The Church and My Unbiblical View of Women

“So what is your stance on women in leadership in church?” she asked. “I am the CEO of an international company and I have a real problem with being able to lead people around the world and then being told in the church that my leadership is not welcome. And you’re planning to plant a church with a group who typically only lets men lead.”

“I don’t know. I just don’t think that is the hill I’m supposed to die on. I want to make it about Jesus. He’s the hill I want to die on.” That was my response 8 years ago when I was asking my friend to invest financially in this church we were dreaming of but had not even moved to Columbus to start yet.

Truth be told I had strong convictions on this topic. But, if I shared those, I knew they would have negative consequences to whether my friend would feel like City Campus Church was a place she could invest in. I did not want to leave hundreds or thousands of dollars on the table that could help us start this new work, so I categorized it as a secondary hill.

Those strong convictions are that the biblical ethos and instruction is that men and women were both loved by God, but that by God’s design men and women were wired to fulfill different roles in the church. A theological separate but equal, if you will. The fancy scrabble word for this is Complementarian. Men and women were largely the same in God’s eyes, but fulfilled different roles that complemented each other.

In my mind, you could not remain true to the word of God without upholding this view. Women shouldn’t lead the church, preach in the church, serve as elder over the church. And I had an arsenal of texts and thinking that supported my convictions. (1 Corinthians 14:33-35, 1 Timothy 2:12, 1 Timothy 3:1-7, Titus 1:5-9, Ephesians 5:21-33.)

And think about it. Jesus picked 12 disciples. Hand selected. All men. The Levitical priesthood from the older testament? All men.

Instructions for elders in the church were explicit in one place, the husband of one wife. So, pretty clear if we take the Bible seriously…Leadership is most often, most godly and most effectively male.

And experientially, the few women I’d experienced in leadership roles in the church spent most of their time defending why they should have a seat at the table rather than centering on why Jesus was such good news. They seemed to spend their time defending their calling rather than living in light of and with the authority of their calling.

It just confirmed in my mind that they were out of step with God’s design for leadership and church.

And don’t even get me started on the dangers and pitfalls of men and women leading together. That’s why Billy Graham famously would not even get on an elevator alone with a woman and infamously why Bill Hybels became a cautionary tale of the #churchtoo movement. He reportedly had inappropriate relationship with women who were on staff with him.

And so I linked arms with like minded pastor celebrities, guys who got paraded on stage in front of the masses at conferences and who held to this complementarian worldview that I held to.

And then something happened.

I kid you not it was a completely innocent thing. I was doing what I was supposed to do as a Christian. I was reading my Bible. Preaching through Luke and then through Acts. And the more I studied, the more disorienting everything became.

Luke began his origins story with a woman struggling with infertility named Elizabeth. Then jumped to a young woman named Mary and the ones who speak and act and pray and praise in the origin stories of Luke are these women and an angel. Interestingly the one guy who does speak does so without faith and the Almighty hits the mute button on him until everything God promised would happen happens. It was men who were to be silent as this new movement of God was birthed.

Then it jumped to poor and marginalized keepers of the sheep. Then the old, widowed and largely forgotten ones in Simeon and Anna. And it shocked my system a little bit. But I could certainly justify it and explain it. These were exceptions, not the rule. After all, these women did faithful things but they were not leading over men. So I continued to read Luke and then Acts with the lens I had always had. But it got increasingly complicated to read the Scriptures and preserve that lens. The first miracles in Luke are a leper, a paralytic and a sick mother-in-law. Not exactly a power play to garner a following and build a platform. Exactly what was Jesus’ good news?

Well he seemed to answer that question. Luke 4. He heads to synagogue, grabs the scroll of Isaiah and says “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Good news, freedom, sight, favor to the least the last the lambasted and the lost.

And the Scriptures started jumping off the page for me like I was reading it for the first time. The widow and the sinful woman in Luke 7, the dead girl and the sick woman in Luke 8, the women who funded Jesus’ ministry and followed him (mentioned by name-Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Susanna and many others also in Luke 8), Mary and Martha in Luke 10, the crippled woman in Luke 12, persistent widows, generous widows, women as the last at the cross and the first at the tomb, the very first Easter message of Resurrection, given by a woman.

And it continued in Acts. And these corrective lenses I was seeing the Scriptures through came to a head with a revisit to Genesis of all places. In re-reading the origins story of Genesis 1-2, it was interesting to see that male and female, He created them in His own image and that this creation was very good. The picture in Eden is one of MUTUALITY and ONENESS, both with God and between man and woman. They occupied the same space, shared the same world and were deeply connected feeling seen, safe and satisfied in the garden.

Then Genesis 3. Rebellion. Sin. Fallenness. And the result of that is that the Mutuality and Oneness are replaced with HIERARCHY and OTHERNESS. Hierarchy, "the man shall rule over the woman" and banishment from the garden and from oneness with God. Otherness, distinct punishments for the man, the woman (and the serpent).

This is at the root of the fallen world ever since isn’t it? Hierarchy. Who has power? How does one obtain power? Sustain power? Utilize power? Increase in power? Otherness. Who is in? Who is out? What divides us, differentiates us, distinguishes us? Winners and losers. Chosen and not chosen.

And then Jesus stands up in a synagogue and unrolls that scroll and says Good News, freedom, sight and favor have arrived.

And he heals who he heals, hangs out with who he hangs out with and loves who he loves.

Jesus Christ is God’s action to begin the RETURN to MUTUALITY and ONENESS. He goes after hierarchy. He confronts otherness. He continually provokes people toward considering there is more room at the table than their lenses have permitted to this point. The leper can belong. The paralytic can belong. Yes even your mother-in-law can belong.

And then Acts 2. Jesus has gone away, ascended to be with the Father and tells the disciples to wait for the Helper that is coming. That Helper, the Holy Spirit arrives and some crazy and powerful stuff happens and all the on-lookers are trying to get a clear grasp and explanation of what the flip is going on and Peter stands up in front of all those assembled and gives the first sermon of the church (if you don’t count Mary’s announcement that Jesus was no longer in the tomb as a sermon).

And Peter, much like Jesus, quotes the Hebrew Bible. This time Joel. Don’t miss this! It’s Peter’s debut in leading this new thing called Church and he quotes Joel saying,

“In the last days, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, (God will use male and female to advance His kingdom), your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams (God will use young and old to advance his kingdom), even on my slaves, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit(God will use slave and free and again emphasizes both male and female to advance His kingdom)…And EVERYONE who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” (Parenthesis and All Caps are my commentary/emphasis.)

Peter is telling this newly formed church that the road back to MUTUALITY and ONENESS and back to Eden and Shalom was begun by Jesus and was to be fulfilled by His bride the Church.

And this fundamentally is what the Good News is all about. That we would all be restored mutually to the place where God’s image was equally on display on each of us and that there would be a level of connectedness with each other where we could be seen, safe and satisfied in relationship with each other as humans and with our creator, God.

And the crisis of belief for me was formulated around one central question: Are we in a post-fall world or a post-Pentecost world?

If it is the former, then hierarchy and otherness is the operating system we are designed for. We need the structure. We need the control. We need the order that is created when certain people have power and authority. There will inevitably be some otherness. Some us and them. But that’s just the nature of things in a fallen and broken place.

But if it is the latter, then, wow do I have to do some major re-alignment. Can I be a part of a church that says women are limited in what they can offer not because of skills and gifting but simply because of anatomy? Can I live in a community of privilege that mostly resembles me, behaves like me, has income like me and insulates from others who don’t look like me, are ‘sketchier’ than me, and don’t behave like me? If Jesus is my north star and mutuality and oneness are truly His guiding maxims for a return to Eden, then what does this mean for how I engage my city, the friends I have, the church I am part of?

This is the tension I am squarely in right now. I’ve realized that all my seminary books and pastors I’ve listened to and followed are white, educated men. It is seemingly one voice of power at the top of the hierarchy and I can no longer in good conscience or even in good faith believe that this is the good news Jesus announced in Luke 4, lived out and embodied, then ultimately gave his life for.

I’ve watched a number of people leave C3 as we have gone through this process of wrestling with the Scriptures and discerning what the wise counsel for the church is, as we have installed both male and female elders and unleashed women to lead Missional Communities and empowered women to preach.

They have strong convictions that the lens which they read and believe Scripture (the same lens I am deeply familiar with and deeply held as true) is the only way to really understand and align ourselves to the Bible. They have made strong, presumptuous and sometimes hurtful statements about how I no longer believe and live out the Scriptures or have strayed from orthodoxy.

I understand where they are coming from. But I have dipped my toes into the world that is post-Pentecost rather than post-Fall and it has felt immensely freeing and has led me to experience God and His Word in profoundly beautiful ways.

And I have begun to be formed deeply by the teaching and wisdom of women who are richly following Jesus and living out their calling as authors and preachers, pastors and prophets.

There is more to say. So a part two will come about what to do with “that passage” and with Paul and with church tradition and elders and pastors.

Suffice it to say for part one, this is no longer a hill I am avoiding in order to fix my eyes on Jesus. I believe now that this is precisely the hill of Calvary that Jesus gave his life on. To make us one.

As for that friend who I pitched on investing in C3? She took a higher road than me and invested in this church and kept us rolling despite our theological disagreement. She owned mutuality and oneness and chose Good News even when I would not. Might be time for me to drop her a note.

“May the church be unleashed from its traditions that have denied more than half its members the full use of the gifts God himself may have poured out by His spirit.”