I posted this blog about a year ago when I was overseas, and it has been one of my most popular pieces so I thought I would re-post it today.

Have you ever dated someone who was perfect for you on paper, but you just couldn’t make the relationship work? Logically, they had everything that you were looking for in a spouse, but something was missing? You loved everything about them, but you weren’t in love with them? While it made sense in your head, there just wasn’t any chemistry.

Sometimes in the face of these situations, I would find myself telling others about how perfect the person was for me, but I would do so in the hopes of convincing myself. Deep down I knew that something was terribly wrong, but I thought that if I focused on all the things about him that were right and good, that the lack of attraction would simply go away.

This method never lasted very long, and soon the charade became apparent to everyone around me, including myself. In reality, a relationship that only works on paper is really no relationship at all.

Well I think that has happened to my relationship with God. On paper, it’s all there. I know all the right words to say, I pray, I do ministry, I disciple young women, and if you ask me why I believe the Gospel I can tell you without hesitation.

On paper, everything is perfect.

But all those things are starting to fall flat. This week I’ve been confronted with people who could be ostrasized by their families, or even killed, were they to profess faith in Christ. So when given the opportunity to share the Gospel with them, I’ve found myself hesitating. I have all the right answers to their questions and objections. I know the Scripture and apologetics like the back of my hand. So what is stopping me? One haunting question…

Is it worth it?

Is it worth it for these people to lose their families and friends all for the sake of changing to a better religion? Is it worth risking their lives, just to accept a more holistic worldview? On paper, it all makes sense to me. On paper, Christianity is the most logical understanding of humanity, the world, sin and God. But is having a correct worldview really worth the risk I’m asking them to take?

All week, my instincts have been telling me “no.” No it’s not worth risking all that, just to get someone to pray a prayer and believe the logic behind Christianity. It’s not worth taking their lives into their hands simply because someone presented them with a more compelling argument than that presented by Islam, Buddhism, or Hinduism. If all we’re about is proposing the best argument, the best way of life, the most convincing worldview, then I can’t sell that to people who could lose everything because of it.

And that is the mindset that results when we reduce our faith to mere words. Logic and apologetics are all good things, but they are not enough to move mountains, let alone hearts. They may be true, but they lack power.

In 1 Corinthians 2:4 Paul writes, “My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power.” Without the power of God infusing our hearts and our minds, without authentic and transformational experience of His presence in your life, your relationship with God will be just as exciting as a dating relationship that only works on paper. In your head, it all makes sense, but your heart just isn’t in it.

That is why my heart has been so hesitant to share the Gospel with those for whom it could mean culture alienation. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt the power of God in my life in a real, transformational way, so my words fall flat in the face of real risk. And when I did share the Gospel, I felt just like a girl trying to convince herself that her boyfriend is perfect for her, when deep down her heart wasn’t sure that was true.

As soon as I identified this issue in my heart, I started praying for an experience of God’s mighty power. And being the faithful God that He is, I have felt it in an undeniable way. Nothing huge and earth-shattering, at least not yet, but just enough to remember the power behind the words that I speak. Just enough to remind me that it IS worth the risk. That we don’t merely share the Gospel because it makes the most sense, but because it really is GOOD news. It is life and peace and freedom for all who believe. It is unity with God and everlasting life, a life that begins here and now amidst so much death and darkness.

The Gospel is all of those things, but even saying it now will mean nothing to my heart or yours if my words are not infused with the power of God’s Spirit. And that is only something that God can give. That said, we can never spread the Gospel apart from a total dependence upon Him. We may know how to turn a phrase or stage an argument, but if we are not experiencing God’s power then we will never convince others, let alone ourselves.

Are you experiencing God’s power right now? Does it light up your heart and mind, and compel you to go tell the world? If not, I urge you to pray that it does, because we should never be people of mere words. We should also be people of power.

Last month the New York Times ran an op-ed column that responded to some surprising findings about the happiness of the modern woman. In “Liberated and Unhappy,”Susan Etheridge reflected on the paper “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness,” written by economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers. In the course of their research, the authors found that in spite of all the advancements women have enjoyed over the years, male happiness has “inched up and female happiness has dropped.”

What is even more surprising about these findings is that they indicate the exact opposite of what feminists predicted. Writer and seminary professor Mary Kassian described this very discrepancy on her blog, explaining that feminist Betty Friedan “pointed her finger at the male-female relationship and theorized that it was to blame. If only woman could leave the traditional role of homemaker behind, be educated and participate in the workplace on the same basis as man, be free to express herself sexually without any restraints, and have society free her from the burden of bearing and caring for children, THEN she would be happy.”

It would seem that Friedan’s goals have now been realized. Women are reportedly “wealthier, healthier and better educated than they were 30 years ago.” But the results she anticipated are nowhere to be found. Why is this?

Etheridge weighs the various possibilities, but she comes to an interesting conclusion:

“All this ambiguity lends itself to broad-brush readings. A strict feminist and a stringent gender-role traditionalist alike will probably find vindication of their premises between the lines of Wolfers and Stevenson’s careful prose. The feminist will see evidence of a revolution interrupted, in which rising expectations are bumping against glass ceilings, breeding entirely justified resentments. The traditionalist will see evidence of a revolution gone awry, in which women have been pressured into lifestyles that run counter to their biological imperatives, and men have been liberated to embrace a piggish irresponsibility.

They should also be able to agree that the steady advance of single motherhood threatens the interests and happiness of women. Here the public-policy options are limited; some kind of social stigma is a necessity. But a new-model stigma shouldn’t (and couldn’t) look like the old sexism. There’s no necessary reason why feminists and cultural conservatives can’t join forces — in the same way that they made common cause during the pornography wars of the 1980s — behind a social revolution that ostracizes serial baby-daddies and trophy-wife collectors as thoroughly as the “fallen women” of a more patriarchal age.”

* To read the whole op-ed piece, click here.

On some level, Etheridge’s conclusions are not off-base. We do need to decrease the number of single mothers in our country, and we should be aware of the ways that a career can negatively affect one’s family–for both men and women.

But I fear that Etheridge is also guilty of making the same mistake as Friedan–addressing the symptoms instead of the cause. This cultural phenomenon of “If we fix this, then we’ll be happy” reminds me of a woman who is never quite satisfied with her body. She diets and loses weight, but she’s still not happy so she gets breast implants. Then she’s still not happy so she gets a nose. But still, she is not happy so she gets a facelift. And the cycle goes on. As she nips and tucks and nips and tucks, she fails to address the true reason for her unhappiness.

Feminism is guilty of doing the same. It has made promises that it cannot deliver. As Proverbs 13:12 tells us, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick,” and that is exactly what we have witnessed here. It is one thing to be slightly unhappy with your circumstances, but it is quite another to have your expectations elevated, only to be let down. That is when despair sets in.

We see this dynamic all the time in marriages–a wife marries a man thinking he’ll be her knight in shining armor. When she discovers he is just a human who cannot complete her, in steps bitterness and resentment. Feminism is like that slightly chubby husband who smells kind of funny and leaves the toilet seat up. He may not be a bad husband at all, but he’s not what you were dreaming of either.

All of that to say, the problem here is not what feminism has achieved–the problem is the motivation behind it. In many ways feminism has been a good thing for women–women are now educating themselves and doing things for the world that they were never able to do before. That is a good thing.

But the movement went awry when it became woman-centered. Like any other false idol, it promised a salvation that lies in Christ alone. And as all idols do, it guaranteed that women would be happy if we just served ourselves a bit more. Etheridge demonstrated this very point with her own recipe for on-going improvements to the feminist movement. It is an idol that will never be satisfied. It will always want more and more and more.

So while we shouldn’t ignore the legitimate needs of women, and we should seek to build a society based upon an equality of gender, race and class, we should do it for the glory of God, not our own happiness. As Kassian concluded,

“The real paradox about female happiness is that though she might try, woman will never be able to make herself happy. Nor will men make woman happy. Nor will children, career, prominence, possessions, lifestyle…nor anything else that woman might strive after. Apart from a right relationship with God through Jesus Christ as the rock-solid foundation of joy, woman will never find what she is looking for. Without a vibrant personal relationship with Christ, she will forever ask herself Friedan’s painful silent question – “Is this all?””

A couple months ago I had the privilege of sitting down for coffee with Carolyn McCulley, author, speaker, and founder of the documentary company Citygate Films. Carolyn is someone that I look up to in the realm of women’s ministry. She is a sharp and intelligent Christian woman whose unique work places her at the forefront of women’s ministry’s entrance into 21st century relevance. Her writing is intellectually engaging while also remaining spiritually sensitive and insightful.

This past year, Carolyn published a book entitled “Radical Womanhood: Feminine Faith in a Feminist World.” In this book she explores the three waves of feminism and Scripture’s pro-woman response to them. While I have not read the book myself (every time I’ve gone to stores to purchase it, it’s been sold out!) I follow her blog regularly and I am consistently challenged by her engagement of Scripture and culture.

With that in mind, what follows is an excerpt from her new book “Radical Womanhood.” It appears in a chapter entitled “The Mommy Wars” and it explores the development of the birth control movement, its effects on pro-life ideology, and its connection with a Gospel message that includes God on a cross. It is a moving read, and it is a caliber of historical research, cultural engagement and theological reflection that I hope to aspire to in my own ministry.

I pray you will be blessed and challenged by her words.

~~~~~~~~

“The Clogs and Destroyers of Civilization”

Margaret Sanger was the founder of the modern birth control movement and a vocal proponent of eugenics — the theory of race improvement that was the cornerstone of Nazi Germany. Sanger believed that all evils stemmed from large families, especially large families of those she deemed as unfit. As she wrote in her 1920 book, Woman and the New Race, “The most merciful thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.”3

I can’t even fathom saying such a thing, but Sanger’s personal history undoubtedly influenced her thinking. She was born in 1879 in Corning, New York, the sixth of eleven surviving children. Her father was a stonemason and a supporter of radical socialist causes. Sanger’s mother succumbed to tuberculosis at forty-nine. Sanger later said the strain of eighteen pregnancies was what broke her mother’s health. 4

Sanger went on to study nursing and married in 1902. Her first pregnancy was a difficult one that landed her in a sanitarium for her confinement and recovery. But she regained her health and gave birth to two more children. In 1910, she began to work as a midwife and home nurse on the Lower East Side of New York City. A year later, she joined a radical labor movement and participated in several labor strikes.

By 1912, Sanger began writing a series of articles on female sexuality and contraception in the socialist publication, The Call, in bold defiance of then-current laws against the dissemination of information on sexually transmitted diseases and contraception. Two years later, by then separated from her husband whom she would later divorce, she founded the monthly magazine, Woman Rebel, under the slogan, “No gods; no masters!”5 In 1914, she fled to Europe after she was indicted for violating U.S. postal obscenity laws. But two years later, having avoided imprisonment, she was back in the U.S. to open the nation’s first birth control clinic, in Brooklyn, New York. After ten days of operation, she was arrested and jailed. The trial made her a national figure, and it handed doctors the right to prescribe birth control advice.

In 1921, Sanger organized the American Birth Control League, which later became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. For Sanger, the birth control movement was founded on two goals: limiting the reproduction of the “unfit” and challenging Christian teaching by creating a “new morality.” She campaigned against women “with staggering rapidity” breeding “those numberless, undesired children who become the clogs and the destroyers of civilization.”6 Sanger’s scorched-earth writing left no one guessing about her views:

While unknowingly laying the foundations of tyrannies and providing the human tinder for racial conflagrations, woman was also unknowingly creating slums, filling asylums with insane, and institutions with other defectives. She was replenishing the ranks of the prostitutes, furnishing grist for the criminal courts and inmates for prisons. Had she planned deliberately to achieve this tragic total of human waste and misery, she could hardly have done it more effectively.7

[T]he most urgent problem to-day is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective. Possibly drastic and Spartan methods may be forced upon American society if it continues complacently to encourage the chance and chaotic breeding that has resulted from our stupid, cruel sentimentalism.8

She was equally as caustic about Christianity and the Bible’s teaching on sexuality:

Let it be realized that this creation of new sex ideals is a challenge to the church. Being a challenge to the church, it is also, in less degree, a challenge to the state. The woman who takes a fearless stand for the incoming sex ideals must expect to be assailed by reactionaries of every kind. Imperialists and exploiters will fight hardest in the open, but the ecclesiastic will fight longest in the dark. He understands the situation best of all; he knows what reaction he has to fear from the morals of women who have attained liberty. For, be it repeated, the church has always known and feared the spiritual potentialities of woman’s freedom.9

When women have raised the standards of sex ideals and purged the human mind of its unclean conception of sex, the fountain of the race will have been cleansed. Mothers will bring forth, in purity and in joy, a race that is morally and spiritually free.10

I think it’s safe to say that with the perspective of nearly a century of hindsight, we have hardly attained a cleansed human race that is morally and spiritually free. To expect this kind of salvation from women is unwise, unbiblical, and downright impossible. As we will see in a following chapter, women did not manage to raise the sex standard — in fact, third-wave feminism gave rise to the feminine “raunch culture” we live in today. Yet, Sanger was so confident about the fruits of birth control and the new race that she predicted exactly the opposite of what has come to pass:

When motherhood becomes the fruit of a deep yearning, not the result of ignorance or accident, its children will become the foundation of a new race. There will be no killing of babies in the womb by abortion, nor through neglect in foundling homes, nor will there be infanticide….

The relentless efforts of reactionary authority to suppress the message of birth control and of voluntary motherhood are futile. The powers of reaction cannot now prevent the feminine spirit from breaking its bonds. When the last fetter falls the evils that have resulted from the suppression of woman’s will to freedom will pass. Child slavery, prostitution, feeblemindedness, physical deterioration, hunger, oppression and war will disappear from the earth…. When the womb becomes fruitful through the desire of an aspiring love, another Newton will come forth to unlock further the secrets of the earth and the stars. There will come a Plato who will be understood, a Socrates who will drink no hemlock, and a Jesus who will not die upon the cross. (emphasis added)11

God forbid. God forbid!

I type that quote with tears on my cheeks. Without the cross, we are doomed. There is no hope of new heavens and a new earth, free from the effects of the fall, without the atonement of our sinless Savior. There is no hope for mercy to triumph over judgment unless it be at the foot of that cross. There is no hope for “child slavery, prostitution, feeblemindedness, physical deterioration, hunger, oppression and war to disappear from the earth” if the Father’s righteous anger against these terrible sins is not satisfied. Where would justice be in the universe if such sins go overlooked? No, on the contrary, our only hope is the cross! If Jesus had not been obedient to this plan of salvation, who could possibly be our mediator?

And who could possibly atone for the slaughter that eventually arose from this “new morality”? Only Jesus Christ, our Savior!

So let’s not get lost in a smokescreen. I don’t quibble with Sanger’s observation that numerous pregnancies can be very hard on a woman’s body or that poor families with many children can suffer tremendous financial hardship. But right observation does not always lead to right interpretation. Sanger saw poor health, poverty, sin, anger, abuse, and numerous other challenges and her interpretation was that the “unwanted” children were the root problem — or even that some people shouldn’t reproduce at all. Thus, she was able to make the outrageous statement that “the most merciful thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.” That is the farthest thing from mercy! But her thinking has influenced our culture. Therefore, contraception is not the true issue of contention. (Abortifacients, however, are. We need to clearly distinguish between prevention and abortion.) Understanding Sanger helps us to understand why children are now disposable — seen as anything ranging from inconveniences to parasites — instead of being received as gifts from God.

Margaret Sanger lived to see the development of the first birth control pill in 1960 — something she had worked toward. She died in 1966, the year the Johnson administration incorporated “family planning” into its foreign policy and domestic health and social welfare programs for the United States.12 Her life bridged the first and second waves of feminism, but her philosophies were the booster rocket for the most profound effects of second-wave feminism.

Of the myriad changes created by second-wave feminism, the most pronounced would be the movement’s unwavering commitment to abortion. This is where second-wave feminism parts most sharply with the first-wave, as 19th-century women’s rights activists were generally pro-life. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, for example, called abortion infanticide and wrote, “When we consider that women are treated as property, it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit.”13

Notes:
3. Margaret Sanger, Woman and the New Race (New York: Brentano’s, 1920), 63.
4. Deborah G. Felder, The 100 Most Influential Women of All Time (New York: Citadel Press, 1996), 12.
5. Ibid., 13.
6. Estelle Freedman, The Essential Feminist Reader (New York: Modern Library, 2007), 214.
7. Ibid., 213.
8. Margaret Sanger, The Pivot of Civilization (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2004), 15.
9. Woman and the New Race, 174.
10. Ibid., 185.
11. Ibid., 232–234.
12. Deborah G. Felder, The 100 Most Influential Women of All Time, 14.
13. Letter to Julia Ward Howe, October 16, 1873, recorded in Howe’s diary at Harvard University Library.

Ever since I got engaged I’ve gotten hooked on a show called “Bridezillas.” It’s one of those train-wreck type shows that you just can’t look away from, but I’ve also been watching it to keep my perspective on this whole wedding planning process in check. Whenever I find myself stressing over insignificant details like the color of the reception chairs or table card designs, I think of Bridezillas and it jolts me back to reality.

In case you’ve never seen the show, here’s a clip that will give you a good taste of what these bride are like. CRAzy!!!!!!!

(For the sake of the groom, I really hope that was staged….)

What’s especially interesting about the show is that each episode follows a specific and consistent plot line. The viewer follows the bride as she belittles her bridesmaids, treats her fiancé like dirt, and goes nuts over the tiniest of details. She is a living nightmare.

Yet in spite of these brides’ horrific personalities, the shows always ends the same. Magically, at the moment of the wedding ceremony the bride is transformed! As if her fairy godmother had flitted into the church and waved a wand about her, the bridezilla’s monstrous behavior is but a distant memory. While she walks down the aisle smiling sweetly, the narrator concludes that the Bridezilla has now “changed into a blushing, beautiful bride.”

It doesn’t matter that she almost called off the wedding the day before, or that she repeatedly told her fiancé how stupid he was, or that she forced her bridesmaids to gain weight since they weren’t allowed to look better than her. Without exception, the narrator always states some variation of that line–the Bridezilla is now a Princess Bride.

After awhile, this part of the show really got to me. I mean who are they fooling? Just because you slap a white dress on a girl and put a tiara on her head does not a lovely bride make. These women are absolute horrors and their fiancés should run for the hills! No spin on the situation can change that fact.

But here’s what really struck me about the whole thing–While I get so angry at the narrator for such a blatant misrepresentation of  the situation, for covering over the clear hypocrisy of the bride–promising to love and honor her husband after just having called him an idiot or a fat pig–I do not apply that same high standard of consistency and authenticity to myself.

When you think about it, Bridezillas is an illustration of the Christian life. We as Christians are the Bride of Christ. We get all dressed up and then step into the church with our best faces on. We sing songs to God, hold our hands high and take meticulous notes on the sermon.

But what were we doing just hours or days before walking into that church? Did we honor and respect our spiritual groom, or did we deny him with our words and actions? Maybe we failed to share the Gospel with a co-worker when given the chance because we were afraid of what she might think. Perhaps we gossiped about other Christians to make ourselves look better, all the while tearing down the Body of Christ. Or maybe we spent our money selfishly instead of giving of it generously.

Every day of every week we give our hearts to other lovers, the countless idols that have our true devotion. We are bridezilla Christians who fail to love, honor, and be faithful to our heavenly groom.

And while we live this life of marital infidelity to Christ, we put on a facade of purity and holiness. I am certainly guilty of this. As I walk through the doors of my church it’s as if I magically transform into “Perfect Christian.” I know just what to say and how to act. I praise God loudly and nod affirmations during the sermon. But oftentimes the image I project is about as authentic as a Bridezilla masquerading as a sweet and innocent wife-to-be. The show’s portrayal of her supposed “change” is a complete farce. And oftentimes so is mine.

While God does desire that we set aside time each week to gather in worship of Him, that time is not meant to be in contrast with the rest of our week. Nor is it a weekly spiritual pick-me-up. It is instead a natural continuation of of our every day lives, one of many ways that we praise and worship our Heavenly Father. Just one of many.

There is a reason why the Bible describes Christians as the Bride of Christ. The fresh and excited affection of a young bride is the exact image that Scripture intends to define the entire Christian life. On the day I get married, I will be enthralled with my fiancé. I will be eager and willing to give my whole self over to him, to love and respect him the rest of my life. And that is the type of love we are to embody every day of our lives–that of a bride who yearns to be united with her groom in unconditional, everlasting love. We aren’t fooling anyone if we play the part of a bride on Sunday morning, and then live as spiritual bridezillas every other day of the week.

MTV has come out with a new show that follows the lives of high school girls who are pregnant. The show is called “16 and Pregnant,” and the following trailer will give you a taste for what this mini-series has in store:

I watched the show for the first time last night, and I have really mixed feelings about it. If you only watch the first 30 minutes, it would almost seem like MTV is glamorizing the idea of teen pregnancy. All you see is young girls throwing baby showers and getting excited about how cute the baby will be.

In my opinion, that’s the last unrealistic message that MTV’s viewers need to hear. Lately the news has been peppered with stories of young girls who intentionally got pregnant for a myriad of reasons. My fiancé’s mother is a high school teacher with numerous pregnant students, and when I asked her why she thought it happened so frequently given the education schools are providing about safe sex, she replied, “Oh, they wanted it! A lot of these girls come from bad family situations where they don’t receive a lot of love and encouragement, so they think that if they have a baby then the baby will love them, or maybe they can get their boyfriend to stick around.”

That scenario is by no means true for all teens, but it is safe to say that when most young people make the fateful decision to have sex before they’re married, they’re not considering the weight of their actions. So is MTV feeding their naiveté?

Surprisingly, I don’t think so. I actually think there is some virtue to this show. (I can’t believe I just said that about MTV. Write it down, people!) First, if you hang on and watch the second half of the show, it follows the young mother after she has the child, and chronicles the hardships that she faces–her dying social life, her un-supportive boyfriend, sleepless nights and all. It’s a realistic look at how tough it can be to have a baby in high school, and it de-romanticizes any misconceptions young women might have about the process. It challenges young viewers to stop and weigh their actions.

But in addition to this strength, I can’t help but wonder if shows like this will de-stigmatize out-of-wedlock pregnancies. That is something the pro-life movement has been talking about doing for years–How do we talk about pregnancy in a way  that values life whenever it comes, and does not produce such crushing shame and hardship that women would rather get an abortion than face the world?

I think this show might serve as a positive step in this direction. While it does portray a realistic picture of teen pregnancy, and in a way that will hopefully educate young women about the consequences of their actions, it doesn’t do so in an armageddon kind of way–ie. THIS WILL END YOUR LIFE FOREVER! The show doesn’t treat babies as a curse upon humanity, but actually highlights some of the wonder of new life as well. While watching the show, I couldn’t help but swoon over how precious the little boy was, and you could see in the young mother’s eyes that she felt the same.

By chronicling the beauty AND the hardship of pregnancy, MTV strikes a careful balance between encouraging responsibility and also valuing life. From what I can tell, each of the girls featured in the show actually carried her pregnancy to term, so there is a subtext of life underlying the entire story line.

But perhaps I am being too optimistic. Anyone else have thoughts on this?

After having delineated the reasons that women’s ministry is on the decline, and then examining the reasons why we as the Church should be concerned, I am now going to explore some points of action on the part of the Body of Christ. This will not, however, be a formula, nor will it be a suggestion for church staffing policies. Women’s ministry is going to look different in different churches, not only because of theological variances but because of financial ones as well. In light of this diversity, I will instead offer several diagnostic questions to evaluate where you and your church lie on this issue.

But before I do this, I want to offer an opening definition of women’s ministry. I should have done this long before now, but it is important for evaluating where your church stands in regard to this particular ministry.  I would define women’s ministry as a function of the Body of Christ in which women are educated, equipped, and empowered to be disciples by other women. This function can play out in a variety of forms and is not necessarily limited to an official “women’s ministry division” of church life. There are plenty of different ways to accomplish this–the trick is in doing it effectively.

Having established this definition, you can implement it as you read through the following Women’s Ministry Diagnostics:

Diagnostic #1: If you are a church leader, are you providing women with the opportunities to use their gifts to the fullest?

As I quoted Ed Stetzer in my last blog entry, a large number of evangelical churches have comprehensive doctrinal positions on Biblical manhood and womanhood, but their beliefs fall short in one of two ways:

1. Churches only describe what women CAN’T do, without affirming the full extent of what women CAN do.

When I asked Stetzer about which churches do well in affirming women, he pointed me to Tim Keller’s church, Redeemer Presbyterian in New York. I researched Keller’s position and I found that while the office of elder is reserved for men, he goes on to say:

“Though the job of elder is a high calling, every believer is a “prophet, priest, and king”. All non-elders in the church must and can use their gifts in the church, whatever they are. In a nutshell, our position is this: whatever a non-ruling elder male can do in the church, a woman can do….Thus, women at Redeemer will be free to use all the gifts, privately and publicly. There are no restrictions on ministry at all.”

* To read Keller’s entire essay, click here.

I agree with Stetzer that this is indeed a strong and affirming stance for women in ministry. However this leads me to the second point of doctrinal break-down, which is follow through:

2. Churches do not put their doctrine into practice. 

There are plenty of evangelical pastors who would whole-heartedly agree with Keller’s stance. And the ones who don’t completely agree are probably not all that far off from his position. There aren’t many church leaders around anymore who would out-right deny that women should serve in some form of a ministerial role. The problem is that hypothetical belief looks very different from reality.

I have talked with numerous pastors who admit that they don’t have any doctrinal objections to a woman teaching or preaching in various church capacities or services. But has it ever actually happened? No. What’s more, church staffing often fails to reflect the equality of gifts outlined in their doctrinal positions. Women are considered to have equal gifts in ministry, but few churches will actually hire them to do so.

Now the real problem here is not the furthering of women’s “rights” in the Church or some other woman-centered agenda. What’s at stake here is the integrity of one’s theology and ecclesiology. (For you non-seminarians out there, “ecclesiology” refers to one’s view/understanding of the Church)

Ecclesiologically speaking, if you believe that God gives His disciples specific gifts to be used for the edification of the Body of Christ, and that God gives those gifts deliberately and with a purpose for expanding His Kingdom and glorifying His Name, then passive affirmation of these truths is not enough. Inherent in the above statement is action. God expects us to be using our gifts, so if we have designed a system that only enables some disciples to use their gifts while preventing others from doing the same, then we are not fulfilling our call to be the Body of Christ.

Theologically speaking, many evangelicals ascribe to a Complementarian doctrine that teaches men and women complement one another in their gifts. That said, if we do not actually allow women into positions in which their gifts are able to complement men, then what results is a lop-sided church leadership that is not only failing to draw on the diversity of gifts at its disposal, but fails to reflect the Trinitarian model of leadership provided for us in the person of God.

As I said, I will not prescribe what this looks like for individual churches, but I ask you to take a hard look at your church in this respect. Are you truly utilizing the gifts of everyone in the Body, or just some?  What would it look like to have more diversity of gifts on your church leadership and staff? And more importantly, how can you build a church leadership team that reflects the heavenly throng awaiting you in eternity?

Diagnostic #2: If you are a Christian woman, how are you honing your gifts for the glory of God?

While it is important to address the Church’s role in affirming the gifts of women, women must also pursue their gifts in Scriptural, God-honoring ways. We frequently fall short of this goal in one of 2 ways:

1. Women hone their gifts for the wrong reason.

For many of you reading this, you are very frustrated right now. You have gone to seminary, you have received an M.Div. and you are ready to serve. Unfortunately, you can’t find a job because you don’t want to be a children’s minister or counselor. I can relate.

In response to this frustration, it’s tempting to try and force your way into the church. You push and push and push, or complain and complain about how unfair it feels, hoping that someone will hear you.

But when you find your heart straying into a direction of bitterness, beware! A tactic of force or coercion that results from anger and frustration is not only ineffective, but it is also not of God. While it is important for evangelical woman to raise concerns about the health of the Church in relation to women’s ministry, we do so FOR THE GLORY OF GOD, not women. This must always be our motivation.

2. Women are not honing their gifts.

A theology of male leadership is not permission to be lazy. Men have their roles, and women have theirs, but the call of every disciple is to preach the Gospel of Christ. Just because you are not on a church staff does not mean you are any less of a minister. While it is important that the larger Church affirms women and provides them with opportunities to serve and lead, we don’t have to wait on this to be serving and leading.

So the question is, where do you fall on this spectrum? Do you know what your God-given gifts are? How are you refining them and using them? And if you are doing all of these things, what is your driving motive? Are you doing it for yourself and your glory, or for God’s?

One thing is for sure–we cannot complain that the Church isn’t using our gifts for the glory of God if we ourselves are not using our gifts, or if we care little for the glory of God.

Diagnostic #3: If you are a church leader OR a woman, what are you doing to equip women with the same training and urgency as men?

As I mentioned in my previous post, women’s ministry will find itself on the road to irrelevancy if it fails to keep up with on-going shifts in the female demographic. Here is one example: As a college student, one thing that always frustrated me about the women’s break-out sessions at conferences was that my male counterparts usually heard from pastors, whereas we women heard from pastor’s wives. Now I am by no means belittling the knowledge and wisdom that those women possessed. Their husbands would not be equally yoked with them were they not women of great faith.

However, not all pastor’s wives are called to be teachers and preachers. Some are, but some are not. That said,  I think this trend exemplifies a common pattern in women’s ministries–women leaders have not always been expected to be trained and equipped in the same way that male leaders are. This is not universally true, and it is not to say that God cannot use someone who does not have a seminary degree, but there is a reason why we expect male pastors to have extensively studied and prepared to teach. It is a responsible, effective and faithful way of equipping yourself to be a better teacher, and we should expect the same of women leaders.

In the past, it would have been a challenge for churches to find women with seminary degrees to lead in their church, but that is no longer the case. More and more women are going to seminary, so it’s time to implement their training. Is your church doing this?

And if you are a woman, what are you doing to educate and equip yourself to lead other women? If you are thinking about seminary, don’t let the limited job market be a discouragement. I have used my degree to serve my church in many ways without ever serving on staff. The Church needs women who can answer tough theological questions as an increasingly educated generation of non-believing women come their way. A seminary education is not just about getting a job, but equipping yourself for the sake of the Church.

And if you don’t feel called to seminary, your call is no less great. If you’re leading a Bible study you should do so with excellence.  Rather than becoming an hour-long therapy session, your small group should be a missional hub from which you send young women out into the world to share the Good News! Or, if you’re not a small group leader, who are you discipling? Find a younger woman to walk alongside of through the peaks and valleys of life. Pour truth into them so that they might rise up and serve the Kingdom of God with rigor and might.

As I have said before, woman serve as one half of the Body of Christ, which means we need to pull our own weight. Our roles may be different from men in some regards,  but we are no less crucial to this spiritual battle. We need to stop treating our Christian faith as a means for propping up our self-esteem, and instead hear it as a call to arms. You have heard the call, now take up your arms.

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This concludes my series on women in ministry. It’s difficult to fit it all into three blog entries, but I hope it has at least served as a start to the conversation. I know I have not answered all of your questions, so feel free to post them and we can follow up. Til then, I want to end with a final thought: Do not mistake my passion for this topic as anything other than what it is–a desire to see God glorified through His Body, the Church. In all that we say and do, we should be about one thing, and one thing alone–the Gospel of Christ. Affirming the role of women in this endeavor is one important means toward this end. Women’s ministry itself is not that end.

In my last post I examined the growing trend among churches that are moving away from offering women’s ministry. Today I’m going to respond to the 2 main reasons why this is happening, and then delve into the bigger picture of what’s at stake if we remove women’s ministry from the Church’s missional strategy.

#1: Women’s Ministry is Becoming Irrelevant–The first reason that women’s ministry is on the decline is that it’s become irrelevant to many women today.

The problem with this reasoning is that we do not treat the Church this way. Just because a church isn’t doing ministry effectively does not mean we abandon the idea of “church” altogether. Instead, we seek reform. We find ways to change, improve, grow, and preach the Gospel with more power and authority than ever before.

And that is exactly what we should be doing in the realm of women’s ministry. Just because successful strategies of the past are no longer working does not mean that women’s ministry has become obsolete. It simply means we need to raise the bar. Women need to step up and be more intentional about equipping their hearts and their minds to equip the women who come after them.We do not throw the form away.

We just make it better.

#2: Women Are Already Thriving On Their Own–According to this reasoning, the most urgent need of our day is to raise up strong men. Given the numbers of women going on the mission field and attending seminary, it would seem that women don’t need their own specific ministry if they’re already excelling without it.

There are actually two problems with this thinking. The first is an overestimation of the goodness of women. Women are not going on the mission field because we’re somehow better or nobler than men. It is instead the result of a combination of circumstances: our changing culture–women are encouraged to do more than they ever have before–and Gospel-centered teaching.

Due to the feminist movement, our culture nearly over-emphasized women for the sake of making them equally, and some of this was at the expense of men. But we are also seeing the positive consequences of a culture that continually affirms women in their abilities and intellect. Women are serving God in ways that they were never able to before.

That said, women aren’t surpassing men because we’re more naturally motivated. Our culture has encouraged us to do so, and there have been some positive results for the Church. But given this imbalance, the solution is not to make the same mistake as the feminists by over-emphasizing men. BOTH genders do well when challenged to step up, so we must not stop pushing women. Nor should we rely on the culture to do this for us, because the secular perspective often strays into a kind of woman-centered agenda.

The second problem with the above thinking is that its vision is far too small. While focusing on the surge of Christian woman in ministry, it overlooks the MILLIONS of women who do not know Jesus at all. I pray there never comes a day when we are satisfied with the number of women who know and are serving Christ. We must always persevere in reaching women around the world, and the individuals who are best equipped to do this work are other women. If we are to reach this demographic, then we must urgently arm more women and then send them into battle.

Now those are two reasons why women’s ministry is far more crucial than it is often given credit for. I would like to offer another.

Several months ago Ed Stetzer, who works at Lifeway overseeing research of the unchurched and teaching Christians how to respond, addressed the issue of women in ministry at a Leadership Network conference. He delineated the characteristics of a “dangerous church” in 2010–that is to say an effective church. Among the characteristics of this church, Stetzer stated that it will have “wrestled with gender inclusion.” He goes on to explain,

It is always a controversial issue, but gender issues will become increasingly a challenge for the church, particularly for the majority of American church attendees who go to churches that do not have women in pastoral roles…In the survey, the unchurched twenty-somethings were asked what impact two stances by a church have on them. First they were asked, “If you were considering visiting or joining a church, would knowing that the church did not endorse the ordination of women as pastors negatively or positively impact your decision?”

Sixty-five percent of all of the younger unchurched said this would negatively impact their decision. Only 6 percent said that this would be a positive. So, the negatives outnumbered the positives 10 to 1….Now no matter where you are on the issue, we need to have a clear and biblical reason, that is consistently applied, to explain our position.

*To read this entire talk, you can check it out on Stetzer’s blog here.

Now some of you may read this and think, “My church does this already!” Plenty of evangelical churches have discussed this topic ad nauseum, so it would seem that such churches are doing well on this point.Well I asked Stetzer about this exact thing–Don’t evangelical churches ALREADY do this, almost to the point of over-kill? Stetzer responded, “No not really. The average SBC church does an incomplete job articulating their gender views. When they do, they only tend to describe it in terms of what women can’t do.”

And this explains a LOT. I have been mystified by the fact that churches with the most detailed views of Biblical manhood and womanhood, who have the most nuanced reasons for distinguishing between the roles of men and women, do not have ministries specifically for men and women. They are not taking their theology to its logical end. If men and women are so different, then men are best equipped to teach men, and women are best equipped to teach women. But most of evangelical churches aren’t doing this, and it’s for the exact reason that Stetzer described.

If we truly believe that God created men and women for different roles, and we want to play to those differences in a way that equips believers in their service to God, then we need strong ministries for women and men. That is not to say that our genders should define us more so than our identity in Christ–if your church does not have these ministries, it will by no means crumble. BUT, the reality of our gender differences should be a factor in our strategy for expanding God’s Kingdom.

And as Stetzer highlighted, this work is not only crucial for building up the Church, but for evangelism as well. If we do not articulate the roles of women in a way that gives women Scriptural options for serving, teaching, and leading, we will quickly become irrelevant.

Now this leaves us with one remaining question: “What does this look like?” How should churches seek to build up women in ways that are both effective and Biblical? We will take a look at that in the next post.

As I mentioned in my last post, I spent this past weekend at the Advance Conference learning from pastors who are older and wiser about how to breathe new life into the Church. What was ironic about the timing of this conference was that it came on the heels of a related conversation I had with Sherry Surratt, wife of Seacoast Pastor Greg Surratt (Seacoast is a church based in Charleston, SC with almost a dozen satellite campuses in South Carolina, North Carolina and Georgia).

Sherry not only serves on staff at Seacoast, but she is the Director of Women’s Initiatives in Leadership for Leadership Network, and she spends a lot of her time networking with women all over the country who serve in women’s ministry.

What was interesting about our conversation was Sherry’s findings from her work with Leadership Network. The Advance Conference was held in response to the decline of the Church in America, and it would appear that women’s ministry is suffering the same fate.  After researching and interviewing hundreds of women who serve in women’s ministry, Sherry found that a large percentage of churches, particularly mega-churches, are moving away from women’s ministry. What was once considered a crucial ministry in its own right is now being absorbed into the larger arena of “church life.” 

Sherry’s findings about the lack of church emphasis on women’s ministry were further validated by a survey taken by Revive Our Hearts. The survey polled nearly 1,000 Women’s Ministry Directors and women serving in women’s ministry. Of the women polled, only a third of them possessed the official title of “Women’s Ministry Director,” and of those women only 15% were actually paid by a church. 84% of the actual Women’s Ministry Directors served in a volunteer capacity and were not on church payroll. Given that budgets reflect priorities, this statistic is telling.

As a woman in ministry, these findings are not surprising. Women graduating from seminary who are seeking to serve at evangelical churches will be hard pressed to find jobs outside the realm of counseling and children’s ministry. Most churches aren’t paying women to lead women.

So these findings beg the question: Given that women constitute one half of the Church, why  is women’s ministry so low on the totem pole?

Although there are many reasons for this, I am going to highlight two in particular. The first reflects a concern that is frequently voiced by women. The second reflects a perspective that I have mostly heard from men. Both perspectives are actually quite legitimate.

1. Women’s Ministry is Becoming Irrelevant–In the Revive Our Hearts survey, the results found that only 41% of Women’s Ministry Directors had completed a college degree, and only 1% had attained a seminary degree.  While Jesus’ disciples remind us that God doesn’t always call or need those with the highest education to lead His people, these statistics do have important implications for cultural relevancy. In a country where more and more women are seeking advanced degrees beyond their undergraduate education, and desire to dig into the meat of theology, women’s ministers have not always been fully equipped to reach them. 

This generational and educational divergence is also apparent when you stroll into a Christian bookstore. In the past, books for women have largely fallen into the categories of lifestyle and self-help, but more and more women today are looking to balance emotion with intellect. So while those genres will always have an audience somewhere and have indeed been a blessing to countless women around the world, young women are more likely to pick up a book by John Piper or Tim Keller than some of the well-known named  female authors. 

As young ladies find women’s ministry resources lacking and instead turn to more general Christian authors for theological reflection, churches are following in kind. If women are no longer interested in women-specific resources, then why bother providing a women-specific ministry?

2. Women are Already Thriving On Their Own–At the Advance Conference Dr. Daniel Akin, President of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, informed us that of all the single people on the mission field right now, 3/4 of them are women. This gender imbalance has been an on-going problem within the Church over the last decade. As the number of women going to seminary and serving on the mission field has increased, the number of men has seemed to simultaneously decrease.

In response to this shift, evangelicals sounded the warning bell and have launched multiple efforts to reclaim manhood in the Church. We have seen a rise in “Wild at Heart” type books, and pastors like Mark Driscoll have spoken out against the feminization of the Church. And in order to drive the urgency home, the importance of male leadership has been elevated to a status of nearly dogmatic proportions. Male leadership has been touted as one of THE most crucial components of the Church.

In light of these events, it would seem that women’s ministry is the LAST thing we need to work on. Given the increase of women attending seminary and going overseas, women seem to be doing just fine. If anything, it is the men who need the help. We need to push men harder and pour into them more intentionally so that they will step up and lead. Women are doing a great job on their own.

These are just two of the main factors that have led to a noticeable shift away from women’s ministry within our churches. If you have been involved in women’s ministry, or if you’re just a woman in the church, I’m sure you can think of more. Feel free to offer your own thoughts!

In my next post I am going to examine the potential blind spots in the above reasoning, and examine why the movement away from women’s ministry may be dangerously short-sighted. If you are one of my male readers, I encourage you to stick with me–while this may not seem immediately relevant to you, it impacts one half of the Body of which you are a part. If we are to fight this spiritual battle, then we better make sure half the army is ready for combat.  

This weekend, my very own Durham, NC is hosting a Christian conference of EPIC proportions.

As the Durham News and Observer reported, the Advance Conference is in town featuring a wide array of “celebrity pastors,” a list that includes controversial Mark Driscoll, fiery preacher John Piper, the influential writer and Lifeway research guru Ed Stetzer, Village Church’s Matt Chandler, and my friendly, neighborhood multi-site pastor, J.D. Greear. As the article described, it is a time for “young pastors to learn from the masters about how to start a successful church.”

While I’m sure the article made every single speaker blush (and then secretly feel good), the article is not that far off. As I stood in the lobby this afternoon, I stared out at a sea of eager young men and women, all looking uber trendy in graphic tees, skinny jeans, funky haircuts and Converse tennis shoes. I think I saw maybe one middle-aged guy in a polo shirt, but he was the exception to the rule. (You know who you are……Rick Langston) This was a crowd of young people all hoping to make their mark on the world and learning from those who already have.

When you’re surrounded by so many great pastors, it’s hard not to get swept up in a kind of hero worship. And I think that’s the great temptation at conferences like these. We look up to these trail blazers, and we all secretly fantasize about the day we’ll be up on stage instructing the younger generations how to lead and preach and grow the Church. It’s funny how a gathering intended to exalt Christ can end up doing quite the opposite. God becomes small in the face of our own aspirations.

But the reality is that, in spite of my ungodly motives, these men do have a lot of experience and wisdom to share and it’s an excellent opportunity to learn. And while the conference itself is about the resurgence of the local church, I’m going to be coming at it from a very different angle:

How do we stage a resurgence of women’s ministry?

In the next several posts I am going to examine the reasons that women’s ministry is declining, why you should care, and what we should do about it. I will not only be writing from my own experience, but from the discussions and correspondences I’ve had with influential Christian leaders as well. From these conversations it has become clear that I am not alone in feeling a burden to initiate change in this particular branch of the Church–the Holy Spirit is on the move.

The theme of Advance 09 is that of an advancing army. We may have experienced some defeats in the past, but now it’s time to mount a resurgence. And ladies, we constitute one half of that army. If this “resurgence” is going to happen then we need to carry our own weight, so it’s time we start thinking about what it means to be a soldier in the Kingdom ranks, fighting not against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities. You are not just a precious daughter of the King–you are a mighty warrior.

This week I was listening to the radio and heard an interview with an author who just published a fascinating yet controversial book entitled “The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University.” The author’s name is Kevin Roose, and he is a student at Brown University who enrolled at Liberty University for a semester as a kind of secular undercover mission into the evangelical world.

Though I have not read the book, I was pleasantly surprised by how sympathetically Roose described his time at Liberty. He found some of the teaching to be archaic and biased, but he was also touched by the friendships he made. Contrary to my expectations, he did not sensationalize his time there, nor did he talk about it in over-generalizations or extremes. Coming from such a young author, that is especially rare and commendable.

(For a great review of the book, check out this article in Christianity Today here.)

Some of Roose’s crticisms are clearly warranted, but there was one perspective with which I disagreed, and that concerned the time he spent with a campus self-help group called “Every Man’s Battle.” The group was for male students resisting the temptation to masturbate, and while Roose felt that such a support group was sympathetic in nature, he was sorry that those men were made to “feel guilty about doing something that isn’t wrong.”

Upon hearing Roose’s words, it dawned on me how absurd the Christian teachings against masturbation must sound to the world. After all, you’re not actually having sex, and no one is getting hurt. What could possibly be wrong with it?

In fact, I wonder if a lot of Christians, particularly women, don’t really know why it’s wrong. There isn’t any clear Scriptural teaching against it, so it’s possible that many believers only have a vague conception based on the fact that it’s sexual and because their youth minister used to warn them about it.

With this in mind, I want to briefly explain why the practice of masturbation is so toxic to the Christian life. I know this seems like a weird topic for a women’s blog, but that is perhaps the first myth that we need to get out of the way. Masturbation is not just “every man’s battle.” Many women struggle with it as well. But regardless of whether you wrestle with this issue or not, it’s important to understand the dangers involved so that you can articulate them in compelling ways. Saying “It’s gross!” just isn’t going to cut it.

The main reason that masturbation seems so harmless is that it doesn’t hurt anyone. Some guys might use it as a way to relieve sexual tension so that they won’t try to have sex with their girlfriends. This would in turn sound like a means for staying MORE pure, right? Or for some of you, it feels good and it isn’t hurting anyone, so why not?

The problem with these 2 perspectives is that they overlook two very important realities about human nature and relationships:

1. Unlike physical appetite, sexual appetite only increases when you feed it, not lessens it.

2. Sex is inherently relational, but we sabotage this fundamental aspect of sex when we divorce it from its created purpose.

Let me tease these points out a bit more…

Point 1:

As I said, sexual appetite increases the more you feed it, so if you are turning to masturbation as a means to abstain from sexual intercourse, you are setting yourself up to fail. Aside from the fact that masturbation is frequently accompanied by lustful thoughts, which Jesus likens to the act of adultery, you are training yourself to desire that stimulation more and more. What can result is either an addiction to masturbation (hence the self-help group), or an eventual succumbing to sexual intercourse before marriage.

In trying to stay pure, you are instead shooting yourself in the foot.

Point 2:

One of THE biggest mistakes that our culture makes in determining its moral standards is short-sightedness. As long as there is no short-term damage, we don’t see anything wrong with it. It is this short-sightedness that enables us to engage in carefree promiscuity, masturbation, or even the “more innocent” serial dating. We plan to change our behaviors once we get married, but for now we’re living the unattached, single life.

The problem with this thinking is that it underestimates the power of our habits. We somehow think that after living one way for 20 years, we can suddenly change upon saying “I do.” But this is not the case. If we establish a pattern of dating tons of people, sleeping with lots of lovers, or masturbating to attain sexual satisfaction, those habits will still be ingrained in us as we enter marriage. That’s why so many marriages fail–Americans are not equipping themselves with the skills they need to make a marriage work. They’re doing just the opposite.

That said, masturbation may seem harmless in the short-term, but it can wreak havoc on your marriage. In particular, it can cause major problems for your sexual relationship with your spouse. If you can satisfy yourself better than your spouse can, then that has severe implications for your intimacy and trust with them.

Ladies, this point is especially important for you! Because women are stimulated differently than men, and because we know our bodies better than men, women who struggle with masturbation may find it easier to do it themselves than depend on their husband for sexual satisfaction. And if you are no longer satisfied by your husband sexually, then it’s likely you aren’t satisfying him, which results in a whole host of marital problems.

Suffice it to say, if you are training yourself to masturbate as a single person, you will not stop when you get married. And to believe that such habit-forming behaviors are harmless is like walking head-on into a coming freight train without a care in the world. It is naiveté at its worst.

Until our culture starts acknowledging that our single behaviors affect our married behaviors more than almost any other factor, I fear the divorce rate will continue to rise.

There have been entire books written on this topic so I could go on and on–there are many other reasons why masturbation is destructive that I have not even mentioned. (For instance, just look up the term “self-abuse” in the Oxford English Dictionary and you’ll find “masturbation” listed under its definitions. That has interesting implications for masturbation’s impact on you as an individual…) But in the interest of time, I hope this was a sufficient summary of the dangers associated with masturbation–especially for you young ladies who may not have given it much thought. If you have any questions, feel free to ask!

Remember that Christian teachers and preachers do not warn against masturbation simply because they’re prudes, or because they’ve been brain-washed into thinking it’s wrong. They teach against it because they’re wise and they know that ALL actions have consequences sooner or later. God created us to have open, honest, trusting, self-giving relationships of love and commitment, and masturbation is just one means of short-circuiting this goal. It may seem harmless now, but don’t be guilty of a naiveté or denial that will later come back to haunt you.