On Sunday nights, we could wear pants to church. The air was more jolly, and we might have thrown in a couple more upbeat accapella songs. We were less somber and less sin-focused, had full bellies from a day with the family, and enjoyed sitting with our friends, practicing the glory of a southern alto and then sitting for a nice game of hangman while the preacher gave a short talk. For the most part, I loved the church when I was a child. I believed in it and the roles it told me to play on behalf of the kingdom.
One Sunday night, the man reminding us of the sick among us couldn’t remember a detail, so he asked out into the congregation to see if anyone knew. Mrs. Whitaker responded aloud, and I remember that her feminine voice in the blank space above the heads of men and God and everybody jolted me up stiff, and my arms went numb. I was terrified.
It’s silly now when I look back as an adult, how it was merely a prayer request, and Mrs. Whitaker was neither leading the prayer nor doing any teaching. But I do remember the shock of it and how it reveals a deeply ingrained teaching that women are to be altogether silent in church as a symbol of the authority that men have, as placed by Christ as the head of the church.
Friday I posted a video confession at theRunaMuck about being embarrassed with my gift of preaching, how it has revealed in me shame in the Gospel, how I don’t want to step out of my upbringing to share my part of the story in all the ways I’ve been called (and gifted) to share it.
“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the POWER of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith unto faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith.’” (Romans 1:16-17). Whatever our giftings are, the purpose of them is to point to Christ’s Lordship, the vastness and righteousness of God and our own smallness as creating beings.
The truth is that I am willing to be silent. Even in my video I confessed it’s the easier way, but also, what if it really were the design? I haven’t earned any right to speak. More often than not, when I hear women argue for a voice in the church, something in it turns me way, something other than my upbringing.
The word feminism has intrigued me in literature, which is why I studied it in college as much as it was offered, but in the church? I haven’t cared to ride that bandwagon at all because I haven’t often recognized gospel in it, and this judgement of mine has numbed me a great deal toward really asking the LORD what to do with the scripture and especially what to do with a gifting that I know I have as one who loves to share what is being revealed in me.
But then enters Sarah Bessey and her upcoming book entitled Jesus Feminist. Enter my love for her and how I know her personally, how she swells with gospel and sends it from her lips in such meekness and boldness that she leaves a trail of peace. Enter Christine Caine, how she could care less for my comfort and calls out like a voice from the desert to follow hard after God. I only began to question God and His calling on me as His child when I began to consider the many women who are speaking and dancing and leading. It was never a woman preaching feminism that changed my perspective. The only women who have given me glimpses of freedom in my calling are the ones surrendered and focused on the one thing–not their rights, but on the righteousness of God.
If gospel were our goal as women in the church, then how low would we be willing to go? Even to mutest depths of solitude to bring God glory? Even to the least of these? How small of a position would be too small? How big of an audience would be too big to hear the Good News of the God who redeems a people by the shedding of His own blood?
I am familiar with shame. It’s long whispered to me. I’m of Eve. My voice is weak. I’ve done it all wrong. Shame tells me God’s righteousness isn’t enough. But it is. Isn’t He all we have to proclaim? If we paint, let it be that the strokes marvel at and reflect Creator. If we build, let it be that our work reflects our capacity for God.
I believe that women will be free in the church to use their gifts as they’ve been granted only when we begin to aim for the gospel. When Kingdom comes, there will be no shame.
original image here
Yes! Amber, you make me wanta shout from the rooftops. I’m so thankful for my marriage, where in the last year, we’ve ventured out into the great unknown, which looks alot like Jesus {alone} is our Priest {not only in the Body, but in our marriage as well}. Oh the freedom and fear of it!
Oh yes, Tammy, the freedom and the fear. It’s like leaning into the wind to keep you from falling off a cliff! That’s how I feel.
I really needed to hear these words today. Thank you.
love you, friend.
Beautiful, important post. I remember knowing back in my twenties that God had called me to speak. But that was way back when, and I didn’t understand because I wasn’t allowed to do so, except to women only or small children.
THank you, Mary.
Beautiful. Thank you.x
Yes – to those who do feminism by whispering and serving excellently. Yes to that boldness of fixing our eyes on Jesus and proclaiming Him, His kingdom, His goodness.
This post reminded me of that privilege and made my heart glad.
These are the words that are ringing in my head at the end of this post:
5.
His only righteousness I show,
his saving truth proclaim;
’tis all my business here below
to cry, “Behold the Lamb!”
5.
Happy, if with my latest breath
I may but gasp his name,
preach him to all and cry in death,
“Behold, behold the Lamb!”
I love the way you cry ‘behold the Lamb’ in your various media.
chills. I love that, Tanya. Yes, behold the lamb.
Yea and amen, dear Amber. This is at the heart of it all. Sadly, the word ‘feminism’ has taken on a dark aura that it does not fully deserve, at least in its classical definition and understanding. I generally avoid the label, but I am a woman in ministry and know that is exactly where I’ve been called and gifted to be. The gifts are for the body, however, the WHOLE body. And you know what? When women and men serve and lead the church together, everyone feels the wholeness of that. Together, we reflect the imago dei. Together, we fulfill the prophecy of Joel. Together, we point people, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to the reality of the Triune God who gives good gifts to ALL humankind.
It’s still so hard for me, Diane, but I want to follow. I’m asking everyday that he’ll teach me how.
Diana,
Thank you for wrapping concise and precise words around what I was thinking as I read this thoughtful, wonderful post.
You also have that depth of experience to speak this truth with an authority I don’t have.
Amber, as you know, God delights in you.
No words, my heart-friend. Thankful, bowed low, Aslan is on the move.
He is indeed.
“The only women who have given me glimpses of freedom in my calling are the ones surrendered and focused on the one thing–not their rights, but on the righteousness of God.”
Amber! That line! That’s it! In just a few words, you’ve said so much, and this is the thing where the hair on my neck has stood up–when women are focused on their rights (however they feel led to exercise their gifts) rather than the gospel.
SO simple, but until I read it Just Like That, I hadn’t been able to articulate a feeling.
You’re hitting your stride…the more you’re willing to surrender, the more He’s stepping in. Mercy.
xo
Thank you so so so much, Robin.
love. love. love
amen.
Anointed words. He is so good! -K
Excellent. I grew up in a church that was fine with female pastors. The church I attended for four years as an adult had a different view. I just wrote about my experience yesterday, in fact. I resisted choosing a side in order to avoid a conflict with what they claimed was clear truth. It was never clear to me and after I learned more about how the church treats women, as well as other experiences in my life, I came to the conclusion that the church needs more than privileged males leading it. The Kingdom’s focus is Christ and His great freedom!
“If we build, let it be that our work reflects our capacity for God.”
When I was younger, there was a woman in our church who spoke over the men, who publicly rebuked them and stood up to give her “word” instead of allowing her own husband – one of the church elders – to speak. I cringed, because I too had a gift of prophecy, one borne out more easily through the music I haven’t really touched since we stopped going to church, but I would never have dishonored my fellow believers in the way she did, pridefully speaking out my “better” doctrine, even to the point of interrupting the men she could have deeply honored.
I DO believe God calls women to speak for Him – He has called me, and while I’m tongue-tied now, I know that there is a time for a Deborah, and a time for a Jael, and that men of God have nothing to fear from strong women of God, so long as you have said here, the Gospel is our aim and Christ is our head.
This gave me chills, your heart for Him, your heart for Gospel. When you speak, you are worth listening to, and silence has made that more evident. There is no shame – only honor for one another, and we women, we’re good at honoring, because we know how broken we are. All this is Spirit-led, all this has to be Him, but when He leads, as He leads… so much power. Humility and shame – they’re not the same.
Fanny pat…this is AWESOME stuff.
You’re awesome. Thanks for keeping the main thing the main thing.
I grew up in a branch of Lutheranism that ordains women, but I didn’t know of women in ministry until I went off to college. If I had only seen women actually preaching when I was a kid, it would not have taken me four different colleges and as many different declarations of my major to finally discover my own path to ministry. Seeing living, breathing women actually live and breath Gospel is what showed me that women belonged in ministry and confirmed my call.
The thing that strikes me so much about this – is that it is so hard to change what has been ingrained in you/ us – from our cultures. I didn’t even know that women ‘were’n't supposed to be in church leadership or speaking from the pulpit’ until I moved to America. It astounded me – a college educated, brought up and stayed in the church woman certainly has had her eyes opened to a lot of cultural things. I recently read ‘Powerful and Free Confronting the Glass Ceiling for Women in the Church’ by Danny Silk (Bethel Church, Redding, CA) and I highly recommend it.
Amber, I’m following you around with all these posts. I’m telling you, you are on to something and YES Christine Caine is so inspiring. After your post I was thinking of her and how if nothing else, she proves that a woman can and should preach because PREACH she can! I heard her at Catalyst a few years back and was blown away!
Well, first, I’m a Complementarian, to get that out of the way.
Second, yes, whatever our beliefs on issues such as these, the gospel must always be central, and God’s glory be our goal.
That said, I feel that this issue is one that has been blown out of proportion on both sides of the fence. On the Complementarian side, out of reaction to “feminism” however you want to label it, we stress that women can’t teach AT ALL, or at least that’s what people hear. On the Egalitarian side, I seem to hear that women should be allowed to teach ANYONE.
The last I checked, Paul said women were not to teach or have authority over A MAN. So, women teaching women, go for it. How women teaching children and at what point that becomes “teaching men” is for someone far more intelligent than I to discern.
The point is this, God may very well have gifted you for preaching, but not opened up ALL doors for preaching. At my previous churches, some of the women who have taught at conferences and other women’s studies could not only teach well, but they could preach with the best of them (I was the sound guy). However, that doesn’t mean that preaching on Sunday morning or to a mixed congregation was open to them. Certain conference sessions where there were panels and such were a different story, and I’ve seen Mark Driscoll bring his wife on stage to offer female perspectives on issues so that both men and women could benefit from the understanding, but that’s obviously different than preaching or teaching in the sense Paul was referring.
I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE your gospel-centered approach to this. Really. It was absolutely a breath of fresh air surrounding this topic.
Grace and peace.
I only know I’ve been called and I hope I never cause a man to stumble. I just have a few questions, and they are honest to goodness questions – not my being a goober.
What do you mean by authority, like a woman shouldn’t tell you what to do? or speak the truth to you?
I do wonder if you’ve ever listened to Christine Caine preach? I wonder, brother, if the spirit in her wouldn’t light a fire under you. If it did, would the authority be coming from Christine or would it be from the Spirit of the living God?
Haha, the definition of authority in this context really is something I have been wrestling to define…not my understanding of authority, but what Paul’s understanding was. For now, my understanding is the leadership of the local church, and the preaching and teaching to mixed congregations. Hopefully, I’ll be able to work that out more sooner than later.
That said, I have many female friends whose voices in my life are invaluable and treasured. I have a meeting with my groups pastor this weekend because I feel pressed to lead a group but feel that, at this stage in my life, an all guys group would be lacking the female perspective which is vital for balance. And I love reading Lore Ferguson’s blog. She communicates truth so deeply and compassionately that it makes me rethink how I would do so. But they are all peers. As none of them are my wife, I’m not their head or leader in that sense, so we speak into each other’s lives as peers, as equals. So, I’m not denying the importance of a woman’s perspective and insight. That’s a big part of what “Complementarian” means, lol.
That’s a different role than my campus pastor coming to me and saying “I have a word from God,” and me needing to obey that word. And yes, he’s done that with people before, though not with me.
No, I haven’t heard Christine Caine preach. And I have no reason to doubt that God has gifted her to preach. Even if I had heard her, it would most likely have been via podcast or a conference. That still wouldn’t put her in a position of spiritual authority though. I listen to John Piper, Mark Driscoll, David Platt, etc., but they aren’t my spiritual authority either. Right now, Matt Chandler is, on a large scale, and the Dallas campus pastors on a smaller scale. They have been the ones entrusted by God to lead The Village, and myself as a member, down the path God wants us to go. As such, there have been times where I have heard these other pastors preach and teach something that my heart knows rings true, but I’ve felt the freedom to not act on it based on where God is taking me at The Village. Most of this is just a timing issue, not an issue of principle.
The other thing I feel is important is recognizing that even though God may gift someone to do certain things, that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily the prescriptive method the Bible teaches. Here’s what I mean, we see in Scripture God raising up at least one prophetess and one deaconess. So, obviously God gifted them to fill these roles and spoke through them. But, I see the rest of Scripture saying that men are supposed to lead the church, with Christ leading the men. So, this makes me admit that these instances are descriptive, God did this, even though they aren’t prescriptive, the way things should be ideally.
As to the “Why?” behind God doing that, I have no idea. I’ll answer that as soon as I can answer why God would create a world with the cross as part of the plan. But I do know that even in this, He is good for ordering things this way. And honestly, sometimes it drives me nuts that it’s ordered this way, but Scripture compels me to work through that in faith.
I like you, Don. That’s what I know. This is a daggum can of worms, huh? That’s why at the end of the day, don’t give me complementarianism or egalitarianism. Give me Jesus. We don’t have time for anything else.
Haha, I think a can of worms puts it mildly. That’s why I usually try to stay out of it, lol. I believe truth is worth fighting for, and solid Theology worth defending and articulating, but too often it just turns into the very graceless, pointless bickering we were admonished to avoid.
Woman, here’s what I know: You and all these words you breathe, they light a fire under ME. Even when you aren’t trying. “Give me Jesus. We don’t have time for anything else.” I may just hop on over to Kustom Thrills up the block and get this tattooed on my arm tomorrow.