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I believe that a woman should be able to preach. She should encouraged to use whatever gifts God has given her. If she has been given the gifts to be a senior pastor, then she should be encouraged to take up that role.

That said, I still believe in gender roles. These often come in the form of “generalizations” or “stereotypes” such as, “Men are strong,” “Women are nurturing…” etc. A lady named JB commented on a blog that when we relate passivity to being “emasculated” we are relating passivity to being feminine and that she finds that stereotype to be offensive. She writes, “As woman, I’m offended by those who portray passivity as feminine, and strength and courage as masculine. And who imply that there can be no worse ridicule than to compare someone to me: one without “a pair”. Or to those who imply that strong women are too masculine. What, is this grade school?”

She is falling into the classic trap of “don’t stereotype or categorize me.” I guess this goes back to the postmodern thingy. “Don’t metanarrative me.” “Deconstruct the binary of gender!”

Without some sort of categorizations or generalizations, there is absolutely no organization and society will not be able to function. I “stereotype” myself all the time. I tell others that I am competent and responsible. Does that mean that I am always competent and responsible? No. But I am saying that in “general” I am competent and responsible. In order for there to be any type of communication or reasoning, there has to be a certain degree of generalization. Am I saying that others cannot be competent or responsible? No.

There are differences between men and women. These are differences that one cannot avoid. Why are men characterized as strong and courageous and not women? Because men have physically stronger bodies and therefore have traditionally taken a fighting role. Women have been characterized as nurturing because they can physically nurse and nurture a child in ways that a man physically cannot do.

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Made for Mutuality : Jesus Creed Why is it awesome? Scot Mcknight is the blogger/theologian and he writes about women in ministry in that post. He’s a man. That’s why he’s awesome. I love it when men take up the egalitarian banner and fight for women who are not being allowed to exercise certain gifts in church.

This post written awhile ago is also awesome for the same reason. Ben Witherington is also a blogger/theologian who is an egalitarian and argues for that position through biblical exegesis. Read the comments for a very interesting discussion.

NT Wright also has an article on women in ministry arguing for the egalitarian point of view.

I love it when men come out to take on this issue.

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I don’t know if you guys have seen this… but talk about interpreting the bible in weird ways.

Youtube video on preacher preaching about “pisseth against the wall.”

He’s serious. He is seriously preaching a real sermon in a real church about how to be a man…

Well since it’s a hot topic… minus well post about the women in ministry issue.

Weakness of the complementarian view:

Honestly, the biblical exegesis I’ve read that supports the complementarian view is very weak. I mean, you have a guy like John Piper writing that one of the reasons why he stands against women teaching is ,”because the sense seems plain to me and not terribly complicated in 1 Timothy 2:12-13.” I really cannot believe a guy who is supposed to be so respected like John Piper could possibly say that it’s plain to him and not terribly complicated. That is so sad. It seems to me that complementarians like to view the bible at “face value” and even the in depth exegesis is merely attempting to defend reading the passages at face value.

Strength of the complementarian view:

Roles of course. Of course there are roles. Complementarians put this at the crux of the definition of complementarian. I think most people have an aversion to seeing male and female as completely the same. They’re not. Egalitarians say that they don’t deny the differences between men and women, but complementarians highlight and give meaning to the differences while egalitarians fail to give any significant meaning to the differences in sex. If God created sex and sex is such a big part of our lives and culture, surely sex has significant meaning.

Of course, I believe the issue of roles is different from the issue of women in ministry. They are related, but they are still different.

Ok let me try to make some conclusions about the guys and church thing, though really this is a problem that is not solved in my mind.

In order to determine why young men are not coming to church I think we need to compare church with the things that young men are attracted to.  What do men like to invest their lives in?  What do they spend most of their time doing?

Here’s a list of some of the things I think they like to do:

sports
entrepreneurial business
video games
sex
riskier outdoor activities

I didn’t include things that I think both sexes enjoy equally.  I think one thing that all of these things have in common is competition.  I don’t know of this is true, but its just a weak hypothesis.  Perhaps the church lacks any competitive drive.  Perhaps guys view church as stagnant and going nowhere.  It doesn’t compete against anything.  It doesn’t do anything really.  You sit there and develop yourself, develop relationships, but you don’t “accomplish” anything.

What about the mission field you say.  Don’t you need to accomplish things on the mission field.  Isn’t the mission field risky.  Isn’t it competitive?  First of all, I don’t think the mission field is competitive in a concrete way.  Second I think the mission field is so far removed from the thoughts of an ordinary unchurched male that it can’t even begin to become a thought until they are spiritually developed.

In a sense some of this is similar to what Eldredge says in Wild At Heart.  But Wild At Heart is more on a personal level.  Even at a personal level I don’t necessarily know if his solutions would really work.  But now I want to look at this from the point of view of the church.  As a church what can we do?  Well I suppose this still doesn’t come up with any conclusion.  First of all my hypothesis is shakey because its just based on flimsy generalizations.  Second of all, even if my hypothesis were true, isn’t competition against the spirit of the gospel?  How can we introduce more “risk” into the church without offending everyone in the church?  Does the church even need to be more risky?  Does it even glorify God?

I’ve been thinking about this off and on for awhile since I read Wild at Heart, but haven’t really come to a conclusion.  Whatever you may think of Wild at Heart, I think it does do one thing.  It brings to our attention a problem.  Guys in general don’t really like church.  Now that wouldn’t be a problem, except that generally church is the way we get to God.  Somehow I don’t believe that God loves women more than men.  Nor do I believe that the gospel is supposed to appeal to women more than men.

There are always exceptions to the rule, but generally from what I’ve observed, the more “spiritual” people are women.  If a guy is regarded as spiritual, he’s all of a sudden held up as the next pastor or something like that because spiritual men are so rare.

According to the Barna Group, “Churches have particularly alienated men. 55 percent of the un-churched are men. And only 38 percent of Americans who consider themselves “born again” are men.”

“The un-churched are also younger, at 38, than the median age of Americans, 43. Combining the information on age and gender, church demographics are seriously lacking in young and middle-aged men. The face of the American church in 2004 is the elderly woman. ”

Isn’t that interesting?  Young and middle aged men don’t like church, at least in America.  As a young man I find this really disturbing.  I think this is the issue Wild At Heart was supposed to address.  Does it have to do with the image of church as a safe place?  What can we do to change this?  How can we attract young men?