I Tipped My Hand

     Today I tipped my hand.  With one slip of the tongue, I found myself letting my "complementarian" pastor know that I was outside the box of his denomination.  I'm leaving in four months or so to follow my Air Force husband out of the country; I've already abdicated any leadership position in the women's ministry arm; and I'm no immediate risk.  So I guess my timing could have been worse. 
    He and I are friends in the sense that we have had private and not-so-private conversations, but not in the sense that we understand one another in any profound way.  In this particular meeting I wanted to nail down one thing:  "Which pieces of the service could a lay person do?"   --Okay, maybe nail down two things, the other being, "How soon can we let some people besides the pastor up to the front of the church?"  His answer surprised me.  He explained that in the interest of being collaborative he was trying to postpone decision making about certain aspects of the service until he had an elder board in place.  Then, together, they would decide some of these issues.  As soon as the presbytery approved his selection of elders, the delay would cease.
     I honor what part of that was honorable: namely his desire to not run the show--though that meant that for all practical purposes he was running the show in the meantime.  But something in the way he explained caused my stumble.  He said, "I want to get an elder board in place to represent the congregation."  Knowing that our denomination doesn't allow female elders, I shot back (without thinking) ". . .at least half of the congregation."  He looked at me with confusion.  I clarified: "The elder board will represent half the congregation."  He remained befuddled.  "They will represent the male half of the congregation."  He leaned back and put his hands behind his head.  "Oh, the gender issue," he said.  He then went on to explain that in his twelve plus years of pastoring, he had found that women were amply represented by their communications with the elders through the elders' wives.
     Now, I know I drove him into a corner he wasn't expecting to be driven into on that particular morning, but his gut-level response didn't serve him very well.  How exactly do you honor women as co-heirs, when they are given manipulation-of-the-elders-through-their-wives as the primary means of having influence in the body of Christ?  And what strange office is this of elder's wife?  Must one show some kind of aptitude or training to obtain it?  Perhaps I should have offered to step into the position.  Or, as one of my friends suggested, perhaps we need a women's meeting to precede the elders' meeting.  Then the women could systematically address their concerns with the elders' wives.  Who could formally present those concerns to the elders.
     At any rate, however that little church plant sorts it all out after I'm gone, I tell this story as an example of the kind of thoughtlessness regular old soft misogyny engenders.  Perfectly decent folks end up saying things to others, that they themselves would never continence if directed back at them.  The law of love breaks down, and the more powerful lord it over the less powerful--in exact contradiction of Christ's call. 
     I'm struggling to extend grace back into this kind of environment, but I must find a way to do so because I do not want to respond in kind.  Jesus calls me to a kingdom that is made up neither of men lording it over women nor women over men.  Quite frankly, I don't have the personal power to walk this razor's edge between not allowing anyone to despise me because I am a woman and not in anyway degrading the despisers.  This kind of supernatural discernment must come from the One who loves women more than their (too often male) pastors love them, and who loves the women's pastors more than the women are able to love them. Together men and women of Christ must both keep their eyes on Jesus, or these rough storm waves will sink both sets of us.    

New Eyes

     I'm surprised at all the times it didn't start--this clear sense that God Almighty, maker of the universe, wanted his women in more than just a supporting roll.  It didn't happen when I watched my friends marry pastors instead of being pastors.  It didn't happen when I moved to the US at 18 and realized that "home churches" were often more conservative about women than "mission field" churches were.  It didn't even happen when my own set of God-given gifts didn't fit any of the gifts my church imagined for women.  Instead, It happened years later, when I heard the pastor of my little PCA plant-church say that he would not allow women to be ushers "at this time."
     I know he was trying to hold off on structural decisions until he got his all-male eldership in place; but maintaining the status quo is, in itself, a kind of decision--a precedence-setter.  I knew something was wrong.  So, I did what I have always done in times of confusion and pain: I went to the Bible and its author.  For months I poured over my Greek Interlinear Bible, cried over misogynistic commentaries, talked to God, read about ancient near Eastern culture, and cringed over learned men speaking demeaningly of women without even recognizing they were doing it.
     Slowly, like that weird car paint that looks completely different depending on the light, I found my understanding changing from what I had always simply imbibed to what I saw must be true:  Women should only ever be on exactly the same footing as men in the church.  God didn't even categorize his earthly children; he called them all sons and co-heirs with Christ.  This must have been quite a promotion for those ancient women to become sons of God.  (I thank the translators of gender-free Bibles to not sully this.) God wanted me in his project, all the way.  No abdicating on anything just because I was a woman.
     I have very little idea what it will look like for me as a woman to transition into actively being a priest in the priesthood of believers, a son among sons, a respondent to the great commission (Go preach, disciple, baptize!)  My church has never called me, as a female, to these things.  And who will guide me?
     So far, I have uncovered only what I am not:

--I am not someone who in any way wants to damage the actual body of Christ on earth.
--I am not someone who believes that having a woman in the pulpit is in anyway related to having a practicing gay person in the pulpit.
--I am not suddenly a Democrat.  I know it seems absurd to even mention politics in this context, but so many people have Democrat in the same pigeon hole as women preachers.
--I am not someone who has abandoned her conviction that the Bible is the unique word of God in the world, to be treasured, believed, and followed with all the regular, orthodox caveats, like "using context."
--I am not someone who has stepped away from Christ, but someone who has found herself feeling as though she were cheered on by him.
--I am not someone who thinks men are the problem.  I think men and women are together hostages to ideas they inherited.  (Men may in some cases have a greater vested interest in propagating the ideas, however.)
--I am not someone who wants women to aim to be like men in ministry.  I want to see Jesus shining out through his women with the same level of influence with which he is shining through his men.