“... the message about Christ is being preached either way, so I rejoice. And I will continue to rejoice.”
An adaptation, condensation and snapshot of a series of actual conversations:
F: S, thanks for putting me on to that book. It was great! Incredible really, one of the best on the subject in print.
S: Great! Glad to hear you enjoyed it. Will you be adopting it for any of your classes or recommending it to any of your colleagues?
F: Well… maybe selectively to a select few colleagues… But even that with some qualification
S: I thought you just said that it was one of the best books on the subject?
F: It is.
S: Why wouldn’t you recommend it then?
F: Well, while this book is fantastic, the author has one sentence in there where he alludes to having a view of women in ministry that I think a lot of students and colleagues may get hung up on?
S: One sentence?
F: Yeah, in the beginning of the book, he indicates that he and his wife pastored a church some time back.
S: Does that come out in any of the theology of the book?
F: No
S: Is his wife still a pastor whatever that may mean?
F: I can’t tell, they are actually in a different country and at a new church, and she isn’t in the directory for leadership at his church’s website. If she is, it doesn’t seem like in any official capacity, but she does deliver some ‘talks’.
S: So a woman who teaches to more than just women?
F: Yes
S: [Thinking in the back of his mind… Kind of like Edith Schaeffer, or Esther Meek or any other number of women who minister in the same context, without the label of ordained ministry] So, you’re gonna hold back such an awesome resource just because of a sentence that points to a former ministry?
F: These are very particular people we are ministering too, easily tripped up by such things
S: Hmmm
F: No really, they could easily dismiss the profundity of what the author has to say because they will get tripped up on that issue.
S: [Frustrated with the insanity of knowing what F is saying to be true] Why don’t you just tell them that they have dropped the ball so egregiously in this area that God has judged them, and the principle they use of Deborah the Judge has come in to play… God is so frustrated in their petty discrimination and not fighting the same battle that the enemy s waging, so he has raised up a Man, who ministered or ministers with his wife (the most scandalous of all possible offenses) as a sign AND he is using them, these two ‘liberals’, as a prophetic voice to address an incredibly urgent matter.
F: Not funny.
It sounds silly, yet this situation still is rampant in evangelicalism. This conversation only begs the questions: If the leaders in the church are so petty as to not see all truth as in Christ (i.e. coming from and founded in and ending with him), if they cannot learn from anyone who has not dotted their theological ‘i’s and crossed their doctrinal ‘t’s how fit for leadership are they, much less engaging the real world that we are living in? Is sifting the wheat from the chaff isn’t something they are willing to do, unless the person is not only wheat producing but even beyond that only produces a certain kind of wheat, what are the really doing (and undoing)?
Are we worried about a weaker brother who is set aside to lead the sheep (and beget more weaker brothers?) or are we really dealing with a swine whom we have mistaken to be a sheep, despite how he looks and acts? Either way, why are we treading on eggshells as we cast our pearls before him - IF -we even dare to cast a pearl before him.
Perhaps its time for for the swine should stop nursing on milk and make try masticating some meat (that isn’t lamb). Try being the operative word. If it proves too scandalous, then deep surgery is needed. Breaking out the scalpel might not be enough - have your butchers knives ready and settle in for some good slow cooked BBQ.