Perhaps one of the greatest challenges for local churches right now is navigating potential controversies around how to understand the role of men and women in the local church. This reflects, a polarising between those holding to complementarian positions and those holding to egalitarian ones. How in practice can we address this in a way that honours God’s word and enables everyone to flourish and use their gifts for the benefit of the body and the glory of God?
The crucial word
I think there is a difference between how you lead through an issue and how you pastor through it. It’s about priorities. If we lead, then it can easily become about reaching the decision we want and getting as many of the church to come with us as possible. The focus is on keeping the church united around a position and protecting the mission of the church and if we are honest, our own reputation.
If we pastor, then the focus is on what glorifies God and what is best for the church family. We care solely about those things rather than our own reputation and needs. It also means that if we want to love the church, then we won’t let one secondary issue get in the way of that.
Get rid of unhelpful language
We have got used to seeing the words complementarian and egalitarian in academic type discussion and debate. I’m happy to use them in that context. It’s shorthand to help locate where we sit in the debate.
However, those words can become problematic in church life. First, they can cover over a variety of nuanced positions. This leads to polarisation, whereas sometimes when carefully listening to each other, complementarians and egalitarians may find that they have more in common with each other and indeed sometimes less in common with those that use the same label than might be assumed.
Secondly, the risk is that I use a label and take a position which tells me more about my assumptions about others than about what I think. All evangelicals should agree that we are made equal, all should agree that we are made different. We can end up presuming that others don’t believe in equality or don’t believe in the distinctions. The question should be more about how we apply both equality and distinction in our church.
We can end up assuming the worst of each other. Egalitarians might see complementarians as seeking to restrict and control power. Complementarians may assume that egalitarians are seeking to take power. Yet if we think the best of each other, we might find that simply we are all seeking to use our gifts for God’s glory and to do so in a way that is faithful to God’s Word.
The language makes the issue political and indeed gets us back into thinking about structures and institutions instead of family. So, for that reason I prefer not to use it in the local church.
I personally would happily drop other aspects of contentious language. For example, the word “elder” can load expectations, but it isn’t the only NT word and we can be hung up on office instead of gift. This is particularly important if we in effect have a word to describe one kind of role in the church but nothing to describe other, equally vital and precious roles. The risk is that we end up seemingly giving lip-service to the value of those people and gifts.
A family where everyone knows what they bring
One of the ways in which the Bible describes the church is as a household or as a family. Much of the language we use to describe church can sound at times like it’s describing businesses or institutions.
I’d like to see more “familial” language used to described church. A big part of this is that families need mums and dads. I think both sides of the debate miss that. We need the contribution of men and women together and we need that because they often will bring something different to the table.
So, what if we focus on encouraging all church members to use their gifts including identifying those who can lead and how they lead ensuring that there are many spiritual mums and dads and brothers and sisters? I’m reminded of Jim Collin’s leadership advice that before you work out the seating plan, you need to get everyone on the bus.
Then put the structures around them
It’s at this point that we can develop structures that support the people and gifts in the church that we have. Too often, I think we’ve put structures, titles and labels first and we’ve tried to work out how to squeeze people into the moulds. For example, we assume that someone cannot be a leader because they cannot make the leaders’ meeting at 6am on a Saturday morning. If we really valued their gifts, we would move the meeting.
Conclusion
Whilst the debate “out there” matters as do all theological debates and can help shape our thinking, the priority for local church leaders should not be the “out there debate” but the “in here” reality of what does it mean for everyone to be serving and using their gifts in the church, obedient to Scripture, glorifying Christ and loving the body.
Faithroots 