Steph Chen

“Complementarians are not denying women the right to use their gifts. There are plenty of places to use one’s gifts. The pulpit is one small forum that not even most men get to use. I return to an earlier question I posed, why do women desire the pulpit so much?”

I appreciate Jeremy’s point and question. I am a complementarian-ish person and a woman who does believe that women can be gifted to teach and lead, even in a context with men. I think women desire the pulpit because they (1) can be gifted with the ability to use it well and (2) the church has been extremely uncreative in creating other venues where women can use that gift. Unfortunately, some venues that do exist (such as teaching other women) are usually only used by women who want to address “womanly” things (contentment, service, being a mom/wife…) instead of other (often more mentally stimulating :O) topics. If women with serious intellectual and communication gifts stopped treating other women as secondary, and instead saw it as an honor to teach them deep, provoking spiritual truths, a lot of the problem would be solved.

Lately however, I’ve been thinking about women teaching men. I wonder if we can distinguish between teaching as a ministry of communicating God’s wonderful truth and teaching as a position of spiritual authority and responsibility over the lives and walks of others. The latter type of teaching should be desired by few, even men (James points this out clearly). I do think, however, a woman teaching under the spiritual authority of a (male) pastor can do a tremendous amount of good and still be in line w/ God’s commands.

My reason is this: Although Eve ate the fruit first (and in my opinion, is responsible for her actions), God punished the earth because of Adam’s sin. Eve only got a personal physical punishment for child bearing, and got the promise of the future redeemer. God held Adam more greatly responsible for the same sin (at least, I think so given the scale of punishment. Whole earth, all living things, and mankind versus just women…) So a FEW men are to have that role of responsible shepherd (elders) that will be held accountable for how he led others. I think our individualistic culture fails to appreciate this responsibility and desires this type of leadership role too much.

Cheryl, since you’ve done a lot more research on this discussion than I have, could you let me know if you’ve come across anyone with similar views? I don’t think I’m an extreme egalitarian; I appreciate differences in the body whether they’re there by gender, age, or even culture. Yet I disagree with some points in the complementarian view.