Women, The Church and Leadership

This is a topic I have been thinking to write about for quite some time, but have never got around to...

For me in all truth the question is a bit of a waste of time, there are numerous accounts in the bible that suggest that women are aloud to teach and are equal to men and all that sort of stuff ... (see for example Gal 3:28)... But it seem to be a bit of a problem for a lot of the church, mainly due to 2 or 3 passages by the apostle Paul. I am one of those people that believe that if we are to look at the context that Paul was writing into that we can understand what he is saying a lot better, I know that many Christians out there see this as a cop out, but have you ever noticed how easy it is to put someone off side when you write them a letter or more often e-mail and they take it the wrong way, because they did not understand the spirit that you wrote it in? - well, context is the same sort of thing... anyway lets not get into a lesson on exegesis, lets just accept that I believe that women should be in leadership in the church.

After saying that, let me now say that a lot of the women who are in leadership in the church should not be in leadership (but then neither should many of the men). Jesus was a big teacher of the first being last, the last first and of servant leadership (washing feet etc.). The sort of leaders that Jesus wanted were leaders who were there for the good of others, not for their own glory or prestige. I believe that we should respect and honor those that the Lord has put in charge of leading the church, but if these leaders expect or demand such respect, I do not think that the Lord has truly put them in leadership...

In a world of women's liberation and a church that tries to suppress female leadership, the sort of women who make it to leadership positions (I talk in generalisations as there are many truly humble and anointed women leaders who I have met), are the sort of women that have had to fight tooth and nail to gain their position. They have had to assert themselves and prove themselves as being professional, great orators etc etc. These sort of women do not understand servant leadership and they certainly would not wash the feet of their congregation (after all that's servants work, and women are not servants!).

It is a shame that the church has put so much pressure on women, that many of those who have the will to stick to their beliefs are those who want to prove a point and therefore forfeit their right to be leaders in the church (according to the servant leadership model), but then if we use the same yard stick to measure male leadership, I'm sure that many of men would fail too...

The question should not be Male or Female, the question should be about motivation... Prestige or Servanthood!!

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CHARGE!!!!.... What? Which way???

Today, I went back to my old, old church, one that I left because of many reasons, but amongst the strongest was that I could not find a sense of purpose there. 5 or 6 years down the track, I have found purpose, and whilst praying one morning, I got struck with the need to go back to that church for a time, to get my attitude right with the church and to see that even if I disagree with the form, Christ is still at work in it. I am not going to go into the details of my visit, there is still a lot of work for God to do in my life before my attitude is right and I don’t want to ruin it by bitching here.

What I did want to blog about was a bit of a question that came out of today’s sermon. In the sort of church that I have belonged to for the past 5 or so years I probably could have bounced this idea around a bit with everyone, but I just didn’t feel right standing up and saying “ahhhh… excuse me….?”

The sermon in a round about way was sort of about being a warrior for God, and being part of an Army of God, it revolved around reading the bible and being prepared and fighting like your life depended on it (the female preacher told us that we were not allowed to fight like girls). Anyway, the question that came out of this was what are we an army for? Where or what is our battle ground, our front line? This question was never really touched on… There was talk about personal battles, like when you feel the devil attacking you personally (your self esteem or something) or your family (your teenage kid might be getting into sex, drugs or God forbid Rock and/or Roll)… but those are personal battles, and yes they are serious, and yes we need to fight them, and yes we need God’s help and the Word to deal with them. But I got this kind of picture in my mind of a person in an army walking along to battle, in full armour, kind of like how the Roman legions did, complaining about how rough the road ahead is. Complaining about how there was a log in the road ahead and how he had to climb over it, or the cliff he had to scale to get to the battle ground, and when he finally got to the battle ground saying “well that’s it I’m stuffed, I fought my battle getting here… you chaps can do the rest…”

I think that what the preacher today was suggesting was that we are an army, that we do have to fight together, that there is a battle to which we are all called to fight. But the battle was not named, and I don’t feel like the battle was ever really named in the years that I was there either, only the personal battles, and the threat of some nebulous future threat. I wonder, if the reason for this is because of the user friendly approach of so many western churches, the reality of what it means to be in this army, the reality of what the war is, or what we have to give up or go through to fight in this army is too confronting. Maybe if these people were asked to count the cost of going to war they would rather run and hide, it’s a lot easier to pump people up, to let them know that in Christ they are mighty warriors, to let them know how marvellous their armour is , than to start to train them in the art of warfare, of tactics, of knowing their enemy…

By this point you probably have noticed that I have not named the battle front either… the battle is to further the Kingdom of God (“thy Kingdom come…”) to make disciples of all nations (not converts, disciples)… to love your enemy (even the Muslim extremist terrorists?... surely not?)… to feed the hungry… in a nut shell to stand in direct opposition to the works of the enemy, it is a warfare of LOVE, but the enemy fights back with HATE, he is blood thirsty and vile and that is why we need the armour of God… that is why we need to be a unified army!!