Proclaimer Blog
Complementarian ministry
Those of us who are complementarian in our view of men’s and women’s roles in the church have some confessing to do. Because we always feel we’ve been fighting a battle against egalitarianism (battle not a helpful word, really), we’ve often defined women’s roles in the church in terms of what we believe is prohibited in Scripture. I understand why we’ve done that, but we’ve made a huge mistake by not being more positive. For any kind of ministry should be primarily defined by what it is, not what it is not. If you went for a new job and they handed you a job description which listed 10 things you could not do, and none you could, you’d be aghast!
I don’t think we’ve really thought this through enough and the danger we will find is that women’s ministry in the church gets relegated to children’s work and some biblical counselling. Both of course are valuable ministries, but they are not the extent of what we believe about complementarian roles. Or they shouldn’t be.
I wonder, how does it work in your church? Have you really thought about this? Have your leadership teams sat down and considered this prayerfully and scripturally? More likely, I imagine you think this is a debate that’s been done already and we’ve moved onto other issues. But the paucity of good, thought through women’s roles in churches in the UK rather reveals that not to be the case.
It’s one of the key reasons we’ve appointed Carrie Sandom to be our new Director of Women’s Ministry – not just to help train those who come to us, but to be a help to the wider church in thinking these issues through. We have a great opportunity. Some wrong turns now could set us back years. How does it work, chez vous?