About a year ago I wrote a blog entitled “Should Women Be Deacons?” in which I highlighted Tim Keller’s endorsement of women holding the office of deacon. This week I ran across a second endorsement by Wendy Alsup that I wanted to repost here.

In particular, I appreciate Wendy’s warning against saying “no” to that which God has said “yes.” We often find ourselves fearing the opposite–saying “yes” to that which God has said “no”–but they are opposite yet equal errors. The goal of the church is to conform to God’s will in all things, which is why I am continuing to encourage conversation on this topic.

Wendy’s argument is as follows:

1. It’s Biblical.
2. It’s consistent with historical church practice.

I’ll end this post with an encouragement. What if this is your conviction, but you are not under church leadership that feels the same? A wise female deacon at my own church told me of her experience advocating strongly for this at another church she attended years ago. At some point, she came to see that her efforts had gone from being positively advocating for a good thing to being negatively divisive. If you love and trust your church leadership, certainly there shouldn’t be a problem discussing this, even advocating for it with the appropriate people. But unity in the church is a precious thing. I encourage you to guard yourself diligently from crossing the line between encouraging toward a more Biblical view of women deacons to undermining leadership and fostering disunity. Be diligent to preserve unity. Make every effort to preserve unity. For we are all One Body.

Wendy’s final point cannot be understated. This is not an issue worth dividing over. But if we care about Scripture, God’s will, and ecclesial integrity, then we should care about this issue and discuss it further, in love, humility and grace. I hope you will.

As today is Mother’s Day, I wanted to write something that has been on my mind for a few weeks now and is also relevant to the holiday. Over the last few months I’ve had the privilege of doing ministry at my church with women who, by and large, are young moms. During that time I have also noticed a trend that is worrying to me. Whenever one of these young mothers attended a meeting or event in which she simply could not find childcare for her little one(s), she felt the need to apologize…profusely.

I know this seems like a strange thing to worry about, and it has nothing to do with the mothers themselves but everything to do with a culture that compels mothers to feel they need to apologize for the presence of their children. But first, let me back up to where this is all coming from.

When I was in seminary I had a professor that completely changed my thinking on the presence of children in public settings. Before taking her class I was easily irritated by the sound of a child making noise during worship. However, my seminary prof had a totally different perspective. She was very pro-family and warned against the workplace’s unfriendly stance towards children and mothers. In an effort to resist this cultural trend, she informed her students that if any of them had trouble finding childcare, their children were more than welcome in class. She would not be bothered by the sounds of children as she taught.

(During that same period I was also fortunate to have a prof who would sometimes bring his infant to class and sit her on the table in front of him as he taught. We loved it!)

These experiences in seminary changed my entire perspective on children, specifically in the realm of hospitality. They also compelled me to look more critically at our society’s view towards children. We are a production-driven culture that often measures the value of a child’s presence upon whether they can contribute to or hinder our work. And this mindset has certainly infiltrated the church! I once heard about a woman who had to bring her twin babies to small group because she couldn’t find childcare. After the meeting, another member took the woman aside and informed her that it was inappropriate to bring them. The young mother never came back.

So while it is by no means wrong for parents to have time apart from their children to focus or relax, nor should we eliminate children’s worship services so that we can all worship together, I can’t help but wonder if parents should feel pressured to cordon off their kids, especially by Christians. Our approach to children often looks more like that of the disciples in Matthew 19 who treated the children as unwelcome, in contrast with the loving hospitality of Christ.

So to all the young mothers out there, if you’ve ever been made to feel unwelcome or out of place in the church because of your children, it is the church’s treatment of you that is misplaced, not your children. Your children are unconditionally precious gifts, whether they’re at home with a babysitter or sitting on your lap during worship. You don’t need to apologize.

And for those of you who work or serve with young mothers, let us distinguish ourselves from the culture in how we welcome them! Yes, it’s important to hear the pastor preach without being drowned out by a shrieking child, but also check your spirit when thinking inhospitable thoughts towards them. For one thing, you don’t know the woman’s situation–she could be a single mom, or perhaps her child is recovering from a cold and can’t be in childcare. But wouldn’t we much rather that she and her child worship God or attend small group together, than not come at all?

Let us be a community that appreciates mothers and their children! Let us treat children with hospitality! Not just when they’re ours, and not just in the “appropriate” settings, but unconditionally.

And to every mother out there, young and slightly less young,

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY!!!!!!!!!!

I’ve recently been reading a book on Women’s Ministry that has given voice to some of my own thoughts on women’s ministry, as well as adding some perspectives I had never before considered. The book is entitled Women’s Ministry in the Local Church and it’s written by J. Ligon Duncan and Susan Hunt. Duncan is a PCA pastor in Mississippi and Hunt is the former Director of Women’s Ministries for the PCA. Hunt has also authored a number of other books that I am eager to check out, including Leadership for Women in the Church and Spiritual Mothering: The Titus 2 Model for Mentoring Women.

Now before I fully endorse this book, I have a caveat. The book is written from a Complementarian perspective (That is to say, men and women are equally valuable but fundamentally different) which means that some of you will totally agree with it. Others of you will object to parts of it. I have not read the whole book so I’m not in a position to come down either way. Today, I simply want to share some of the wisdom I’ve been encouraged by thus far.

In particular, I wanted to include some excerpts from the chapter entitled “The Need.” This chapter addresses the specific reasons why the local church needs Women’s Ministry, and it begins with some of of the common mistake that churches make in this regard.

Here I want to highlight a specific one: Amidst the placing of boundaries on what women cannot do, there is little teaching about what women can do, or more importantly what the church needs women to do. Because of this breakdown, women are left feeling frustrated and restless, possessing God-given gifts with no outlet for expressing them:

Some churches do not have a women’s ministry because of a concern or even experience that if women are organized they will make demands or seek power. In this vacuum of isolation and underutilization of women there is the potential for frustration and anger-birthed leadership to erupt among the women, and the very thing the church is attempting to avoid becomes a reality.

I myself have experienced this frustration. There is a constant battle with the temptations of anger and bitterness when this dynamic occurs. So while a church’s failure to enable women to use their gifts in NO WAY justifies the indulging of sinful compulsions, it was encouraging to have my feelings articulated so clearly, and it offers a helpful insight for church leaders to consider.

Later on in the chapter, the authors list 5 reasons that the local church needs a Women’s Ministry, and I wanted to highlight the fifth one here:

We need to help Christian women appreciate the manifold areas of service that are open to them in the church and to equip them distinctively as women to fulfill their ministry. But this will never happen if our approach to discipleship in the church is androgynous–that is, if it refuses to take into account the gender distinctives of the disciple.

This last point was particularly interesting to me because it is a point well made. Paradoxically, many churches that espouse a Complementarian perspective have a practically androgynous approach to discipleship. Though small groups may at times be divided along gender lines, the intentionality given towards shaping specifically Christian women ends there.

Those are just two points that have stood out to me in the book thus far. There are numerous others, but I hope it will give you a taste of the book, as well as encouraging you in your thinking on this subject. Given that women constitute one half of the Body of Christ this topic certainly warrants our attention, so I was delighted to learn that there are key evangelical leaders who are wrestling with these very important questions.

In recent years there has been a lot of criticism of the “feminizing” of the church. Much of this language became popular with the publication of books like Wild at Heart that blamed the drop in male attendance on the overly female conceptions of Jesus. Jesus seemed too passive and gooey to attract the average man. The solution? Remind men of the red-blooded, radical, masculine Jesus.

Since then, this language has remained popular. In more recent years, church leaders like Mark Driscoll have critiqued the sweater-vest wearing pastors and soft music playing churches that women supposedly love but men seem to hate.

And this reclamation of the masculine has seemed to result in its desired goal. A whole sub-section of men who were somewhat alienated from the church appear to be returning. And for that I am truly grateful.

I am not opposed to altering a church’s style of worship in order to remove obstacles from attracting men. However, there are a couple of cautions that we need to keep in mind to prevent the church from swinging too far in the opposite direction.

Gender Distinctions v. Gender Stereotypes

While I firmly believe that God created men and women in different ways, we need to beware of language that reinforces worldly stereotypes. For instance, the language of “feminizing” can be quite derogatory towards women given what it implies. It assumes that ALL women, or at least the majority of women, prefer soft music and passive leaders. It equates fluffy theology with femininity, and it implies that passivity is in some way inherently feminine, which it is not. Women may be called to submit, but they are not called to be passive. That is an important distinction.

This language also has worrying implications for how we understand masculinity. There is an implication that the majority of men, or at least strong men, dislike these supposedly feminine styles of worship. Again, this is a dangerously narrow understanding of gender differences. My dad, for instance, is one of the strongest men and greatest leaders I know, but he can’t stand the loud, more “manly” styles of worship that are popular today. He prefers the hymns and the more contemplative styles of worship. Where is the evangelical construct of masculinity that accounts for men like him? Have we blurred the lines between evangelical culture and Scripture too much?

All of that to say, we must be extremely cautious when we slap the label of “masculine” or “feminine” onto styles of doing church, especially when the subtext of those labels is “right” and “wrong.” We not only flirt with the line between culture and Scripture, but we run the risk of excluding anyone who does not fit our extremely cultural constructs of gender. In doing so, we are not far from the judgmental Pharisaism described in Scripture.

A Misdiagnosis of the Problem

While I certainly understand and support any method of outreach that reaches individuals who the church failed to reach in the past, I would caution against any language of making the church more “masculine” or less “feminine.” If something has gone awry in our church, then our re-centering should not pivot upon gender. It should center around Christ.

A particular emphasis on reaching men can convey the subliminal message that women are somehow less sinful or lost than men. Even though women are no less likely to go to church than men, I have not witnessed the same intentionality in reaching women.

Yet if we stop being intentional about reaching out to women then we can be certain they will stop coming. We live in a culture that FEEDS upon women. Every day it chews them up and spits them out, so we need to be fighting for women with as much zeal as we fight for men. Otherwise, we will not only see a decline in the number of women in church, but an increase in the number of broken women in our country.

Ultimately, the church doesn’t need to be “less feminine” or “more masculine.” Yes, there are logistical elements to be considered in facilitating church growth, but the language of “feminine” and “masculine” is usually a complete misdiagnosis of the problem. Our problem is not feminine churches. Our problem is the lack of unapologetic preaching of the Gospel and the passionate worship of God. The lack of those two pillars is not feminine; it’s flat-out broken. That means that no amount of tough guy personas or drums in worship can compensate for their absence, nor can any sweater vest detract from them. Let us not be so distracted by misplaced gender stereotypes that we altogether miss the conversation we should really be having.

In the past decade, the church has increasingly challenged men to step up and be leaders in their families, and their wives have been enlisted toward this goal. Interestingly, one of the key strategies of this movement has centered around the following counter-intuitive advice to women with passive husbands: Do nothing.

The idea here is that women need to create a leadership vacuum in their marriages. If they’re always the ones stepping up and taking the kids to church, keeping the house clean, managing the finances, and basically treating their husbands like another one of the children, then their husbands will act like it. Men will have no incentive to change or step up. They simply left one mother to inherit a new one.

That said, wives with passive husbands are encouraged to stop doing everything for their husbands. They need to create a leadership vacuum so that their husbands are forced to step up. Rather than beat him to the punch when someone needs to take the reins, wait him out. The aim is not to do this spitefully, but to draw the leader out of him.

I was reminded of this teaching tonight as I listened to my small group discuss their constant state of over-commitment. Most of us are leaders in our church, and a lot of the women in our group are burned out from being stretched too thin with service.

Some of this urge to over-commit comes from a fear of man, but it also stems from a lack of faith. Just the other day I spoke with a young woman who was also stretched too thin. She needed to stop serving with the children’s ministry but she was afraid to abandon them since they’re already short on workers. The fear of leaving her church in a tough spot was leading her to do too much, yet nothing well.

We over-estimate our importance when we fear the church will crumble without us. We also underestimate God’s ability. Yes, the church is composed of God’s people and we all play an important role, but we also serve a God who can take a few loaves and fishes and feed as many people as have need. God desires to use us, but He does not need us at the expense of our health and spiritual well-being. God’s victory is not achieved by trampling over His children.

But I digress. The over-commitment of the few highlights an equal but opposite problem: The under-commitment of the many. What has transpired in the church is a dynamic similar to many marriages today. The same people keep stepping up to serve over and over again, thereby preventing other church members from stepping up. That was the tremendous irony of my young friend’s fears that the children’s ministry would fail without her. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of other people who could step in and take her place. But the need had already been filled by her.

With all of this in mind, we need to create a leadership vacuum in the church. If you are currently serving at your church and you feel stretched too thin, pull back. That is not to say you should pull back altogether–continue to use your gifts in ONE strategic area. But in all the other areas that you serve, consider stepping back and letting someone else step up. In all likelihood, there is someone who is much better suited to take your place.

This does require faith. In the same way that a wife has to trust God that her inaction will make space for greater action, we must do the same. Decreased church involvement is not always a sign of less commitment; it can be a sign of faith that God has much greater plans than we are currently witnessing, and they will not be carried out on the backs of the burned-out few.

So as we approach the summer and things slow down, consider using the next couple months to reassess your church involvement. Pray for clarity on the use of your gifts, and then I challenge you to pick ONE place to use them. Say no to everything else. Not only will you avoid getting burned out and be able to serve your church more effectively, but you’ll have the chance to actually ENJOY serving as well. For some of us, that is an aspect of service that, sadly, we haven’t experienced in quite some time.

Just over a month ago Christianity Today published an interview with Gayle Haggard, the wife of former President of the National Association of Evangelicals and pastor of New Life church, Ted Haggard. In 2006 Ted Haggard was exposed as having paid a male escort for sex and methamphetamine. As a result of the allegations, the leaders at New Life church asked Haggard to leave the church and the state of Colorado altogether. Since then, Ted and Gayle have fought for their marriage and are now speaking openly about the experience. Gayle has also written a book documenting the ordeal entitled Why I Stayed: The Choices I Made in My Darkest Hour.

I highly recommend reading the interview. Gayle’s example is both inspiring and humbling. The Haggards’ story challenges us to consider what it means to be God’s church and it raises some important questions, such as the nature of church discipline when dealing with a repentant sinner.

But for the intents of this blog I want to focus on one particular issue that that this story raises: How should the church respond to the wife of a man who strays?

It is difficult to imagine what it was like for Gayle to not only suffer the betrayal of her husband, but the abandonment of her church as well. Though her husband was the transgressor, her injury was two-fold.

What is even more tragically ironic is that she was essentially punished for doing the right thing. Rather than divorce her husband, she chose to fight for her marriage. Had she decided to leave her husband and stay at the church, she might have had a support system to lift her up. But because she made the decision to stay with him, she inherited his outcast status. This cannot be right, can it?

Even more troubling (or should I say disgusting) was the fact that many Christians blamed her for her husband’s infidelity. While marriage is indeed a two-way street that requires the hard work and dedication of both husband and wife, there is NEVER an excuse for a man to have an affair. Nor are we in any position to conjecture.

Which is why it disturbs me greatly that, in the midst of such a dark time in her life, a time when her husband and her local church betrayed her, that the larger evangelical community denounced her as well.

Their story is a wake-up call for the Christian community. It compels us to reconsider the nature of Christian love. Scripture tells us that we are to be known by our love for one another (John 13:35); the way we love one another should look different from the world. We do not stop loving when we are betrayed. We seek to restore when someone is broken. Our love should defy the reason of this world, and it should require us to sacrifice. It means loving when it is distasteful to us, when it gets our hands dirty. When it is hard.

That is the kind of love we must show if we are to be “known” by our love. Too often we respond to the sin of others in the same way that the world does. What we call “church discipline” is sometimes just old-fashioned judgment. We are washing our hands of the things and people we don’t want to deal with. So rather than restore, we crush.

Remember this story. Your friends and leaders in the church will disappoint you in monumental ways. So be prepared for it, not as a cynic but as one who is ready to love them through it. Reach out to them and lift them up so that the watching community around them will see your good works and glorify their Father in Heaven. And don’t forget to care for their spouse, who is going through their own private hell. Rather than be an additional source of brokenness, be a source of healing and grace. That is what it means to be the church, and I am thankful that the Haggards’ humility enabled that message to arise out of their ashes.

One of the things I have appreciated most from my husband is the knowledge that he’s always in my corner. No matter what people say to me or about me, I can always trust that he’s got my back. It’s not that he’s a passive yes-man who tells me what I wanna hear–I can also trust him to be honest. But he’s my personal pep talker. He builds me up and affirms me in all that I do. He helps me to hope and persevere. He speaks truth into my mind and my heart.

As a warrior in a spiritual battle, having a spouse is a major asset. You’re fighting alongside one another, you can protect one another, pick one another up when you fall, and help one another to heal.

Knowing this, I’ve been convicted about the vulnerability of my single friends, who don’t have this same built-in support system. At least, not as frequently. I was reminded of this yesterday as I listened to one of my single friends confess her struggles and pains. She was tempted to believe a whole host of lies about herself, but she lives alone so she is often isolated with these thoughts. Whereas my husband is always right next to me helping me to combat the lies I am tempted to believe, my friend doesn’t have the same resource. As a result, she’s been a lot more vulnerable to attack.

As I listened to her, I was struck by the significance of the marital language used to describe Christ’s relationship with his church. My husband models that relationship for me every day, but not everyone has a supportive husband. In fact, not all married women have supportive husbands. It is in that gap that the church is supposed to step in. Our single friends should not be going it alone. They are still pursued by a Lover, and we serve as His hands and feet. While their relationship status might read “Single,” they’re not really single at all.

The only voice of support that really matters is Christ’s. My husband often serves as a vehicle for that voice, but husbands aren’t the only ones who can. The church can and should as well. As the hands of feet of Christ, we must do the work of the bridegroom in loving his bride. Countless women need to hear truth in the face of lies, insecurities and shame. We should be the bearers of that truth.

So if you have single friends, get involved in their lives! Know what’s going on with them. Don’t hole up in married world and shut them out. They need you as much as you need your husband. Speak truth to them and build them up. That is what it means to be the church to your single friends, so be there for them. Your husband may be your teammate, but we’re all soldiers in the same fight. Make sure you’re not sending your single friends out to battle alone.

Is the church a democracy? This is a question that my husband and I have been mulling over this week. While a seemingly abstract question, or at the very least random, the way you answer this questions has a LOT of implications for your individual life. Just hang with me and I’ll explain how.

At the heart of this question is the location of authority within every church. Assuming God and Scripture to be the highest authorities, the question of democracy asks whether the next level of authority lies in the hands of church leaders, or the congregation. On this matter, there is a fairly wide spectrum of churches. On the one end you have Catholics, for whom there is a trickle down structure of authority that finds its head with the Pope. On the opposite end you have denominations like Baptists, who give a lot more freedom to the individual congregation. Contrary to popular opinion, the Southern Baptist Convention does not rule over or dictate the lives of Baptist churches. Historically, Baptists churches have taught the autonomy or independence of the local church, which means Baptist churches can look as different as the people in each congregation. That’s why you hear about crazy fringe churches in the news that don the name “Baptist.” They aren’t reflecting a wider Baptist tradition, but instead their own congregation’s fringe beliefs. Baptist tradition gives congregations that freedom.

So we are presented with two extremes: all the authority lies in the leadership, or all the authority lies in the congregation. Given our country’s ideas about government, we tend to buck against any structure that gives absolute power to a higher ranking authority figure. And I can sympathize with that. There has got to be accountability. Unchecked power leads to corruption.

However, I’m not sure full-fledged democracy is the answer either. In Scripture we see a couple examples of democracy, and they’re not positive. In Exodus 32 the people took a vote so Aaron acquiesced to the consensus: he gave them a golden calf. In 1 Samuel the popular consensus was to appoint a king over Israel, so God gave them one: Saul. Throughout Scripture, the popular consensus was often a sinful one. That’s why God so frequently sent prophets to hold His people accountable. Without strong, godly leadership, they were like sheep without a shepherd. They strayed.

So while I am by no means Catholic in my understanding of authority, I am also wary of a truly democratic model of the church. But here’s where this issue really applies to each and every one of our lives: If we believe the authority of our local church lies first in the congregation, and not in the hands of leaders on whom God has granted authority, we give ourselves an out. We give ourselves permission to not follow the leading of our pastors and the movement of the church. Say the church sets out a vision for its people–the leaders feel called to serve the community more, give sacrificially to a cause, or send more people on the mission field—but you don’t “feel called” to this particular vision, so you don’t participate. The church’s larger vision is irrelevant to you. You simply don’t listen because you are the “decider.”

This is deeply problematic to me. I don’t want to overlook the individual circumstances of people’s lives, but this approach to church leadership can also reveal a tremendous lack of trust in God. If you serve a church that has systems of accountability for its leaders (that is to say, there are no blatant abuses of power at work in your church), then passages like Hebrews 13:17 provide our direction. We are to “obey our leaders and submit to their authority.” If they call the church to a vision of outreach that is Scriptural, we aren’t given a “what if” clause. We are called to follow.

While this might sound scary to some people, as if I’m affirming a kind of blank-check power to our church leaders, there is an alternate way of thinking about it. If God has given you leaders to guide you, teach you, bless you and grow you as a vehicle of His Holy Spirit, but you constantly defer to your own judgment about what is best, then you’re missing out on a blessing. You’re missing out on an opportunity to exercise faith in ways that you might not have considered on your own.

The purpose of me writing this is not to resolve the tricky question of church polity–how a church should be structured. There are strengths and weaknesses to every model in the book because we are all sinners serving a sovereign, redemptive God. What I DO want you to consider in the face of all these questions is your own view of authority. Has it been shaped more by your culture or by Scripture? Leaders are not perfect, but God calls us to submit to them without providing an escape clause. If we can do this responsibly and without bitterness, I suspect we will find blessing and new spiritual depth through our obedience to Him.

This week my pastor preached about Exodus 32 and the Israelites’ betrayal of God. While Moses was on the mountain receiving the Ten Commandments, the Israelites felt abandoned. They couldn’t feel God’s presence, so they took the gold that God had given to them in Egypt and used it to make a golden calf. Or as Aaron the dufus put it, “They gave me the gold, I threw it in the fire, and out came this calf!” (v. 24) He’s like the kid who claims he didn’t punch his brother in the face; his brother simply “ran into his fist.” The only appropriate response to this Exodus story is a Homer Simpson-esque “doh!”

Even though I’ve heard this story countless times, something new struck me about it this time. In response to the Israelites’ unfaithfulness, God became angry and essentially slaughtered all the unfaithful. But that’s not what surprised me. What surprised me was the extent of God’s anger even though He knew ahead of time they would betray Him. It’s not as if God was caught off guard when they started worshipping idols. He knew it was going to happen, and yet He responded with the kind of anger of someone who’d had high expectations but had been stunningly disappointed.

And that got me to thinking. The story of Exodus happened thousands of years ago. It continues to happen today. God knows we are going to royally screw up over and over again, but He gets angry about each act of sin and disobedience as if it’s the first time. Why hasn’t God become disillusioned with us? You’d think that at some point He’d wash His hands of the broken human race and walk away. That way He wouldn’t have to go through such pain and depth of emotion each time.

But He doesn’t. In spite of the fact that God knows we will mess up, and in spite of the fact that His justice compels Him to feel betrayal and wrath in response, His love and mercy compel Him as well. He perseveres with us. He loves us unconditionally. He pursues us even though He knows we will forsake Him. He never becomes disillusioned.

For us young people, this is a powerful example. Disillusionment is an attribute that frequently defines our generation. As a group, young adults are generally more idealistic, which also means we’re more prone to get sick and tired of political corruption and religious hypocrisy. In response, it’s easy to wash our hands of it all.

While there’s an extent to which our faith in secular institutions should certainly be limited, there’s no excuse for washing our hands of the church. In view of God’s great mercy, disillusionment is revealed to be nothing but a cop-out. We are not in more of a position to be disillusioned with God’s people than God. If He will not forsake His people, if He will not stop loving them, then neither should we. And more importantly, if God has not stopped loving US in spite of our own infidelity, then who are we to do less for others?

This truth holds me accountable for my attitude and the state of my heart. I do get frustrated with other Christians, and there have been times when I’ve wanted to walk away from it all. But we cannot do so and remain faithful to God. The two options are incompatible. Remember that the next time you hear someone say that they walked away from the church as some sort of spiritually superior move. As 1 John 4 reminds us, “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.” (v. 19-20) You can’t love God and hate His church. You can be disappointed with people in the church, even angry at times–clearly so was God–but you cannot walk away, nor can you give into feelings of bitterness or self-righteousness. The love of Christ compels us otherwise.

About a month ago I was hanging out with some friends when someone raised a really interesting question for discussion: Should single women adopt?

One friend, who comes from a large family in which a number of her siblings are adopted, had an immediate response. She felt that this was absolutely wrong, and contrary to God’s design for the family. As she explained, God created families to be composed of a mother AND a father, and while there are families in our broken world that fall outside that category, and God can still redeem them, it is not a scenario to be sought after intentionally.

Another friend of mine was not so sure. She pointed out that there are a LOT of orphans in the world, and as Christianity Today recently reported, as many as a third of Christian women will have to remain single because they so greatly outnumber Christian men. What is better, for a child to be raised in an orphanage, or to be raised by a godly, caring single woman? The answer would seem quite obvious.

Honestly, I have really mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I’m sometimes wary of the emphasis that Christians place on the family as being THE fundamental foundation of our community. Now don’t freak out on me yet–I’m not saying it’s not important. It is. But what is more important, more fundamental and foundational, is the Church. As the Body of Christ, we have a responsibility not only to our own families, but to every member in our community, as well as their children. This point is grossly understated in our language about family and the church.

When I got married, I stood before an entire community of people whose very presence was a kind of commitment to hold me and my husband accountable to our vows. I expect that accountability, encouragement and teaching to continue the rest of our lives, and many of my married friends expect the same of me. That said, if a single Christian woman were to adopt a child, I would expect that child to be well cared for by her entire church community, which possesses ample men who can be a kind of father figure for the child. In fact, this should be happening in any church community in which single parents exist. As the Body of Christ, we play a crucial role in our friends’ children’s lives.

So with that in mind, I can see an argument for single mother adoption, not on the basis of God’s created design for the family, but on God’s created design for the Church.

HOWEVER, to jump to such a conclusion is to miss the real problem altogether. If we have come to a place in which the numbers of orphans are so vast that the burden is falling onto single women to adopt them, then married couples are missing their call. Scripture specifically highlights orphans as a demographic we are to care for (James 1:27), and it’s no wonder–is there a better picture on earth of what God did for us? Though we made ourselves strangers to Him through our sin, God adopted us through the sacrifice of his Son and loves us as his children, allowing us to inherit all that He has.

Amidst a culture that values biological children so highly, going to extreme lengths that are sometimes theologically questionable–in vitro fertilization, surrogacy, etc.–we must be cautious of the message we are sending. Our biological children are not more important than adopted ones. So while it is by no means wrong to desire and have our own children, we must value all life equally, consider the way that God, not culture, defines parenthood, and take seriously our call to care for orphans and make disciples of all nations (Matt. 28:19). After all, adoption fulfills both those Scriptural commands, while blessing a child in a way that will not only change their life for the better but enhance their love for God.

So should single women adopt? I’m still not entirely sure and I would really love to hear your input, but I don’t want that debate to overshadow the bigger issue. In America where we have so much and countless Christian parents have sufficient financial resources to support large families, why aren’t they adopting? My friend who was raised in a large family of adopted children explained that while her dad was a doctor and they could have lived a more luxurious lifestyle had they had fewer children, her parents chose to live at a slightly lower standard so that they could adopt more children. What a wonderfully counter-cultural, radical Christian idea!

This is truly something that more married couples should be praying about it. God may not call your family to adoption, but you will never know if you don’t come before Him in surrendered obedience and ask. And if He does call you to adoption, I guarantee you will share in many of the blessings and joy that God received in adopting us.