There was something that was lurking in the background. Rarely is a topic so divisive and guaranteed to cause upset as Women's ministry. We could say the above for a range of theological topics. Who agrees on the nature of the Trinity? How do you do church meetings? Other topics affect us personally and deeply. As we disagree about other topics, we still walk side-by-side, negotiating the way forward together.
But for women's ministry, men and women assume opposite sides. Backs go up. Our words betray our thinly veiled accusations "I don't have a problem with...". That is, YOU have the problem. Touchy, touchy...Why so belligerent? This is THE topic that is inextricably linked with the curses in Gen 3:16. It is the only curse which involves men and women ~ and they are locking horns. Like it or not, we are more likely to sin with this one.
*Should say that this precursor discussion wasn't the least bit upsetting for anyone. It was a nice way to acknowledging the 'elephant in the room'. We didn't get much further than this beginning, but it was a very good beginning.
Christian community is a wonderful gift from God.
Later that night, I had a wonderful opportunity to "run around the paddock", chase all the questions, air heresies to see how far we could take them and bounce off each other without hurting other kids. Some beautiful women training for a lifetime of ministry and I were exploring the territory together. One had the very tricky situation of being hardwired for academia. All in all, I felt like we got somewhere.
3 comments:
Do you think there's a wide range of views in your chaplaincy group?
Is "running around the paddock" a metaphor for something? (i wasn't aware Moore had a paddock...)
Can you explain what you mean by "One had the very tricky situation of being hardwired for academia"?
It's hard to tell at this stage of the discussion, but it seems most people are "conservative".
tsehehe... yes it's a metaphorical paddock (phrase coined by L. Maddock!). No paddocks in Newtown. I just mean exploring our ideas fully and "going with" the heresy to see where it goes.
A friend is gifted with a large, analytical, academic brain and is very suited to academia. This is tricky because it's very hard to know how to preserve ideas of headship in lecturing and writing books. Is the lecture room church? What is teaching with authority? Is teaching in books authoritative? What's the difference between teaching church history / Greek / philosophy and doctrine / New Testament? tricky, tricky, tricky...
This is my second attempt at a comment on this post. If the first turns up, would you please delete it as it didn't sound quite how I had intended it (and my internet time is almost up, I won't be able to check for it).
I just wanted to say I am pleased that your discussion is helpful. Sometimes discussion is blocked before it even begins for fear of conflict.
It is interesting that you find men and women coming down on opposing sides of the issue. In my experience there were men studying at college in favour of women having the same roles as men in ministry and women in favour of them having different roles.
And, a little off the track, as I have been thinking a little about curse... (see here... do you think that men and women were cursed or just the ground and the snake? Did God curse Adam and Eve or do they just suffer as a result of the curse? (see Gen 3:14, 16, 17) Or is it implied without being stated? What do you think? (Not that you don't have enough to think about already).
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