Women in Ministry

Recently Amy, our Family and Children's minister, returned from a Women in Ministry Conference at the Skillman Church in Dallas. She shared in our staff meeting how impressive the women at the conference were. She talked about how many of the women there had completed or were working on completing advanced degrees in religion from a variety of Universities. She recalled how smart, committed, humble, and open towards God's leading they all were. Amy shared that in the midst of all this incredible talent and potential she felt a real sense of frustration at the lack of opportunities given to these women to serve in The Churches of Christ.

This has stayed with me since our meeting because I often forget that for the majority of congregations in the church I have been a part of my whole life, women are not given the opportunities to be ministers. This is based on many things, but especially on an interpretation of scripture that severely limits women. Seven years ago the church I minister at started opening up opportunities for women to serve in all facets of our church body. That process has grown from reading scriptures, to the service we had this past Mother's Day. That service was led entirely by women (you can listen to Amy's sermon from that day here and the testimonies can be heard here). At this stage I take for granted that if I had a daughter who was gifted in prayer she could lead our church in praying to God. I was reminded in our staff meeting that I shouldn't do so.

I am not posting this to layout the proof text of why women have full and equal gifting of God's spirit and should be allowed to use those gifts to glorify God. You can get that information here and here by people much more qualified than I am.

I have just been thinking about what would happen if all of these young women who are coming out of our Christian universities with degrees in Bible, youth ministry, preaching, or theology had an equal chance at getting hired by a church as their male counterparts do? Personally I think the guys (particularly the youth ministry guys) would be very nervous because on a maturity scale I'll take a 22 year old girl over a 22 year old guy any day. It would be this phenomenon that would make men better at being pastors and ministers as well. The way men and women counterbalance each other is so vital to each gender that if one is left out of the equation, then things get skewed.