Women in the Church

So I've been reading this book and it's messing me. It's answering questions that I didn't know my heart had been asking since I was a young girl watching my parents church plant. Is there a place in the Church for women outside of children and women's ministry and singing on the praise team?
Hmmmm ~

Honestly, it's easier to say there's not a place of greater worth and value for a "godly woman" outside of being a wife and mother. It's just cleaner, easier to support biblically and really, what man wants to deal with a woman in key leadership and her "emotions" over his stable male colleagues? Well, outside of the marketplace. ;)

And then I find myself at our local Bride, Christ Fellowship. No ceilings for women in ministry. My sisters are encouraged to function as their brothers. While it's not perfect and we are always learning and changing, it's beautiful. The Kingdom touching Earth. It's made me ask even more questions about what I've believed regarding women in the Church my whole life. Good questions...ones that reach out past my church and into the world.

Silk asks why we see so many talented, intelligent and gifted women seek careers in the marketplace rather than the Church? One of those reasons lies in the fact that if you have vision outside of setting up a women's retreat or organizing children's bible studies or administrating a male leader's schedule... you're just outta luck, sistah!

I'm so thankful for those women that the church has loved to hate who wanted a single mom working the same job as her male peer to make equal pay, attain a higher education, have the right to vote and the ability to be promoted even though she has a uterus and a greater amount of estrogen.  While we were busy judging her for getting a divorce, the equal rights leaders made a way for her to find venues for her gift set and not only that - she would be represented by others sisters in leadership. She would have a voice ~ albeit not as strong as her male friends, yet. ;)

So back to the book.

Silk tells the story of a church who had hundreds of visitors, but they just wouldn't stay. Signs and wonders, the prophetic, great worship; but folks weren't feeling pastored. So they left. They asked Silk and his friend to meet with the leadership to help process moving forward. They arrived and his friend said "Where are the women on your leadership team?" The response was that for the 17 years of the church there had never been any women at that level of leadership. His friend looked at the leaders and said "You have no women here on purpose, and that is the reason for your constraint. You have no women at the top levels of authority, influence, and decision-making in your environment. When you remove the woman from a family, the quality of her presence in removed from that family."

I love what a leader in our church movement, Susan Peters, says to women wondering about their place in the church, "Don't worry about being invited into leadership like your brothers. Just focus on Jesus. Because when you show up with Jesus that's all that matters and all that will make a difference."

What the Church has valued is being a wife and mother. I feel like I have some authority to speak about this because I'm doing both. Married an humble, godly man (the love of my life) and I'm a mother to six children. And I'll be the first to tell you that my husband and my children are not "my life." They are my honor and my joy and my current "job" in this BRIEF season of life. Did I mention that this season is BRIEF?? ;) But they are not my Treasure ~ my Treasure is Jesus.

When you preach a gospel of Jesus - and just Jesus - it makes things more clear. The things that matter are apparent.

I'm the first to tell a young mom that her greatest joy/calling/gift - really, AS A WIFE/MOTHER, is to raise her children and love her husband. Because creating a legacy is valuable and mothers shape the culture and the future by the way they raise their children. I even encourage her to stretch and make it work to stay at home and be present. Don't stress over having it all, because when you're a mom you can't. This mothering season will FLY. And I mean FLY. Do the mommy thing well, you'll be glad you did. Yet, I cannot extend that calling to my single friends and my friends who are barren. And casting the pallor of their "failure" at marriage/motherhood over them is from Hell. Marriage and motherhood are not the "highest calling" ~ being a son or daughter of the King, that is the highest calling.

Being a mother and a wife IS valuable because God created it. It's been my investment these past 20+ years. Yet, somehow Eve went from being created in the Image of God and named "ezer" after Him (the same name used for God himself more times in the Old Testament than any other name), walking with Him every day and charged like her brother to take care of this whole World to being something to be seen as less than and inferior because of her weaknesses. Because of this regulation put on her, women have learned down through the thousands of years to trust God or to lead a hopeless life. Because when you don't have a voice and you're not represented except through a man - you my dear had better damn well learn how to trust or you might as well give up. If you can't trust Him it really is hopeless as woman in our world.

But He's always seen us. Now I'm crying...like a girl ;) He's even chosen the lowliness placed on women to reveal His plans and ways through us many times. Women. Not because we are more valuable than our brothers, but because he is attracted to our weakness, our need, our oppression. What Hero doesn't want to rescue the locked up princess? What Hero wouldn't show up to Sarah, Ruth, Rahab, Esther, Elizabeth, Mary and Mary in the garden...

Obviously, I don't have it all figured out; but what I do know is that God values His daughters just as much as He does his sons. And that I'm not out for "equal rights", but desiring equal representation. Because something happens when women have a place at the table. The other part of God's image is revealed.