Back in the fall of 2013, I was asked by my church to serve on the Pastor Search Team. It was a long but very rewarding process, which came to a close in March of 2015 when our church elected its first woman to serve as Senior Pastor. In many denominations this may have not been such a big deal, but for a church such as ours with Southern Baptist roots, it was. There is a part of me, which wanted to describe it as a huge event (after all, don’t we all want to say we have been instigators of change or revolutions – ha, ha); but in reality, our congregation had been on this path for a while. Women had served in the role of deacon for well over a decade. Even one woman served as chair of deacons during one term. When I say this, you have to keep in mind, we’re Baptists. So, in our case, the church is an independent body which elects deacons to essentially serve as its board of directors. It’s not their only function, but they have been traditionally viewed as the governing body of the church. Therefore, if you looked at our organization like a corporation, you might say the senior pastor serves as the top executive or President (if you will) handling the day to day functions. And like any President or top executive, they serve at the discretion of the church (shareholders) whom the deacons (board of directors) represent. So, to have a woman serve as chair of the deacons is to demonstrate, at least in a symbolic sense, a comfort with women taking on authoritative roles in the church.
Despite our history with women serving in leadership roles and the fact we had ordained a handful of women as ministers, the Pastor Search Team still received questions from the congregation regarding the possibility and the ultimate eventuality of a woman serving as head pastor. Thinking the matter had been settled long ago (in my mind), I admit I didn’t understand the questions or uncertainty around the idea. However, our team very much respected and appreciated the sentiments of all those in our church body and spent a lot of time in prayer seeking discernment and guidance from the Holy Spirit on the matter. And for me, I spent a lot of time searching through Scripture back in the fall of 2014 attempting to understand what the Bible said on the matter and how to interpret passages like 1 Timothy 2:1-15. It was actually a fun and interesting exercise and help me develop a new appreciation for the Bible and what it means to interpret it.
So, with that bit of a backdrop, I’d like to share with you my notes which I gathered up in a bit of a narrative. I’m going to need to break it up into parts since the total length of the essay goes for 14-15 pages, which is a bit crazy (never thought I could write that much on a single subject). But, it’s a fascinating topic requiring the investigation of many, many different parts of the Bible, both Old and New Testament. After all, we have to remember when someone like Paul reflects on the Gospel, he’s writing about Scripture (in his case, the Old Testament) as understood through the life of Jesus. His encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus changed his perspective on the religion (its ideas, practices and principles) he thought he knew and the faith he was so zealous to protect. Christ changed his perspective about what it meant to follow God and to live out his commands. His perspective on the Torah changed. His preconceived notions about God and Scripture were uprooted on the road to Damascus. They were ultimately discarded and replaced with a fresh perspective. A new interpretation.
I have to admit I often wonder how much of what we think we know about God, church and how we approach church needs to be uprooted and discarded. In other words, what does Scripture say to us as a people of God after we have walked our own road to Damascus and encountered the blinding love of Christ? After all, if someone like Paul – that is, the ultimate religious person of his day, the one who was the self-described “Pharisee of Pharisees”, the guy who knew the Scriptures the best – if he could have it all wrong, what makes us think we have it all figured out just because we happened to grow up in a church who just happens to believe only men can serve in leadership roles. But, if we are to take the Bible seriously, then we need to continue to remind ourselves the blinding light of Christ allowed Paul to see the story of God’s people in a brand new way. We must take Paul’s story seriously. It’s our responsibility. Obviously, before the road to Damascus, Paul was a dedicated but misguided servant of God. We could be too.
As I mentioned in my last post, there was a time when many Southern Baptists believed the Bible justified owning slaves. Any one of us could have been the child who grew up in a family who believed Paul condoned owning slaves and could have gone to the grave thinking we had understood the Bible perfectly. And yet today, we view this issue a lot differently, don’t we? We would readily admit the Southern Baptists of their day took these passages out of context. So, the only point I want to make in closing is this: I can’t help but think that if the way we interpret passages in the Bible creates any level of inequality or subordination within the human race, it should be questioned. It should raise some eyebrows. We should be very skeptical. History is on the side of the skeptics. Experience is too.
Fair enough?
Now, what will follow over the next several posts are articles concerning the subject of how one person understands the Bible concerning women’s roles in the church. I’ll state up front that much of my thinking follows NT Wright’s views on this subject, which can be found in his book Surprised by Scripture and, actually, in an article you can access on-line for free. Needless to say, Wright is a very well-respected New Testament scholar and one could do a lot worse when searching out commentary on the subject. Even so, what I try to do and what I hope you find in this series of articles is my attempt at taking these perspectives and evaluating them in terms of my own experience with Scripture and life. Perhaps you will do the same. Not sure we will come to the same conclusions and I think we will have to be okay with that. Peter, Paul and Barnabas didn’t always agree either and God still found a way to spread the love of Christ anyways. It’s okay to disagree. Disagreements in the church are not new.
So, with all that said, I’ll just close with this final thought: if any one happens to stumble across this blog (pun intended) and decides to read through all the entries, I hope you enjoy, but I hope most of all each and every one of us experiences our very own road to Damascus moment as we seek to understand this ancient book we call the Bible. Grace and Peace everyone.