Chapter 8
Setting Women Free for Ministry
It is ironic that evangelicalism, which gave birth to the women's rights movement, not only has deserted its offspring but has become its most vitriolic opponent. Why such a reversal? The reasons are many and complex. We have already dealt extensively with the first: namely, the rise of biblical literalism in which isolated verses have been ripped out of context and used as clubs to bludgeon women back into their traditional status of subservience, submissiveness, and silence.
A second reason for Evangelicals distancing themselves from feminism is theological. It is rooted in a concept of God weighted heavily, if not totally, on the side of male metaphors. From this arises a renewed commitment to the idea that men can better represent God before the congregation than can women.
Third, and even more critical, is the misunderstanding of, and virulent reaction to, the feminist movement. Feminism, like most movements, is defined by its extremists on the one hand and its critics on the other. And women preachers are often lumped together with them. Feminism has been blamed for all that is wrong in marriages, families, and society today. Women engaged in professional
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ministry only accentuate the problem, in the eyes of these critics.
The final reason for the eclipse of women in ministry is practical: that is, doors of opportunity have increasingly closed to them — sometimes noisily, sometimes quietly, but nonetheless tightly. Jesus' warning that "many are called but few are chosen" (Matt. 22:14) is certainly the case in that many gifted Christian women continue to be called by God but few are allowed to enter into ministry by our male-dominated and -controlled church. Our entrenched resistance to them has not yielded to a quiet, reasonable approach. Rather, we force them to consider the aggressive, divisive, and militant strategies of some secular feminists. We leave them with no other choices except stridency or departure.
Two thousand years of Church history have shown that heroic women have, in every generation, made sustained, noble, and vital contributions to the Church and the cause of Christ.1 Yet, like caged eagles, women have been restricted from stretching their wings to the fullest. They have been unable to soar into the stratosphere of the "upward call of God in Christ Jesus" (Phil. 3:14, NASB). Sadly, the Body of Christ has been deprived of the full measure of what they, and only they can offer.
Rena Yocom, a diaconal minister in the United Methodist church, tells the story about two elderly sisters who, one Christmas, received a silk flower arrangement from an estranged sister. They examined the gift and decided they did not want it. The arrangement did not match anything in their house. Besides, they judged that such an expensive gift was inappropriate given their sister's small pension. And so they "ungifted" the gift, sending it back to their sister. Then she draws the analogy: "Women have time and time again had the painful experience of the church 'ungifting' our gifts. Our gifts are often deemed
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undesirable because they do not match the ecclesial furniture or because they are not like anything anybody has envisioned . . . This 'ungifting' is denial, denial of the giver as well as the gifts."2
The time has come to "proclaim release to the captives" (Luke 4:18), strike the chains, and throw open the gates that the "King of glory may come in" (Ps. 24:7) on the wings of words uttered in the feminine voice. We cannot afford to tolerate a status quo that denies a significant majority of God's people the right and privilege of responding to the full measure of God's call upon their lives, simply because of physiology. Prisoners rarely have the power to liberate themselves. Male guardians of the "sacred flame" of gospel preaching must die out to their own lust for power and dominance and become aggressively proactive in attacking prejudicial mind-sets, in challenging restrictive structures, and in confronting the inertia of a deeply entrenched discriminatory patriarchal system. There are four fronts, in particular, where the issue must be raised and the battle pressed on behalf of equal opportunity for women in church ministry.
BIBLICAL EMANCIPATION
There were many scrolls of Hebrew Scriptures that could have been handed to Jesus on that day when He stood up to read in the Nazareth synagogue, but divine providence dictated that it would be the Book of Isaiah. There were many powerful passages from which He could have preached His first sermon: some thundering forth with dire warnings about the wrath of God ready to exterminate sinners, others eloquently prophesying the coming of the Messiah of God. But no; He deliberately searched until He "found the place where it was written: 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim
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release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor'" (Luke 4:17-18, emphasis added).
There are many ways in which the Bible can be read, interpreted, and used. It can become an instrument of condemnation, as it was for the law-obsessed Jews of Jesus' and Paul's time. It has been used to forge chains that have bound whole races and generations of people into the "vile institution of slavery," as John Wesley called it. It is being used by evangelical submissionists as a billy club to beat married women into mindless, dehumanizing subservience to their husbands. And it continues to be used as a "swift and terrible sword" to cut down women who would dare approach the sacred precincts of the pulpit.
William David Spencer tells about his wife, Aida, who though not having been reared in an evangelical family, blithely went off to seminary soon after becoming a Christian, to learn more about Jesus. While sitting in the Princeton Seminary cafeteria at a table full of evangelical brothers one day, she was accosted with this challenge, "What are you doing in seminary when women aren't suppose to speak?" All she had said, up to that point, was "Hello." They laughed it off and went on to other topics. Aida was stunned. In her five years as a Christian, she had never heard 1 Cor. 14:34-35 applied to her. Aida's husband relates her response: "What troubled her was the implied challenge that women had no right to learn in seminary. Such a conclusion seemed to strike at the very core of all that Christianity had revealed itself to be to her. Was not Jesus engaged in making all believers his disciples?"3
This launched her on a quest to master the New Testament in its original language, in order to resolve the dilemma of how Paul could write instructions prohibiting women from speaking or teaching in church and yet surround himself with so many women whom he warmly
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commends as "fellow workers in Christ Jesus" (Romans 16:3, NASB). The result was a landmark work of careful exegesis upon which this defense of women preachers has relied heavily, Beyond the Curse.4 Looking at the well-worn texts through a woman's eyes has yielded insights that even the most sympathetic of male exegetes would probably not have noticed.
The time has come for all of us to repent of turning the Scriptures into a "letter [that] kills" (2 Cor. 3:6). Most women engaged in professional ministry — past and present — testify to constant harassment by those who assault them with Bible verses. Certainly, there is no "letter" that has wounded them — even "killed" their resolve to follow God's call — more than the Pauline texts we have examined in some depth. Instead of binding women in chains forged from atomized and decontextualized scripture verses, we must aggressively preach the gospel of the "Spirit of life in Christ Jesus," which sets them free "from the law of sin and death" (Romans 8:2).
From Genesis to Revelation the Bible celebrates God's "Emancipation Proclamation" for all peoples from sin, death, and all that would diminish their lives. It rejoices in the human beings — male and female — created in freedom under God. It weeps over their freedom lost in the Garden of Eden. It does not shrink from recording the oppressive, enslaving, and destructive consequences of sin. It exults in a God who will not let sin and death have the last word but who intervenes redemptively, as early as Genesis 3, in forgiving sins, binding up the brokenhearted, clothing the naked, and setting captives free. It rises to its highest peaks in the Exodus event under the old covenant, and the death-resurrection of Christ in the new. Not only does it proclaim that "the truth will make you free," but Jesus declares that "if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed" (John 8:32, 36).
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While the Bible candidly acknowledges and faithfully records, on almost every page, that "the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now," yet it anticipates that glorious day when "the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God" (Romans 8:22, 21, NASB, emphasis added) — female as well as male children of God. The Bible was written, not to oppress but to liberate, not to discourage but to encourage, not to enslave but to emancipate. If we are to ever witness the healing of the seismic split that continues to divide the Church along gender lines, more than passive quietism is called for. We must take the initiative, seize the Scriptures even as Jesus did, and deliberately proclaim that which we believe to be its central, overarching, and fundamental message: namely, that of "good news" about God's acceptance of women on an equal footing with men; that of "release to the captives," women so long enslaved by men; that of "recovery of sight to the blind" — men blinded by the egoism of male-dominance and women blinded by truncated submissionism texts; that of setting free those God-called and Spirit-filled women who have been so callously and cruelly "oppressed"; and, finally, that of "proclaim[ing] the year of the Lord's favor" upon all of His handmaidens under the dispensation of the Holy Spirit.
Rena Yocum tells about a pastor's widow who answered a congregation's call to become their new pastor when her husband died, attending seminary while pastoring. A plumber's services were needed at the parsonage. The young apprentice asked the woman whether her husband was the preacher. "No, I am," she said. The plumber was shocked: "Don't you know that Paul told women to be silent in church?" Gently, the pastor replied, "Bless you, child. Paul didn't call me. God did!" That woman was
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Leontine Kelley, who went on to become a bishop in the United Methodist church.5
ENLARGING OUR VISION OF GOD
God himself may have said, "I am God and not man" (Hosea 11:9, NASB), but it is hard for us to imagine Him as anything other than male. God as "Father" conveys images of masculinity, sovereignty, and patriarchy. These are dominant in the Scriptures, deeply engraved upon the human psyche, and exceedingly difficult to dislodge.
It is a truism that people tend to become like the gods they serve. This is certainly the case in considering the matter of God's gender and the issue of women preachers. If God has revealed himself (not herself) as our Heavenly Father (not Mother), if Jesus was truly incarnate as a man (not a woman), and if we hold that "in him [not her] the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily" (Col. 2:9), then it would seem to follow that He is more transparently and exactly represented before the congregation of God's people by males than by females.
Admitting the power of words, especially personal pronouns, to form deep and evocative concepts of God, we must nevertheless face the limits of language and its analogies. For instance, if the fact that Jesus was incarnate as a male human being indicates that God is male as opposed to female, then why shouldn't we affirm that God is a Jew as opposed to a Gentile? Furthermore, if the Church is the "bride of Christ," then why shouldn't it follow that women ought to have the predominance since they more exactly reflect the true gender and nature of the Church?
We must steadfastly resist making too much of anthropormorphic images of God in the Scriptures, for "God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth" (John 4:24). He is neither male nor female but
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beyond all gender differentiation. Thus, to literalize figurative descriptions of God is both heretical and idolatrous.
On the other hand, we must also avoid the opposite error of not taking seriously the manifold ways in which God has chosen to reveal himself through language images and symbols in the Scriptures. If God was to disclose himself as a "person" and not a "thing" or "force," it was necessary that He squeeze himself into the narrow framework of human concepts, with all of its limitations, including gender specificity. While many ancient cultures were able to conceive of — and worship — a mother-goddess, that was an impossibility for the Israelites, especially given the patriarchal structure of their families and tribal lives.
It is true that the Bible does employ mostly male pronouns, metaphors, and images in speaking of God. Yet this is not exclusively the case. For instance, God sews, clothes, and cooks food — strictly a woman's work in biblical times (Gen. 3:21; Exod. 16:4; Neh. 9:21). God conceives, births, and suckles His children — all exclusively female roles ( Isa. 42:14-16; 45:9-10; 46:3-4). He is even described as the perfect midwife (Psalm 22:9; 71:6). When the Israelites think that God has abandoned them in exile, He asks, "Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb?" (Isaiah 49:15). David speaks of the profound rest he experiences when he trusts God "like a child quieted at its mother's breast" (Psalm 131:2, RSV). To the returned exiles God promises: "As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem" (Isaiah 66:13). Isaiah chapters 40 through 66 are heavily laced with mothering metaphors.
Fathers may leave nurturing young children to mothers, but not God. "It was I who taught Ephraim to walk, . . . I bent down to them and fed them" (Hosea 11:3-4). God compares himself, in His protective care of His people, to a mother eagle that "stirs up its nest, and hovers over its
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young; as it spreads its wings, takes them up, and bears them aloft on its pinions: (Deut. 32:11). Likewise, Jesus utilizes a mothering metaphor when he cries in anguish, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem . . . How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling" (Matthew 23:37, NASB). As a lioness or mother bear feeds and protects her young, so does God guard and provide for His people (Isaiah 31:4; Hosea 13:8; Lam. 3:10-11).
It is apparent that God himself ignored man-defined conventions and revealed himself, numerous times and in many ways, through the use of female pronouns, symbols, and analogies. This underscores something we noted earlier about the original creation of human being in His own image as "male and female": namely, there is something in the character and nature of God that corresponds to the woman as fully as to the man. Conversely, there are unique and vital dimensions of God that can be disclosed more transparently and authentically through females than males. Aida Spencer puts it succinctly:
If the Bible uses feminine imagery to mirror certain aspects of God, should not the church allow women leaders to reflect God similarly? For God is like mothers and like females in that God has the capacity to bear burdens, to produce life, to save, to perform the inexplicable, to be compassionate, to calm, to comfort, to care, to protect, to help, to love, to bring joy, to command fear and immediate response, to intimidate, to destroy, to guide, to educate, to feed, to persevere, to develop, to rule, and to be merciful . . . The church indeed will be "happy" if it follows our God, freeing woman from the curse of the evil tree to become the fruitful tree of life God intends her to be.6
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Amalie Shannon expresses the frustration and hope of women ministers everywhere when she writes about the need of the church to enlarge its vision of God: Weary of expending our energies on efforts to be recognized, we covet a theology that embraces all humanity on the same level of grace. Our vision for women emerging into new roles in our church is one in which God's will is that we, women and men, are one in Christ Jesus."7
God, as He is in himself, lies far beyond the stretch of human imagination and the boundaries of descriptive language. If we must speak of Him in gender-specific terms — and we must since the Scriptures do, then let us be careful not to squeeze Him into our narrow, biased, and prejudicial mold to where He is perceived as favoring one gender above another. Even after Pentecost, Peter persisted in an inherited and deeply ingrained loathing of all Gentiles, particularly the hated Roman oppressors. While praying on a rooftop in Joppa, however, he had a startling vision that shattered his racial prejudice. His vision of God was so enlarged that he exclaimed, in the house of Cornelius, a despised Roman centurion no less, "I most certainly understand now that God is not one to show partiality" (Acts 10:34, NASB). If God deals graciously and impartially with Jew and Gentile, then why not female and male as well? While thankful for the gift of language and the ways in which it discloses God's character and nature to us, we must, ultimately, bow with the apostle Paul and confess, "O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! . . . For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen." (Romans 11:33,36).
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WOMEN PREACHERS AND RADICAL FEMINISTS
It must be candidly admitted that forces unleashed by the equal rights movement have been part of the mix of complex sociological and cultural factors contributing to the destabilization of society's primal institution, the family. Having gained access to an education, the political process, and a strong foothold in the work force, women have acquired an independence never before enjoyed. Equal rights has laid an axe at the roots of the patriarchal family with its clearly delineated hierarchy and sharply defined roles. It has empowered women to take their lives and destinies into their own hands. Wives no longer are forced to remain in an abusive or dehumanizing marriage. Men often experience crises of identity in the face of assertive and successful females, both in the workplace and at home. The problems caused by this upheaval — particularly as they impinge upon the family — are real, urgent, and not likely to go away soon. But the existence of these problems does not nullify the validity of women's God-given aspirations.
We must face the fact that all freedom movements in history have been disruptive. The liberation of the children of Israel from slavery left Egypt devastated and bankrupt. The gospel of freedom from the tyranny of the law, won by Jesus and preached by Paul, precipitated a rupture within the covenant community of God's people that has yet to be healed. Martin Luther's reformation, setting Christians free from the tyranny of works righteousness, led not only to a seismic fracture in the monolithic Roman Catholic church but also to the scandalous proliferation of Christian denominations and sects. The high-minded, biblically based, evangelically driven crusade to set slaves free embroiled the United States in its bloodiest conflict ever and nearly destroyed the Union. The civil rights struggle divided our
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nation as no other issue in this century. The current right-to-life movement is tearing apart families, dividing churches, and inflaming communities as no other issue. Freedom movements call into question the status quo, challenge entrenched traditions, and have always upset the equilibrium.
Yet what is the alternative? Dictatorship? Slavery? Bondage? The domination of the weak by the strong? Back to the "good old days" of rigid patriarchy where families were more stable but women less free? And less human? Families where fathers exercised absolute power over their children and could slap, whip, beat, and kill their offspring with impunity? Or sell them into slavery, or expel them from the family (as Abraham did with Ishmael), or even offer them up to their gods as blood sacrifices (as Abraham almost did and Manasseh succeeded in doing)?
History teaches that while freedom destabilizes, it also generates unimaginable new possibilities. From Egypt's ashes came the covenant people of God. Out of fractured Judaism emerged Christianity. Beyond the upheaval that tore apart the monolithic and autocratic Catholic church came a reformed, revitalized, and democratized Body of Christ in which diversity has proven to be one of its most positive assets. From the blood, flame, and smoke of our young country's conflagration over slavery, and the subsequent civil rights upheaval, has arisen a nation that is stronger, richer, and nobler. And out of the equal rights movement we are beginning to see quality, love-bonded marriages emerge that have enriched family life — not to mention a focused concern for the education and welfare of children unprecedented in human history.
Why, then, shouldn't we expect to see arise, out of the current ferment over women's full participation in ministry, an entirely new dimension of spiritual vitality and church renewal? We have already had a taste of it in the
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19th- and early 20th-century evangelical equal rights movement. It would be hard to argue that the cause of Christ has been retarded or irreparably damaged because of women preachers. To the contrary, one can only wonder what today's evangelical and holiness churches might look like — not to mention the world missions enterprise — if the venturesome and courageous women preachers of an earlier generation had succumbed to the letter of the law and kept silent. We do not have to look far to see what might happen if we dare to unchain God-called and Spirit-filled women and set them free. Let us consider one notable 20th-century example.
Henrietta Mears reigned for 35 years as the dean of evangelical women, and she wielded unprecedented influence from her position as director of Christian education at Hollywood Presbyterian Church (1928-63). She has been credited with doing more to dignify the work of Sunday Schools than any other person in history. Though she neither sought nor received ordination, she nevertheless became one of the most popular and widely traveled Bible teachers and preachers of her generation. She authored over a dozen widely circulated books and numerous Bible study series.
She exercised phenomenal leadership initiative by launching more organizations than any other evangelical leader. She founded the National Sunday School Association, started the Greater Los Angeles Sunday School Association, established Forest Home Christian Conference Center, inaugurated Gospel Light Publications, initiated GLINT — a missionary organization formed to translate and distribute Christian publications around the world — and was the prime mover behind the Hollywood Christian Association, which has made an incalculable impact for Christ upon the entertainment communities.
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In addition to the thousands who committed their lives to Christ, over 400 men and women were called into vocational Christian service under her ministry. The list includes such notable evangelical leaders as Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ; Jim Rayburn of Young Life; Dr. Irwin Moon of Moody's Institute of Science; Richard C. Halverson, who for decades has wielded enormous influence as pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C.; Don Moomaw, former UCLA All-American football player and now highly respected pastor of the Bel Aire Presbyterian Church; Rafer Johnson, Olympic decathlon champion; Dick Halverson of World Vision; Paul Carlson, medical missionary who martyrdom in Africa inspired hundreds of others to take up the cause of world missions; and many more.
Billy Graham sought out Henrietta for counsel on how to be filled with the Holy Spirit prior to his historic 1949 Los Angeles Crusade. While at Forest Home he fought the spiritual battle of his life. He recalls, "I remember walking down a trail, trampling alone in the world, almost wrestling with God. I dueled with my doubts, and my willingness to be centered in the cross-fire. Finally, in desperation, I surrendered my will to the living God as revealed in Scripture. Within six weeks we started the Los Angeles Crusade and the rest is history."8 He testifies that she has had more influence upon his life than any other person, apart from his mother and wife.
In the bosom of the entertainment world's capital — "sin city" — God raised up a woman who would, more than any other individual in the mid-20th century, enhance the cause of Christ across denominational lines through what has been broadly called the evangelical movement. One wonders what today's church would look like if this Spirit-filled and enormously gifted woman — an authentic example of a "biblical feminist" — had been prohibited
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from exercising her ministry in full measure solely on the basis of gender.
EXERCISING THE BARNABAS PRINCIPLE
Unlike the secular arenas of work and politics, professional ministry in the church is carried out "by invitation only." Jesus did not take it upon himself to enter into the stream of humanity: God sent Him. Neither did He suddenly appear in Galilee and get on with preaching. He waited for a fitting introduction by John the Baptist and an appropriate ordination by the Holy Spirit following His baptism. The disciples did not volunteer to become apostles but were deliberately called, trained, and then sent out. They did not seize authority to preach but were commissioned by Jesus.
We may never have heard of Saul of Tarsus had not Barnabas, pastor of the church at Antioch, sought him out and invited him to participate in his ministry. The first missionary movement, which transformed Christianity from an obscure Jewish sect into the major world religion that it is today, may never have occurred if the church at Antioch had not fasted, prayed, and then given their official blessing to Paul and Barnabas through the laying on of hands before sending them on their way to preach to the Gentiles. Likewise, if Barnabas and Peter had not reached out and made a place of service for young John mark, the church's first "missionary dropout," the Gospel of Mark may never have been written, nor Matthew and Luke who borrowed heavily from its contents. No wonder Barnabas was called "son of encouragement" (Acts 4:36).
Likewise, not much is going to happen to set women free until local church leaders, pastors, and denominational officials aggressively reach out and invite them to participate more actively in public ministry. It is just as unreasonable to expect that women preachers, teachers,
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educators, theologians, and leaders will emerge, entirely on their own, full grown and mature — like bumblebees — as to imagine that male ministers come that way. All God-called and Spirit-filled potential ministers are "dead in the water" until someone in a position of authority recognizes their gifts, invites them to participate in increasingly responsible forms of ministry, supports them in times of challenge, and encourages them along the way. It is only by active involvement in ministry that natural gifts can be developed, skills learned, experience gained, and potential actualized. The attention and nurture we so readily extend to our male professional ministry aspirants must be extended to our women as well. Since there are so few role models for women in public ministry, this whole process will have to be shepherded with uncommon dedication and extraordinary effort. It will have to be coupled with a teaching ministry to the church, helping congregations face and transcend their inherited antipathy toward women, and be ready to accept them in positions of public ministry and leadership.
One way to begin this process is to democratize worship and deliberately include women in all aspects of church work and administration. Why not women ushers as well as men? And women included among those who serve Holy Communion? Why not encourage greater participation of women on church boards and councils — a not unreasonable objective considering the fact that most of the real work of the church is done by women? Is God offended if an invocation or pastoral prayer is lifted in a feminine voice among the congregation of His people? Are holy Scriptures desecrated if handled and read by a woman? Since women are welcomed as church musicians and soloists, why not as ministers of music? In that people have grown accustomed to hearing prime-time news from female reporters, receiving instruction from female teachers
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and professors, healing from the hands of women doctors, representation by female attorneys and politicians, then why not women worship leaders and preachers? Like all innovations, it might take some getting used to, but aren't the potential benefits in terms of evangelism and enrichment infinitely worth the effort?
When vacancies occur on pastoral staffs, why not search for the best qualified person to fill the position, whether male or female? Does this not, however, raise the delicate issue of men and women working closely together as a pastoral team? Not any more so than male pastors working with female secretaries.
If women begin to emerge in church leadership and public ministry, isn't there a danger that they might displace men? Not any more so than when younger or more qualified leaders and ministers displace older and less productive men. What opening the doors to women offers is the opportunity for the church's ministry to multiply its redemptive impact because of more laborers in the harvest. Furthermore, women bring to the church not only a unique way of communicating divine truth but a whole different leadership style. Kathleen Hurty points out how Mary, the mother of Jesus, may serve as a prototype for women ministers: "Hers is a model marked by her experience of poverty, her willingness to be vulnerable, her deliberation and decision-making, her reliance on the Holy Spirit, her doubt, and her delight. These are marks of partnership . . . Partnership with God and with one another excludes the practices of domination and subordination. God's mercy is not passed down from a hierarchical pinnacle but bestowed by God's presence with us where we are."9
Monika Hellwig adds that the exclusion of women in past ages may actually equip them to be more effective ministers in the future. She suggests that
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because women have for the most part been excluded from roles of dominance in the churches, it may well be that they have learned a more characteristically Christian approach to the task of leadership — patterns of horizontal leadership or true ministry, leadership by the evoking of consensus, community building in the wisdom of the Holy Spirit . . . Such a position also provides protection against arguments based on the authority of office that are not also based on the authority of experience and faithful listening to the experience of others. Moreover, one who speaks from a position of exclusion is more likely to speak on behalf of the excluded and is more likely to speak out of compassion.10
Women comprise the largest group of underutilized potential ministerial work force in the church. Nearly half of all American adults are single (46 percent), and the majority of these are women. Even among the married, only a minority are actively engaged in full-time mothering of small children at any given time. Is it fair to deny a woman an opportunity to develop her gifts and pursue a calling that would actualize her own unique individual potential if she is unmarried? Or childless? Or has children who are grown and gone? Since the overwhelming majority of women in the church fall into one of these categories, does it make sense to exclude them from professional and lay ministries by forcing them into a traditional wife-mother-homemaker mold that simply does not apply?
Again, we do not have to look far in order to see what might happen if we dare to unleash women for the full range of ministry in the church. Dr. Paul Cho, pastor of the world's largest church, tells about a revolutionary change in his thinking that occurred in his ministry. The church he founded in Seoul, South Korea, experienced rapid growth in its early years, but leveled out at about 3,000 members. He worked himself into such a state of nervous exhaustion
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that he was sidelined for several months. Out of this crisis experience came two insights that were to trigger the most explosive growth of any church in the history of Christianity.
The first had to do with small groups. Like John Wesley, he began to see unlimited potential for church growth if the church could be built upon a foundation of intimate, personalized, and dynamic cell groups where believers would be held accountable to each other for their own spiritual growth and evangelism. Through exercising the principle of "divide and grow" the church would increase, not by addition but by multiplication — which indeed it has done. His second insight had to do with women. Cho writes:
God then showed me that we should use women as cell leaders. This was totally revolutionary to us, not only as conservative, Bible-believing Christians, but as Koreans. In Korea, as in most of the Orient, leadership is a man's business. The traditional role for women was to marry, have children, and keep a good and happy home. The husband is the provider and he is in complete control of his business and home life. Although we see things changing in Korea now, our culture still is basically male-oriented. So for women to be given positions of responsibility and authority in the church was more revolutionary than establishing the cell system itself.11
Then Cho relates how he had to work through, in his mind, the theological problem of how to interpret Paul's prohibitions regarding women speaking and teaching. However, he had to balance that over against Peter's Pentecost Day sermon in which both men and women were to preach under the anointing of the Holy Spirit. He also noted the many places where Paul encouraged female co-workers and fellow ministers in the preaching of the
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gospel and the work of the church. As he considered the fact that the first preachers of Christ's resurrection were women, and that nowhere did Jesus discriminate against them in any way, he says that
I decided to use women as cell leaders in my church. Once the women began to be used and we had overcome all of the ensuing obstacles . . . the men in the church became much more cooperative. In all of the years I have been teaching the cell system, I found that my female associates have been loyal and reliable. They have not rebelled and done their own thing, but have worked hard.
My advice to you then is, "Don't be afraid of using women."12
Paul Cho is leading the way in showing the entire church world that there is nothing to be afraid of in setting women free to minister on an equal footing with men. His church has long since passed the half-million mark in membership and shows no signs of leveling off.
CONCLUSION
We have reached a crisis point in the Wesleyan-Arminian holiness tradition. We are in danger of losing a major dimension of our spiritual and social heritage. We have allowed a strident fundamentalist and traditionalist force in our contemporary church world, which perpetuates the scandal of blatant sexist discrimination against women, to intimidate us and squeeze us into its narrow mold.
The choice before us is straightforward and urgent: Are we going to order our lives, as the people of God, under the dispensation of the curse where male domination and female subordination is the rule, or are we going to risk living in the freedom of the grace in which there is "no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus"? (Gal. 3:28). Are we going to live under the oppressive bondage of the law whereby gifted, God-called, and Spirit-filled women
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are forbidden to exercise their vocation simply because of gender — to the great loss of God's kingdom — or are we going to dare to live in the liberty of the Spirit where both men and women may hear and respond to the call of God to preach and where all may exercise their spiritual gifts for the edification of the Body of Christ and the evangelization of the world? How can we preach a glorious gospel of freedom from sin and yet tolerate keeping our God-called women in chains?
If the secular world sees the value of women and has learned to trust them in virtually all areas of service and leadership, can we as God-freed, God-filled Kingdom dwellers continue in such a God-dishonoring manner? Should we not bear uncompromised witness to the freedom of Christ by encouraging women to preach and teach, by soliciting (and heeding) their advice and expertise on church and denominational boards? How can we persist in demeaning the witness of grace by this kind of dehumanizing and debasing discrimination against our mothers, wives, daughters, and sisters in Christ — those choice and chosen persons whom God created in His own image and for whom Christ died? Can we continue to countenance a spirit of passive resistance that effectively blocks women from actualizing their God-given and Spirit-anointed call?
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1. For excellent surveys of women in Church history, see Elise Boulding, The Underside of History: A View of Women Through Time; Edith Deen, Great Women of the Christian Faith; Barbara J. MacHaffie, Her Story: Women in Christian Tradition; George H. Tavard, Women in Christian Tradition; and Ruth Tucker and Walter L. Liefeld, Daughters of the Church. [BACK]
2. Rena M. Yocum, "Presents and Presence," Women and Church, Melanie May, ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 70. [BACK]
3. Spencer, Beyond the Curse, 141. [BACK]
5. Yocom, Women and Church, 71. [BACK]
6. Spencer, Beyond the Curse, 131. [BACK]
7. Amalie R. Shannon, "A Lutheran Woman Looks at the Decades," Women and Church, 64. [BACK]
8. Ethel May Baldwin and David V. Benson, Henrietta Mears (Glendale, Calif.: Gospel Light, 1966), 278-79. [BACK]
9. Kathleen S. Hurty, "Ecumenical Leadership," Women and Church, 94-95. [BACK]
10. Monika K. Hellwig, "Foreward," ibid., xii. [BACK]
11. Paul Y. Cho, More than Numbers (Waco, Tex.: Word, 1984), 43-44. [BACK]
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another book at the online library?