition, those priests who were still allowed to marry before the Gregorian Reforms mandated celibacy; those monastic houses that were founded as double monasteries where men and women served together; those times when questions about the Eucharist came down to why we should pour wine and water into the cup, to mark an incarnational mystery.
I share this to give context. My experience is not limited to the views of my youth but to a witness of the history and Tradition. In the history, in the Tradition, I find a much more liberal view of women than is often painted as being the standard for medieval culture. True, women were often unable to inherit from a husband who died, but in response, a number of monasteries wrote charters sanctioned by canon law that stipulated a woman who sought the protection of the veil was entitled to retain her property to be put unto the service of God and her community as she was led. Women did not serve openly as clergy in the chapel, but there was nothing strange in having a woman teach or instruct fellow brother monks–for instance, the rule of the abbey of Fontevrault required an abbess be in charge of the entire monastery, men and women alike.
These wild, liberal medievals lived on the fringes of the Holy Church. They were within it, certainly, in the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic sense, but they were in a sense without it, governmentally speaking. They made do with what they had in the fields where real people met the incarnate God and theology faced the burden of being lived over being nuanced. They made do with what God had given them and I doubt it not that unto Him they gave much glory.
And so I find myself in the small chapel of St. Paul’s, all these years later, as the Mother–a new Mother, for Andrea has moved on–now raises the Eucharistic bread and wine and proclaims it the sign of Christ’s death and resurrection and return.
In my spirit, I feel nothing more than the complete solemnity of the grace of our Lord, which outshines and outweighs all discussions of gender and propriety and roles altogether.
Perhaps one day I shall need to take a firm stance, put my feet in the thick of it and take a side. But for now, I believe He has given me the grace to live in the grey, to question and wonder, to experience the good of both camps, to commune with those of both camps, to meet them at a common Table, and to trust that together, as Simone Weil so beautifully phrased it, the secret and quiet action of grace shall make its way in our hearts.
{ 60 comments… read them below or add one }
exceptional essay; I contemplate and give thanks. Thank you.
Thank you.
You have essentially the position of my wife. While I am a bit more liberal in my position. Where it always comes done for me is “if the person feels called to a position then I feel they should be assisted toward that position.” There is the reality that I think people, both male and female are mistaken. I know many pastors that I think were mistaken in thier call.
The problem in some complementarian leaning positions is that the default is to not encourage. But I have a good friend that was a strong complementarian but did more to encourage women in ministry than most I know. He wasn’t encouraging people to take roles they should not have, but once they were in those roles, he viewed it as his responsibility to defend and encourage them to the best of his ability,
In the end I feel a lot of this is inextricably tied to cultural background. I fully admit I may be wrong in my position and I have moved both ways over the last 20 years, but I still take my friend’s method as a model.
You’re so very right about the place of encouragement. From my own life, I can say that meeting with those women in England was always joy and, though I might ultimately disagree with regard to “fittingness,” I refused to negate the good and meaningful and Godly work they were nonetheless doing. My disagreement didn’t dictate I should shut them down or even be passive. These were people of God doing the work of God. So I encouraged them and begged them to keep pushing forward. It’s a strange paradox, but it seems true, to be able to disagree about this without trying to say it’s a sin. To say, instead, that there is something about fittingness, but that fittingness–I’m using it the way Aquinas does–is secondary to the good work of God through and by whomever He pleases.
I can certainly appreciate where you’re at with this. You sound a lot like where I was while in college. The turning point for me came when I saw God powerfully using women to lead and teach on the mission field and in prisons. A lot of study of Greek culture (especially the Syballine Oracles) helped me as well with the biblical texts–but I’ll spare you the details here! Perhaps the best place I can point someone interested in this topic is NT Wright:
http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_Women_Service_Church.htm
thanks for sharing that link, Ed. That particular Wright essay blew my mind when I first read it. I sit in the tension that Preston describes. I’ve chosen to sidestep the political machinations and just ‘be’ and ‘do’ as god calls me. strangely enough, being in Academic theology gives me more latitude to teach then saying exactly the same things within a church might (or might not) although to be fair my current church community are extraordinarily supportive of all of the ways in which I serve.
And I LOVE that you do it, friend. Go, go, go!
oh that good old NT Wright
I read those words a few months ago, but before that one of those summers I lived in England I was honored to actually sit down with Wright as he was packing to leave for St. Andrews. We chatted for about an hour and one of the things I asked him directly about was the role of women in ministry. I have come away with more questions than answers. I don’t particularly accept the argument of culture, at least not purely, in that I find the Gospel counter-culture in enough places so as to make the argument not feel fully rounded. True to a point, but missing a link. And I wonder, too, and I’ve wondered about this more lately than ever, that the early church looked very little like most Protestant ones do today, that it would have been much more high church, and that in those settings a woman in “authority” doesn’t matter much to me because “authority” isn’t really what anyone has in that space. The place of Christ is too central to reduce it to that. I’m rambling a bit, but it’s to share that I have read Wright, spoken to him, and considered the view of culture and the modern place of that culture, but I’m still puzzling that out, still praying that out.
Cool! You met the man himself, eh? I’ll spare you the details and all, but I think the culture angle is but one of many to consider. I’ve actually hit the place where I think complementarianism kind of blows up the Bible for the sake of two verses. I actually find it much easier to be a conservative Christian who believes in inspiration as an egalitarian. However, it took me about 5-6 years before I made up my mind on this issue, so I can certainly understand the pressure, strain, and difficulty of processing it all.
I really get this tension.
Thank you, Joy.
Very well put. I can relate to much of it!
Thank you; it’s a strange journey.
Thank you for your thoughtful approach. I think you are doing what is one of the things that most needs to be done with this conversation: calling it to a higher standard.
I grew up in a church where women weren’t allowed to vote at church meetings because their vote might “hold authority” over a man’s vote. Then, I wound up going to seminary and becoming a children’s pastor. My experiences have been all over the map.
The sad part about this debate to me is the failure of both sides, often, to recognize that the other side has a possible biblical stance. The understanding that interpreting another language and another culture across thousands of years leaves room for differences of understanding and opinion. That people can authentically believe in Jesus as their Savior, and the Bible as the authoritative Word of God, and yet come to different conclusions.
Gender is talked about in the Bible. Texts have to be wrestled with. And I think the discussion could be most beneficial to those who don’t know the other side of the discussion exists. Who feel stuck when they read these passages and don’t know what to do. Sadly, instead of feeling like they can and should wrestle with texts and history, people are feeling like they have to pick sides.
I think you are calling people to a beautiful humility and uncertainty about complicated matters. Thanks for having the courage to write it.
“That people can authentically believe in Jesus as their Savior, and the Bible as the authoritative Word of God, and yet come to different conclusions.”
I am so, so, so grateful you are teaching children. And not at all in the “whom you should be able to teach” sense, but in the overwhelming since that this is the heart, acing, beauty message children so very much need to hear. Thank you, thank you, thank you for giving of yourself that way.
This is something I have been thinking about as well. As I’ve been considering my faith, what I believe and why, this has come up. I have had a lovely, grace/God filled experience with a female senior pastor. She was a mentor, a favorite aunt, a mother figure who holds me to the truth when I stray.
But talking with others, I know that this is not how other traditions of faith practice.
While I have no issue with having a female pastor, I just don’t know why. I think it’s important to know why. And I’m trying to look beyond my own feminist agenda: Women can do anything a man can do! Because even though I believe that, is that what God want?
Today I received this devotional from Heartlight Ministries:
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. — Genesis 1:27 http://www.BibleStudyTools.com/search/?query=Genesis+1:27
THOUGHT:
We are made in God’s image. Not just the man. Not just the woman. Both male and female are made in God’s image! Incredibly, this is not just true before the Fall. When God made us in the womb of our mothers (Psalm 139:13-16), he made us in his image (Genesis
9:6). Because people are precious to God, because we reflect something of the character of our Creator, each person is to be valued. None is to be denigrated, belittled, or cursed (James 3:9-12). People are precious, not only to God, but also to us because in some special way they reflect his image.
If that is true – that man and woman were created in God’s image, the man and woman reflect something of the character of our Creator, why can’t a woman be a senior pastor? What is it that a woman doesn’t have that man has to not qualify her to be the senior pastor? If we look at those verses, there seems to be no difference between man and woman. If we each of the character of our Creator why not?
I don’t think we can calculate the qualifications male vs. female to be senior pastor. Culturally, anthropologically, at the time of the Gospels women had little to no rights because we were not considered the equivalent of man (regardless of what Genesis said). But that’s not the case now. Women can be heads of their households. They can own land and their own homes without the presence of a man. We are astronauts and gold medal Olympians and mothers – our bodies create new life! So why? Why can’t we be a senior pastor? Why can’t we be a priest? Why are we relegated only to ministries that serve other women or family ministry or children’s ministry? (Not that this is the case for all churches.)
Anyway, I still don’t know why I think it’s okay other than that verse from Genesis where God is saying I, a woman, is made in his image, not men, but me too.
“While I have no issue with having a female pastor, I just don’t know why. I think it’s important to know why.”
I struggle with this a lot and, I admit, it depends on the day. Some days I feel as if the reigns of tight theology need to loose for the sake of the God who moves in the unexpected ways … and then other days I think as true as that is, unless we say something about the normal how can we accept the abnormal? And somewhere in that is also the belief I have that grace often brings us to the place before we know it. Maybe that’s part of this, too.
I agree! I wish I could figure out what parts of my beliefs are me and what part of my beliefs are God’s. I think about my cousin Robin. She is so convicted in her faith. She believes what she believes and does not waiver! For the most part she’s a real inspiration; holy moley I would love to live a such a convicted faith life like that. But on the other hand, there’s this inclusiveness, this subtle (very, very subtle) tsk tsking if something goes against what she believes to be true. That plays a lot into how I feel about my faith. Do I want to be strong in what I believe and unwavering and somehow unexposed to all the things God has created; or do I want to be flexible and worry that maybe my flexibility isn’t what God would want.
Preston–thank you for being honest & gracious with your thoughts & heart & words. As a past history student, I value how you bring about the grey. Studying history isn’t black & white, or a compilation of facts & multiple choice. That’s what is frustrating & invigorating about it. Knowing that life is not a pat answer. That we change our minds as we read & study more.
Growing up in the Baptist and now Assemblies of God/Penecostal, I value the men valuing the role of woman. I know that we live in the tension of Genesis 2-3, but wasn’t God’s original intent to be in Genesis 1? Isn’t that what he was constantly doing through Israel and ultimately Jesus? To restore all of humanity & creation to the right order? If we are to live against Genesis 2-3, then why are rules for women within certain denominations being made to stay in Genesis 2-3? I get that creation is fallen and only when Jesus returns, redeems and we feast at his great table will it be reconciled; but, he called us to bring his hope and bring the “not yet.” That’s me thinking aloud. Thank you again for sharing your experience & study of the richness of the church.
I think I would say that I’m not convinced that the roles for men and women are the result of the Fall. But, in truth, then I get uncomfortable because I feel a need to then define those roles and I come up a bit short. My brain and soul want to live in the middle ages alongside Francis and Clare while my body is stuck here in a present that is so compartmentalized into denominations and theological structures I’m just not sure where to stand to even begin to make sense.
I normally don’t reply, but I am interested in hearing as to why you are not convinced that the roles for men and women are the result of the Fall? Maybe we are missing one another or not. Thanks in advance.
I would weigh it with a view to divine intent. Male and female He created them. Indeed, both very, very absolutely in the same image of God. But just as the Trinity is One and yet the Father and Son and Ghost seem to carry out different tasks without any diminishing of their equality, unity, or one-ness … Well, could we also see that perhaps there is a unity, an equality, a sameness in men and women that does not require them to be the same in terms of some things? Bearing children is an obvious one, but could there be other elements as well? And in this, I want to be very, very careful, because I don’t actually know what I would say absolutely these differences are, but I can conceive of them as plausible in that kind of incarnational logic.
You know, Preston, I was actually really hurt and angry when I first read this piece. I walked away. But as the time has gone by, I still feel sad but also understanding. I hope you don’t find me patronising (because I hope you know me well enough to know that that is not my heart, right?) but I remembered that you are still rather young. And I remember when I was in university, I remember how I was in much of my twenties, and I almost laugh at myself for how *differently* I think about some things. I think that your humility, your uncertainty, your willingness to admit to that will serve you well as you learn – much better than my “know-it-all” attitude served me! I trust God at work in you and I love your honesty. I also see your heart to learn and understand. I hope that you do find some answers because I believe that while some things are an eternal tension (the now-and-not-yet of the kingdom of God, for instance) other things are a tension only for a season as we learn and struggle. And to me, women, their equality, their equal standing in Christ, is actually an issue of justice because women are not an non-essential. (I know that you did not say that but just articulating why I am so passionate about the issue.) Thank you for your honesty.
Sarah, dear friend, thank you for this. Thank you for trusting me and Him (in the most non-gendered way
) to be in process with this. Thank you for having a heart that sees me and lets me grow. Thank you for having a heart that still opens, shares, speaks, and in all that beautiful passion very much helps me glimpse our God. Thank you, friend, for this kind of grace.
I really felt refreshed reading your blog today. This is such a passionate subject for me and I agree that sometimes the more I hear people’s opinions and listen to different theologians argue Greek Biblical passages sometimes I just get more confused. I have been struggling with this for a while now. I grew up in a home and belief system that said the husband is the head, authority, high priest etc..But I also belonged to a church that had no problem with women in ministry and leadership and they fully embraced that but there seemed to just be these unspoken rules like….you wouldn’t see a woman as a senior pastor unless she was on a mission field somewhere…and then that seemed acceptable. I really didn’t have a problem with any of this until well….a few years ago when things just didn’t seem right somehow.
I have a wonderful husband and we have been in ministry all of the almost 20 years we have been married. He fully embraces my giftings and we truly pastored our church together as a team but he also is a strong leader and considered the senior pastor. I think this feels right to me. He often wonders why I struggle with this issue because he doesn’t hold me back one bit in fact he had no problem sharing his pulpit with me if I felt God had put something on my heart. I led both our Women’s ministry and also our Worship ministry at different times.
I say all this to say that I still feel like I want to know the truth…and that is why I struggle so much with this subject. I wish I could just stay in they grey area and let it be at that. Or sit down with Paul and ask him to “Please clarify”! Lol! But I do wrestle with it a lot. Some how a woman being a senior pastor just doesn’t seem right to me but…. is it because it’s not biblical or because of the culture I grew up in. How can it be wrong here in Canada or the US but be ok in China or the Philippines? That doesn’t make sense to me. There are some amazing Prime Ministers and Presidents of Countries in the world that are women and that seems perfectly normal to me too. I guess the healthiest leadership to me seems like a strong husband and wife team leading together not just one or the other but what is actually Biblical and not Biblical?
Anyway….. thanks for the honesty….I think there is probably quite a few of us that struggle and wrestle with this and aren’t ready to call it black or white.
Me, too, on this view, Preston. I don’t know.
Women & Men are fully equal, but they were not created to be the same.
And, I just don’t know how everything is supposed to play out…
i feel stirred to say something, and i’m not sure what. preston, i respect your wrestling and your writing and agree that there are many instances where we can live the tension, not picking a side. no matter what, we love across the divide.
please know, however, that you write as a person of privilege, as one who benefits from the status quo. the stakes are much higher for women whose callings are questioned and whose voices are silenced. for my sisters, that grey is not nearly as beautiful as your words suggest.
Yes, this. Beautifully put, Suzannah.
Please try to keep this in mind as you wrestle this out, Preston, you have the power and the privilege in this discussion. How would it be different if you were on the other side?
I would say that you’re correct … but to a point. Because I have lost a lot of power and privilege because of theological choices I’ve made. I will likely never be an Episcopal priest because I disagree with the issue of baptism, as well as a few other political stances. But I can’t be a Baptist pastor, likely, because of what I do embrace from the Anglican sphere and the place of liturgy. I’ve been turned away from speaking at churches about faith and the arts because my theological stance didn’t quite fit. I’ve been told to “choose” a side and my desire to embrace what I am seeing more as True and less as absolute has meant I’ve had more than one door shut in my face. I do not want to minimize or trivialize in any way the very real hurt and wrong that is done to women who have been gifted and called and are denied, but I would reject the notion that I am a person of privilege just because I’m male. More often than not, because I have not fit the stereotype of what it means to be male, my ability to reason seriously about God is called into question. More often than not, because I am willing for a woman to be a priest, my orthodoxy is rebuked. More often than not, my ability to be seen in a single space, in a single Body, is often impossible because of my theological blend. I took to a blog, I took to writing the book, because those were the only spaces I found to have a voice. Sometimes what I am suggesting here has as much to do with me coming to terms with me as much as it does a broader theological question.
preston, i wasn’t making assumptions about your life and wouldn’t dare say that yours–or anyone’s–is an easy path to walk. but i will push back about privilege.
as a white person, i am the beneficiary of a tremendous amount of privilege and access not shared by people of color. any given moment, i’m probably unaware of most privileges conferred to me by “virtue” of skin color alone, but only a privileged person really has the option to be in the dark, you know? lack of privilege/access is pretty obvious to anyone standing without, and in this discussion, that’s anyone without male parts.
my heart does break for what you’ve alluded to in not meeting some foolish alpha male expectations. rigid, prescriptive, often cultural *shoulds* defining appropriate roles for “real” women and men hurt everyone so uniquely created in the image of a creative God.
I appreciate your transparency. I, too, was raised in a Baptist Church, but have been gone from there since high school. In the churches my husband and I have attended over our past 25 years of marriage, occasionally a woman would preach, and it used to make me feel uncomfortable – after all, who did she think she was to get up there and speak to men? Something “felt” wrong. But I never really took the time to think about it and wrestle with it, because that’s how I was raised and I didn’t question it.
We’ve been at our current church now for over 12 years, a church I said I would never attend because of it’s size (nice to know God has a sense of humor about these kinds of things!) It’s like home, and we both felt God leading us there. Over the years, our church has wrestled with this subject, although before we attended, and our pastor was very candid about it in a recent sermon, entitled “Women Can’t be Senior Pastors, Can They?” You can read it here if interested: http://vineyardcolumbus.org/_media/uploads/files/2011_Sermon_Text/MythsthatChristiansBelieve/Women%20Can%27t%20Serve%20as%20Senior%20Pastors,%20Can%20they.pdf
It really opened my eyes and made me look at the beliefs I had been raised with, what I had chosen to believe without thought. But this year has been a year of change for me in other areas, too! I found Deeper Story, and I’ve finally taken time to think and pray and ask God about what I believe to be true. And He used this sermon, too, to make me stop and think.
The words to my favorite song seem to sum it up well: “Walking, stumbling, on these shadowfeet. Towards home a land that I’ve never seen. I am changing, less and less asleep, made of different stuff than when I began.” I am grateful to be able to stumble along with the rest of you on this journey, more awake, and different than when I began. Thank you for allowing me to grow and learn with you.
The first sentence I ever read on The Deeper Story was the first line of Sarah Styles Bessey’s gorgeous essay on the Incarnation: “If more women were pastors or preachers, we’d have a lot more sermons and books about the metaphors of birth and pregnancy connecting us to the story of God.” That single line struck me just as powerfully as the rest of the whole beautiful piece. You see, I am a woman who is a pastor and preacher. I preached my best Christmas Eve sermon when I was a senior minister and 36 weeks pregnant. I have a book coming out next month that spends quite a bit of time on that very metaphor of pregnancy and incarnation. I wanted to wave my arms and say, “Here I am, over here! And I can introduce you to my amazing sisters as well!” (I was a founding member of The Young Clergy Women Project.)
I echo Sarah’s response to this piece. Whenever someone questions whether God calls women to the fullness of the pastoral vocation (even gently, even humbly), someone questions whether God calls *me* to the fullness of the pastoral vocation. I am a pastor through and through. Every part of me: heart, mind, body, soul. I identify so strongly with my vocation that it is disorienting to encounter resistance. And honestly, because I am often (for better or worse) ensconced in communities that wholeheartedly support women in ministry, I’m startled when I do encounter resistance.
When I was ordained as a Minister of Word and Sacrament, a community of Christians laid their hands on my head and shoulders and called upon the Holy Spirit to bless me. Though I am yet learning the depth of that blessing and will no doubt be plumbing its mysteries for the rest of my life, I have no doubt that their prayers were answered. The Holy Spirit’s movement in my life and ministry is so vivid, so gracious, so quietly astonishing, that the darkest night of my soul could not convince me otherwise.
I don’t want to argue about the Bible or cultural context or theology. (I can’t help but argue: yes, Preston, you are a person of privilege just because you are male. That doesn’t mean you’ve abused or taken advantage of that privilege, but it is your cultural birthright that cannot be shucked off. Holding theological positions that would set you in a poor light before denominational ordination committees is not comparable to standing before denominational ordination committees in a body that is believed unfit to receive God’s call.)
But I digress. That parenthetical is just that, a parenthetical best left to the margins. Let me try again: I don’t want to argue about the Bible or cultural context or theology. I will simply say that one biblical narrative in which I find my story reflected is the conflict about Gentiles and circumcision. Some of the early Christians were absolutely gobsmacked that God would not require that the male Gentile Christians be circumcised. And yet, it was undeniable that God was pouring out the Holy Spirit upon the uncircumcised believers. Peter testified, “God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us.” I know full well I’m taking that passage out of context, and it wouldn’t be my leading argument if I had to debate the matter of women’s ordination. But if I am to give my personal testimony about whether or not God calls women into ministry, that’s the verse closest to my heart.
God calls my sisters into ministry and gives us the Holy Spirit, just as God calls my brothers into ministry and gives them the Holy Spirit. No resistance to women’s ordination can tarnish that blessing, pale that humbling authority, disgrace that gift.
Katherine, thank you for this.
One of the things that I’m not sure came across as clearly in my post is that I don’t think this is an issue of sin, but a question, perhaps, of ideals, of fittingness, of what was intended. But I want to lean hard to the side of that sentence that says question, because it is, truly, something I struggle with and am wondering about. From the fragments you have given me here, I know I would very much love the hear you preach some day and I don’t doubt for a moment the power of Spirit in you.
(As to the parenthetical, being accused of seeming homosexual from time to time can indeed make you feel like your body is a prison you can’t get out of. Moreover, your own mind. It’s not the same, I don’t want to say it’s the same, but it’s closer than you might realize, because we all have a context.)
But what I wanted to hold out was the honest space of not knowing. I’m not telling you not to be. I’m not telling you that you can’t. I’m telling you that I still don’t know. But if my example of the medievals showed anything, I hope it showed that when it comes to not knowing, I will lean more toward acceptance and mystery than ever to saying no. I’m confessing I’m unsure, but I’m also confessing that such uncertainty means that I do not yet have the position to make an authoritative claim.
Can I please celebrate the good that God does in and through you at the same time I wonder if it’s most fitting, at least, were the world to be less broken? I fear that comes across too often as me suggesting that you’re just good enough to be an exception. It’s not. It’s me saying women like you help me pull the tent peg of grace a little farther out each time, such that I have accepted in heart long before mind. But that is, ultimately, the secret action of grace that always surprises us.
First, let me say I appreciate your tone of humility, your leaning into the question. I’m generally a fan of gracious uncertainty, and far prefer it to arrogant surety. So: thanks.
That said, your response is somewhat confounding to me. I can’t say I fully understand what you mean here: “Can I please celebrate the good that God does in and through you at the same time as I wonder if it’s the most fitting, at least, were the world to be less broken?” I don’t grasp the connection you’re making between the brokenness of the world and the issue at hand. Do you mean that God calls women into ministry only because the world is so broken, or we only think God calls women into ministry because the world is broken, or, perhaps, God does not call women into ministry, but we have allowed the culture of our broken world convince us otherwise?
Part of my confusion is just that – confusion. But I should say I found your original explanation of how women came into ministry – as a sort of practical matter, cultural custom becoming theological position – unconvincing. I believe cultures have shifted in ways that have finally allowed women to respond to the fullness of their God-given vocations.
It hadn’t dawned on me that you might be interpreting the women in ministry issue as an issue of sin. But in your clarification, you set forth language that troubles me. If this is a question of “ideals,” of “fittingness,” of “what was intended”… well, consider the inverse implications. Is my ministry less than ideal? Am I unfit for pastoral leadership? Is this prayerfully, communally-discerned life I lead not what was intended – to be clear, not what God intended?
No doubt, there is a difference between proclaiming that women in ministry are not ideal, unfit, and unintended by God, and posing a question of ideals, fittingness, and what was intended. But it still stings to be questioned.
I love the phrase “tent peg of grace,” and my prayer is that the Holy Spirit would swoop in and yank it all the way out for you, and for all who live in the gray.
Gray might be better than black and white, but the world God created is in full color.
Part of it stems from the thought that God allows for less than ideal circumstances to be remedied in ways that are not the ideal, but become the ideal in the fullness of time. That is, Lottie Moon is in China and there’s no man to lead a church, so she leads one. The ideal, perhaps the best, would have been for a man to do it, but there wasn’t a man, so what mattered more in that moment was that the church be led, so she led it. Perhaps that wasn’t the ideal, but her faithfulness more to God than circumstance brings it into the ideal, since we can’t speculate on the good of other outcomes. Like David eating the bread from the temple. It wasn’t to be used that way, but circumstances meant that at that moment, it didn’t matter, something more important was at stake.
I used the medieval example and the British example above to try and illustrate that the “role of women” question has to be subservient to the good of the Church. If the Church needs leaders, then bugger all else, who cares who’s doing it so long as they desire to be faithful.
And this is where I feel the tension. God doesn’t place women in the role of the priests in the Old Testament, even though He has every ability to do so. Moreover, He does call women to some pretty incredible roles, Deborah being an obvious example, but also the women who in the Hebrew are called “wise-hearted” and make some of the preparations for the artistic splendor of the tabernacle. (Not trying to regulate them to weaving here, but to point to the sacredness of a call to the arts.) And I wonder about this. I wonder if it was because there were enough adequate men that it fit God’s purpose to leave them in that role and not to broaden it. But in the world we live in now, all fragments and division in our own unified Body and without, I wonder if the fullness of time is such that the good of the Church has overthrown the question of roles–which is still a word I don’t like using–or fittingness. That God calls women to positions of highest authority now because so much is broken it’s the least we should be worried about. That in the heavenly order, in the cosmic end, all of us are supposed to be on equal footing because we are all under the authority of the one God.
This is a crude comparison, but it grasps a bit at what I mean. Simone Weil talks about how she would be baptized either by water or in some other manner. She’s getting at the idea that though we know what the front door is, there very well could be a side door. The front door is the ideal, but the side door still gets us in the building. If we go defining the side door, though, it stops being a side door and is just another front door. So we have to live in the tension of knowing that door is there without trying to seize it.
That comes back to my space of saying that I’m not ever going to question your calling. Not ever. (I would question it if we were close, but in the way that I would question male or female, just asking how they came to know, etc.) Because I do believe that those He calls He justifies. And I should say that I do very much wonder, and often, how very many of these things we do now aren’t measuring up to what grace would have us desire. I wonder in the diversity of denominations what we might have undershot. I think there’s grace there, I think there’s salvation and working out of faith, but I do wonder. I wonder how we’ll be surprised, in the kind of silly murmuring of, “Oh, that’s what it was supposed to look like …”
But I’m digressing; I do apologize. What I want to say is that I don’t think your calling is wrong or unintended in the present time and in present circumstances. Do I wonder if it in the grand and large scheme falls short of the ideal that every other thing we’re doing is falling short of? Yes. But that wondering doesn’t factor you into the process, because in spite of or in cooperation with it, God is working and moving. Just as I, in saying all this, may very well be completely missing the mark, but would that the Spirit use even a portion of it to be grace and truth.
It’s why I say that I really, truly, don’t know. But why I also say that until I feel comfortable as to where I am to be, I’m not going to deny the call placed on anyone, let alone a woman, because I am not your Holy Spirit.
No, women were not called to be priests in the Old Testament. And Gentiles were excluded from the Covenant, but later – well, later, things changed, didn’t they? I don’t believe this is a radical comparison, especially given Paul’s radical statement, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
But what I really hope to convey by engaging you in this conversation, Preston, is this: I don’t believe that you can “come clean about the women in ministry issue” as just that: an issue. It isn’t an issue. It’s personal, about people. It’s about the women God either is or is not calling into ministry. I appreciate that you do not intend to deny my or any other woman’s call. But from my perspective, the answer to the question, “Can I please celebrate the good that God does in and through you at the same time I wonder if it’s most fitting, at least, were the world to be less broken?” is no. Well, sure, you can wonder if it’s fitting, but you cannot wonder that in generic, “the women in ministry issue” terms. Wondering about the fittingness of women in ministry is wondering about the fittingness of *this* woman in ministry, and every woman in ministry.
Now, with all due respect, I don’t have to give a hoot about your questions and reservations. My church has discerned that I am fit for ministry, and ordained me, and given me the good and holy work of preaching and leading and celebrating the sacraments. When I shared this link with some colleagues, someone responded sort of dumbfounded that I would even bother. But, because I believe wholeheartedly in the oneness of the church, I choose to give a hoot what you think. Furthermore, because I am passionate about advocating on behalf of the many, many women who are called to ministry in communities that do not fully affirm their calls, I also choose to respond and engage.
Thank you again for your willingness to join me in conversation. I am an even bigger fan of The Deeper Story for all of this, and have a submission all ready to go (an indirect response to Sarah’s Incarnation piece) when you re-open the site to guest posts.
Thank you for your beautiful puzzling out of the issue here. It’s interesting to read your words and your tensions, particularly at a very pertinent time for me. I’m a member of the General Synod of the Church of England, and I have to vote next week on the legislation regarding admitting women to the role of bishop… I am prayerfully and thoughtfully considering all of the issues at hand. So much of me wants to say that I am a woman, I can preach and teach, God has chosen me, He died for any woman as much as for any man, so why would He exclude women from ministering for Him, why only restrict women from certain areas of ministry and men from none? At the same time, I don’t want anyone to feel that they cannot attend a church or grow in their relationship with God because they have genuine theological objections to the ministry of a woman. I wish I had an answer, but as I continue to consider these tensions, I want to thank you for your beautifully worded and carefully considered thoughts.
Lorelai, all I can say is that I shall be praying for your decision and that you shall vote toward the highest good. As to what that is, I’ll leave that to you and the Holy Ghost and keep my opinion out of it.
Dear Preston,
Thank you for your blog and your honesty. I think there are many who sit where you do. That said what you have said hurts and upsets me as a woman called to leadership and as a woman living out an egalitarian marriage in which there is no decision maker or final authority on anything, just my husband and I working everything out together.
Surely the question of who is in charge is always the wrong question and if you’re bothered about who’s at the top I would suggest you need to look at what your priorities are (in a humble, please do not be offended type way) Jesus was never about who was in charge, but instead was about who was serving. If we’re serving the last, the least and the lost, why does it matter who’s in charge? Jesus was much more bothered about how much we were making a difference than who was in charge (He said listen to the Pharisees, just don’t do what they do, He didn’t say stop them being in charge…)
I would also suggest that privilege and power are so often invisible to those of us with it, and so for you as a man to say you don’t think women should be in certain types of leadership may reveal something about the privilege you have lived with. Perhaps I am wrong though!
It pains me to see so many women devalued and demeaned and told they need to be under the authority of men. Why?! Why on earth would God create 50% of humanity with a biological make up that requires them to beneath the other 50% of humanity.
And yet even though I am sure of where I stand, we all must grapple and wrestle with this stuff. Thank you for doing that so openly.
Blessings to you!
“I would also suggest that privilege and power are so often invisible to those of us with it, and so for you as a man to say you don’t think women should be in certain types of leadership may reveal something about the privilege you have lived with. Perhaps I am wrong though!”
I take a bit of issue with this. Because I am white and male, that means I am predisposed to certain privilege. Let’s extrapolate that: do I have the right to make judgements on when life begins? As a man, I will never carry a baby, so does that mean I can’t make judgements on it? If the answer is yes, than you as a woman have power and privilege that may be invisible to you that I don’t have. And, again, I would point out that we all have context and my context has been that being white and male hasn’t earned me as much as you think it has. Moreover, I never argued from those perspectives and I certainly didn’t do so from authority. See my response to Katherine, above. I presented where I am and I resent, rather strongly, the implication that because I am male and white that my context is such that it means I have all this power and privilege, when I have avoided claiming that some here have projected their past experiences onto my words or are fighting about a position I myself did not take.
Firstly, I probably should have said that I also come from a place of privilege, I am a white woman, born and living in the UK and constantly am having to acknowledge and rethink my own position on things because of this.
Secondly, please do not assume that because I speak of privilege I am someone who has the view you suggest, I do not think men are less able of deciding when life begins, why on earth would I think that?
I’m sorry I didn’t read all the comments before replying, so I missed the particular comment and reply you have mentioned.
But this is my context: I spoke to someone who was really pleased that in his Father’s Day talk he had challenged men to take responsiblity in their parenting more, because when they get to heaven, they will be held further accountable for their parenting than their wives and therefore they better get it right. (I feel this begins to devalue a mother’s contribution and what does it say about single mothers…) I spoke to another man recently who suggested that the fact I have been abused and mistreated partially as a result of teaching on headship, made me too emotionally involved to hold a proper view of theology. I meet woman after woman after woman who has been put down, devalued and experienced abuse as a result of the complimentarian position. Yes I know that all those that hold that position would say, “well of course the complimentarian view doesn’t accept or condone abuse”, but my own story and those of the many women I meet would suggest otherwise.
I did not mean to accuse you of some sort of malevolent position based on privilege, please forgive me for coming across in that way.
Please forgive me, in turn, for answering more harshly than I should have.
First and foremost, as a fellow human under God, I am so sorry for evils that have been done against you, regardless of whatever form they took. I am so sorry for that kind of hurt.
As to the experiences you list, this is when I think I need another word than complimentarian. Maybe it’s egalitarian. I don’t know. I know that when you speak of that Father’s Day message, my stomach turns–by the way, the Baptist church I grew up in would have never endorsed that kind of crap either, so my context has a definite arc. So maybe it’s that I truly need another word, because I absolutely disagree with the positions you described, to the point that it comes from a “this is what it means to follow Christ in the most basic way” kind of logic before I even consider it a theology of gender. So maybe it’s the vocabulary, here, that is being unkind.
These kind of conversations are a lot better at a table, over something freshly baked.
Thanks! Yes freshly baked stuff and a table would be better! Most definitely! I think you’re right, maybe one of your future pieces could be creating a new word!
I feel relieved to know you are not supportive of the complimentarianism I have come across! I thought your post “This one’s for the sisters” was so beautiful
Blessings to you and thank you for taking the time to reply to me!
Thank you for your honesty, Preston. I am an egalitarian in my heart and hermeneutics, but I’m with you when it comes to labels. I wish there was a label for a place that rises above this frustrating continuum of debate between complementarians (this great label has been hijacked unfortunately) and egalitarians. I’ve thought about the word “synergistic” but it’s probably identified with the business world too closely.
This is how I would describe the place above the endless debate. There is…
LOVE – We may disagree with each other but let’s work hard at understanding each other.
UNITY – We all have the Holy Spirit but here is a mystery: we may interpret the Bible differently. And that’s okay. Church history is filled with shifts in theology and interpretations. In order for the shifts to occur (the ones we wouldn’t undo), there had to be a period of coexisting differences.
RESPECT – You may not agree with the role I want in the church, but if it is obvious that I am gifted in leadership/preaching, give me and the Holy Spirit a chance to exercise the gifts and demonstrate the anointing. I may be the “exception,” a Deborah/Huldah/Priscilla, that God has raised up for a reason.
Can you think of other qualities in this higher place?
Harriet, I love this, it’s absolutely beautiful.
I think I would add Honesty to your list. The space to admit what we actually think or struggle with or to say, freely, what we still aren’t sure about.
Honesty – I should have thought of that since I commended you for yours!
In some ways honesty is related to my description of love – in order to understand you I want you to be honest with me. Otherwise I’m not really understanding you.
YES.
Thank you for writing this. It takes courage, especially in a blog context that leans heavily egalitarian. I appreciate it. I’m a woman, and I currently fall the same place you do, except in that I feel some of the ramifications very personally. The discussion of roles in marriage or in the church can be done well, but often it comes down to some sort of business metaphor about a CEO and a co-worker under him. It can feel very personally demeaning. I don’t care if a woman shouldn’t be a head pastor, what I care about is WHY. Does it speak to something about my personal inherent value and purpose?
I wrote about it here very briefly: http://wellthoughtoutlife.blogspot.com/2010/11/biblical-womanhood-in-new-york-times.html
The fact that I wrestle with it doesn’t mean that I don’t want to truly understand and follow God’s design, whatever that may be. I recognize that my personal struggle to understand my purpose may create an emotional reaction that biases me against complementarianism though I don’t wholeheartedly embrace egalitarianism.
Ah, living in the tension. Although I am a part-time evangelism pastor, I have never been comfortable labeling myself a complementarian or an egalitarian. My head and heart nodded when I heard NT Wright mention that although he believed women should freely use their gifts, allowing the label of “complementarian” to be coopted by strict definition may be a mistake. Of course we complement each other, thanks be to God! I am unwilling to let go of this mysterious beauty, this God-inspired interdependence, even as I freely cheer women on to being full and free citizens in God’s Kingdom, holding nothing back.
I am a strong woman whose husband opens the car door for her because he loves her. Out of my love and respect for him, I fold his tshirts army style. He cooks. I manage the calendar. Give and take, back and forth, loving and yielding.
I am also a woman who cried the first time a woman served me communion. Whose heart rose up to thank God for the beauty of His image revealed in the feminine. I am a pastor who hears that she is sought out by individuals because she is female, not in spite of it. And so I live here, in the tension, unashamedly and hopefully offering up all that I am to serve the Body of Christ.
And many times wondering, how did it come to this? How did this magnificent vision of males and females joining together get reduced to roles and labels? Why are men and women not joining together in leadership to image God fully? How can we come together to paint the portrait God envisioned in the beginning? For there is a garden to care for (this earth). There is a world to share dominion and leadership over. There is spiritual fruit to be multiplied. It all hinges on the male-female team our Creator saw fit to create and to bless.
Thoughts from this little perch. Thank you for your honesty, Preston.
You just shared so close to where my heart is. Thank you.
Thank you for this Preston. I’ve been pondering this issue somewhat lately. Partly because I think I’m called to church leadership, and partly because it’s an issue which has puzzled me since my childhood.
There are a couple of things that still perplex me. If Adam and Eve had different roles before The Fall, shouldn’t that mean we should be attempting to get back to those gender roles? As in, how things worked in that Garden, was good wasn’t it?
Is it that we have a false understanding of hierarchy? That if we’re saying a man should be the senior pastor; then that somehow makes women worth less? When indeed the best example that we have of community is God, the Trinity, and we witness hierarchy and equality best there.
I forgot that my gender is still something that trips others up… a bit about my background, i’m a twentysomething pastor, who has never known a world without women pastors… I had both men and women pastors in my home church growing up (but it was never ‘the man pastor’ or ‘the woman pastor’… they were always rightly just the pastor ). And it is taking even ounce of me to not have a biting and snarky remark about being thankful that God can use me, despite I am woman.
But, in all honesty- there is a huge unsnarky truth in that: I am thankful that God uses me, despite that I am human…. Because, like everyone- I am a sinful, broken person- in a sinful, broken world. And I think you echo that in your writing, that God uses us all to proclaim His love & redemption to this broken world in need….
…but I also feel that our idea of wholeness looks vastly different.
You said (in reply to a commenter):
“Part of it stems from the thought that God allows for less than ideal circumstances to be remedied in ways that are not the ideal, but become the ideal in the fullness of time.”
Which you seem to mean, perhaps if this world weren’t broken, perhaps women wouldn’t be in leadership (as you said in a reply, “Can I please celebrate the good that God does in and through you at the same time I wonder if it’s most fitting, at least, were the world to be less broken?”).
I believe the exact opposite to be true… if this world were not broken, we would not try to use gender as a means of doubting someone’s ability to lead & serve. If this world were not broken, we would not be wrapped up in gender and worthiness- we would be living into the FULLNESS of our identity: God-molded people. I think of Paul’s letter to the Galatians (the third chapter): in Christ… there is no male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
When God looks at us- God does not see those external markers (as Galatians reminds us: the gender, ‘jew or greek’, ‘slave or free’, and all the other ways the world has tried to mark us since then). When God looks at us- what God sees is the ways we have been uniquely and wonderfully gifted by the Spirit.
This can seem somewhat dicey- since we also celebrate (as Psalm 139 directs our praise) that we were knit together by God… and we were ‘knit’ with a gender, we are embodied. AND God chose to enter into this world as a body- Jesus Christ… the body plays some role in this life. Thinking about how we, as embodied people, proclaim & live God’s word— to remove the body almost seems to make the Word of God abstract- and God’s Word is never abstract… it is lived and breathed among God’s people. God is always embodied. Men and Women are the embodiment of the Good News of God’s love and grace- that you are created, loved & redeemed by a God who knit you together in your mother’s womb. And the issue, then, to find women ‘less suitable’ or whatever language you wish to use- is that you are saying that women do not carry, bear, proclaim- LIVE, BREATHE, REVEAL, BE that Good News in the way of men. And that makes me sad.
I do find on point where I agree with you: “The priest, fully and truly, is the one by whom God reveals grace and mercy through Communion. Male or female it does not matter, the point is ultimately Christ”.
The word of God is always embodied. By men, by women, by communities… here’s to praying for a day when we can all live into the fullness of that embodied revelation of the Word & not having so many people stumble by the anatomy that accompanies God.
My prayer for you – a sincere prayer – is that you come to see women in ministry, and in senior pastor roles, as part of God’s unfolding plan for the redemption of creation, not as fitting some less-than-ideal.
You know, what should my response be to this? That I am going to pray — sincerely pray — that you come to see that you’re not right about this? Doesn’t sound like a very nice, uplifting, or helpful thing to say, does it?
Liturgy Geek said essentially the same thing I said. You responded graciously to me, and this response strikes me as angry and defensive. Perhaps I’m giving your words an inflection you didn’t intend. How can we not pray for hearts and minds to be opened to receive the leaders – men and women – God is calling into ministry?
Because when I pray, I don’t pray as if I already know. I pray that all of us would come to a place of Truth, especially when this is not something as clear as I think you claim it to be. It’s not something that has been understood since the earliest years of the tradition, it’s not something that is easy to reconcile unless you read Scripture one way. A way that very much could be the right way. So when I say I don’t question your calling but am still not sure, that leaves room for me to be wrong. To say you’ll pray that I’ll essentially see that you’re right is not, at all, the same thing. That’s rather assertive and claims that if I don’t agree with you, I’m wrong. I have avoided, purposefully, to ever say that you’re wrong. To say that you’re wrong is to say I have an authoritative reason as to why you are. I have reasons. I reject, for instance, the way you’re using Paul and I think you’re using that verse out of context. But I don’t press that and I don’t belabor it, because I value more that the Spirit is journeying you as well as me and we’ll both “get there” wherever that is on this and everything else. So it’s not the same thing to pray I’ll “get there” to your side and take on things.
This is a “here I stand, I can do no other” place for me. As unpopular as it may be to make a definitive claim in a postmodern culture, I believe that it is wrong to deny the full calling of women in ministry, and that it is not only detrimental to the women who are called and the churches they might serve, but that it also constricts the movement of the Holy Spirit. There are certain issues that I cannot fathom the “other side” being right, despite the fact that the Bible can be interpreted to support differing positions (like, for instance, slavery). I hope that this is not pride in my own opinion, but faith in the Spirit of the Living God.
I think we’re probably beginning to bump up against the limitations of the medium through which we’re communicating; I liked your suggestion that this kind of conversation is best had around a table set with something freshly baked. (I’m particularly fond of chocolate croissants.)
I made some assumptions in offering that prayer, Preston. One assumption was that in some ways you already are affirming the role of female clergy. And yes, my prayer was one seeking that you would continue to be open to that affirmation, and to come to a place of fullness regarding that acceptance. Because as it is for others, for me this is a “here I stand, I can do no other.” I am ordained into the ministry of Word and Sacrament and I serve in a local congregation. God has called me to this work and God has affirmed that call and the Church has deemed me worthy. Your discomfort with wonen’s ordination reflects a discomfort with my ordination, and I can say with the assurance of the church that I am called and confirmed to this ministry.
I also have colleagues who have called me a blasphemer and who refuse to work with our ministerial fellowship because women are a part of it. How does that disunity reflect Jesus’ prayer in John’s gospel that we all might be one?
I am sorry that my words and prayer have caused offense. I will pray for your heart to be opened to the fullness of God’s truth – and sometime later, when you are certain what that is, you can share it with me. For now, I rest in the certainty that God has revealed to me – that it is not a body part that is the arbiter of who is fit for ministry.
I think this issue comes down to a disparity in modern cultural values, rather than purely just a question of gender equality in the church. One problem with popularized feminism in our culture is the devaluing of women’s natural gifts in favor of taking the roles of more male-dominated positions in order to obtain that value. Instead of celebrating femininity, females are being compelled to embrace masculinity as an “equalizer” rather than celebrating the differences in gifts that men and women are given and giving equal value to those gifts. I think you made a good observation, that within the context of church history women have always had an important voice and role: they have helped in the structure, teaching, and forming of the integral parts of the body of the church, created vast infrastructure and leadership in schooling, and taken on the important lead roles in the care for the poor, weak, and defenseless. Women are venerated as saints throughout history, just as men are, for their strength in Christ – some for extremely brave acts such as martydom and some as spiritual leaders (and yet not priests), their voices heard loud and clear by laity and leaders alike (St. Therese of Avila immediately springs to mind). As for women serving in the church, I think it not only important, but absolutely necessary – their teaching, example, and service are part of the foundation of the church and ultimately the Body of Christ. One of the greatest gifts I think women of faith can express is humility, servanthood, and trust; as a woman myself, I highly value these traits in the women who have mentored me above almost anything else I have learned from the church. However, I do not think it necessary for women to be a pastor, and I do not think that being in leadership is the natural role for women in the church. I am not trying to step on any female pastors toes, I understand that in our culture today that having females in leadership is a representation of the cultural and societal norms and for that very reason is compelling to want to represent the perceived needs of the people. However, we are called to transcend worldly pressures and must ultimately seek the roles in which the intrinsic value of femininity can be expressed to its fullest extent. Thus, I don’t think that supporting a fundamentally flawed worldly outlook will be of full benefit.