The college football team gathered around the strength and conditioning coach for additional instruction. They looked to be doing a team-building activity just as I’d watched them do on the gym court during my previous treadmill run.
“I’d be intimidated,” I thought, as I watched her—the strength coach—look up at them and explain the next phase of the workout.
Wait a minute.
I wouldn’t have been intimidated in my “previous life.” By this I mean my life before I was treated as less-than by the church for being a woman. The worldview was there all my life, but it didn’t rise up and stab me in the spirit until age 33—eight years ago.
I have participated in various forms of strength training since I was 14. With a bachelor’s degree in Exercise Science and a (previous) ACE certification I have trained many male clients as a personal trainer with no problem. It was a true joy to aid growth in strength and confidence!
Medoing Turkish get-ups in 2017: 10 ea with 40# DB in 9:40 (goal of under 10 min). My PR is completing this workout with 50#!
At age 33 church leadership treated me as a child of my husband. They didn’t view it that way—their worldview trained them that this was loving me.
One of them even knew better, at least at first (this was years-long), but that’s a different story.
Healing meant a multi-year process which included adding a minor in Biblical and Theological Studies and a masters degree from seminary. It involved seeing women respected as leaders in the church. It took being invited to live out who I am and the respect afforded me by leaders in conversation, demeanor, and opportunities.
— I actually struggle to know how to interact when there is an underlying power hierarchy based in gender. If a relationship is not founded in mutual humility in Christ being genuine is a challenge for me. —
But back to the strength coach.
I am not going to ask her if she’s intimidated. I don’t want to put that seed in her mind. You see, I grew up being respected, and she likely has too. We’ve talked before about her past lifting experience.
This Christian college she works at has been a place of growth and healing for me. I know she’s fully valued for who she is and what she has to offer.
Anything else would face institutional correction.
If only our churches could be the same!
Christian and Missionary Alliance, I implore you to see that policy that treats women as under—rather than fully co-equal with—men does not foster respect. Rather, it is a very modern Evangelical (soft-complementarian) misunderstanding that
degrades the image of God.
Read that again. Own it. Contact me if you’d like to discuss. I write out of a passion God has lit in my being for greater wholeness—Shalom—in C&MA churches. I write out of care for the women under your governance. I write because I know God has more for the men in the C&MA, too.*
Shattered peace evokes in us a vague sketch of Shalom, a sense of how things should be. That ache you feel when catching the news whispers to a deeper plan for this world.
Broken Shalom.
Country invades country leaving death and destruction in its wake. Athletes strive for fair competition in sport. An unrelenting virus carries death to our families and divides friends over policy and protocol to stop it.
We long for wholeness.
Shalom encompasses perfection of relationship of all creatures with God, self, others, and all creation. In our fallen world Shalom means deliverance from what blocks peace internal and external.
Shalom means “wholeness.”
This week I read a line that stopped me in my tracks.
I’ve been pondering it for four days.
“…a world hellbent on maintaining broken Shalom.”
In The Very Good Gospel Lisa lays out God’s vision of Shalom in Genesis, a creation that was broken by sin and redeemed in Christ. While we await the consummation of that renewal we are invited to follow Christ as our Lord where we are!
The Very Good Gospel p. 192
We “go and do” by trusting Christ and following the Spirit’s lead to join what God is already doing. Where is God leading you to encourage change or be the change?
The context of Lisa’s line was Christians standing up to other Christians who blocked abolition of slavery, civil rights, and women’s right to both preach and to vote.
Many twisted Scripture to argue for maintaining their economic comfort with slavery. Likewise many argued that women were not created with the capacity to make good decisions and lead; women were not to vote.
God created adam to exercise dominion. The Hebrew adam in Genesis 1 includes
“male and female he created them.”
Genesis 1:27
זָכָ֥ר וּנְקֵבָ֖ה בָּרָ֥א אֹתָֽם
Dominion is explained in Genesis 2 with Hebrew words that mean “to till and keep” and also “to serve and protect.” Women were given this dominion—stewardship—together with men in Genesis. I had the blessing to share what it means to be created in the image of God last October in my first two sermons:
A short century ago people were hellbent on maintaining broken Shalom by sanctifying Jim Crow and denying women the exercise of dominion through vote.
Jim Crow laws weren’t repealed until 1968. Black women couldn’t vote until 1965, white women in 1920. Those claiming Christ fought it every step of the way using the same arguments (believed to be) from Scripture used to support a male-only eldership today.
This is true; this is history.
I cannot convince Putin to leave Ukraine, but I can witness here, to you, that the persistent ideology that God designed men for a dominion, a form of stewardship, not open to women
— eldershipand pastor —
is today’s
“hellbent on maintaining broken Shalom”
in many otherwise enlivened churches.
I long to join God in God’s movement through history and beyond time.
Church service should not be about power but partnership and full expression of all gifting granted by God.
Friends, I implore you to not be hellbent on maintaining broken Shalom. Jesus has overcome the world!
I loved my church since I was a child and was introduced to my Lord and Savior in that space: 34 years ago; I was 7.
Life has been a journey since then, no doubt! The trials and successes, pain and exhilaration could fill pages—but not here.
Brevity requires leaping the decades much like I used to approach the pit when competing in triple jump: hop from age 7 to 17 where I chose a Christian college; step to 27 when married and staying home with 1 (soon to be 4) child of mine; and jump up to 37 when while raising 4 young children with my husband I added a minor in Biblical and Theological Studies to my Exercise Science degree and was just starting seminary.
I had a burning passion deep in my being to help my denominational leaders grow in the truth of God’s design for men and women. Thanks be to God; I had landed in Christian spaces that respect all callings of God on women’s lives: Northwestern College and Western Theological Seminary. Once I became aware of how much worldview influences opportunities and treatment, I saw it everywhere. It’s like buying a silver car and then seeing them in every parking lot.
Christ restored the sin-broken creation of Adam and Eve as full partners (Gen 1:26-28; Luke 10:42; John 10:10; Gal 3:28). In Christ men and women receive the same respect for their callings abundantly bestowed by our One Lord and Savior.
I long for the personhood of women to carry the weight of Spirit-filled image bearer, in the Christian Missionary Alliance. This cannot happen short of eldership.
Here’s why:
The short answer is because it is truth, truth that shines with the light of God’s steady voice to me my entire life, truth that I didn’t understand intellectually, biblically, until I was 33 years old.
After a brief rewind of the Triple Jump tape, I will sum the full answer in four short parts: Scripture, theology, history, and lived experience. (A Wesleyan Quadrilateral is a Wesleyan Quad by any other name 😄.)
In actuality, we’d have to rewind the triple jump footage and stop back at the voice of God to me at age 12 that deeply affected me—but I didn’t understand.
Then we’d hop to the longing for career focus that ate at my soul from age 14-22.
After this we’d mix the hurts and false method of coping in with God’s steady hints in my life and the healing God began in me.
Remember, all along, the girl of 7 and 12 who loved Jesus with her whole life.
I know about God like a worm who’s burrowed into sweetness conceives of apple pie; I know God as the one who invited me on an adventure decades ago, at times hard to glimpse since but always there. Seven years ago God invited a calling with the words “Do you trust me?”
But why do I care how the C&MA handles the “woman question” when many gifted women find avenues for ministry? Why do I care when other spaces provide women the respect I champion?
THEOLOGY: I care because I believe that separate spheres for men and women came first from sin (Gen 3:16) and second from a culture trying to navigate amid sin. It is a lie cloaked as light to base roles (first) in the gender of an image bearer and not (only) in the granting by the God whose image we all bear.
Human hierarchies set themselves up against the very essence of God. This golden calf has stolen focus for far too long; God is exposing thiswhite-lie across the spectrum of history and the American church.
HISTORY: I care because there is no escaping the truth of history. A sound Church History course will get you started in the early church. Greek philosophical views of women and the Roman power structure centering men and hierarchy were adopted by the church in the 2nd-4th centuries, directly opposite the church foundation on Christ put into action by Paul (Gal 3, Rom 16).
SCRIPTURE: I care because scholars honestly seeking God in the original biblical manuscripts have yielded an avalanche of knowledgebased on an inerrant view of Scripture. Gifted, faithful, honest scholars pore over the Bible in the Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, bringing the culture of the day(s) into the meaning of the words.
EXPERIENCE: I care because I have tasted a Christian world where women are seen and treated as full persons. This breaking of God’s kingdom into ours has been slowly healing the places harmed in me over my leap across time which reached dramatic crescendo in 2014.
Misunderstanding piled atop immaturity-given-reigns by a complementarian system and was sent barreling towards my family. (My attempts to say the same in soft language have been softly dismissed.) These men thought they were being loving, but love without respect is not love—it is to patronize.
This is extremely hard on me to write, please understand, yet it is true. If I stay silent with what I’ve lived and learned, leaders will not see what happens below the surface of their own viewpoint.
How many more young girls and women must be harmed—must realize the spiritual and ontological abuse—before C&MA leaders will change harmful policies? How many more gifts, like my own, must be shelved and mis-sorted and undiscovered (at least toward full kingdom impact) until middle age?
How many more women, and men, who’ve tried desperately to stay will finally leave when they realize they cannot be C&MA (or SBC, or E-Free) and be faithful to God’s vision for his people?
How many more must leave or continue to be eroded when God’s call inside is not allowed respected voice?
I have finally connected my own physical symptom, given no medical explanation after 8 vials of blood tests, to the slow-boil trauma of the soft complementarian world:
the pain of being subsumed;
the angst of sharing, yet having the truth explained away;
the frustration of God removing the veil from my eyes while others remain content with the ruse, unwilling to see.
I thought that maybe God gifted me as he has and waited to reveal his purposes for me until such a time as this. Or maybe the excuses and attempts to mold God’s way into man’s own will, will continue. Perhaps both will be true.
But I hope not.
To shrink back from acting on the truth once learned is to choose one’s own kingdom over God’s (1 Cor 3). I have deeply researched both sides of this issue in Biblical interpretation and theology; I have lived as part of both types of communities and have much more to share, if you’d like to discuss.
Love compels me to keep caring for
the girls who grow up searching;
the women who are trying to fit their call into a skewed system;
the men who, unbeknownst, forgo a degree of sanctification; and
the body that misses the fullness at its fingertips.
I ask that you not choose to follow another person’s view as opposed to taking agency and growing for yourself. I close with a quote:
“There is no greater cowardice than chosen ignorance. To speak out will often come at a cost. But we are constantly standing before the face of God.”
Rachael Denhollander
God still has my final allegiance. That is why I care.
[See A Ladder Leans ‘Against’ a Wallfor a necessary counterview to that last linked article. (There is SO much misunderstanding in it; this is just a start!) Again, if it “seems right” that Genesis 3:16 denotes a wife being “contrary to” her husband, read A Ladder Leans ‘Against’ a Wall for helpful perspective.
It seems God does not well regard the lines drawn by human expectation. It seems God instead lives out the name revealed to Moses.[a]
Seven Years Ago
Seven years ago the God I’d known through trial and error, who’d led me through notable success and been steadily present despite lurking depression, the God I’d come to know over real life for over 30 years, asked,
“DO YOU TRUST ME?”
God firmly impressed the question to my spirit as I cried out over how this trusting was turning out around me—not well.
Running Chaska trails had me at this underpass exactly at this point in writing this post. Suddenly my hand was too cold to continue working, and I turned on King of Kings for the few miles home. In 7° I was able to swype until this spot, then ran back to where the gray squirrel had disappeared, and I’d stashed my mittens under a fallen log, just past the wooden bridge where I’d need to turn right.
The image above perfectly depicts my walk in faith from September 2014,
with the smooth ice of my own emotional growth-edge, frozen-boulder daily challenges of life raising four young children, and threatening 6-foot ice daggers:
Soft complementarian protocol—a love without respect that infantilizes women;
Entitlement-shrouded eyes in church leaders;
Compounded misunderstanding ruling the day.
God’s steady light sustained, granted perspective, and beckoned from beyond: toward call and into truth; it promised the eschatological fullness completed in Christ and yet to run unchallenged.
The light at the end of the tunnel matched the burning glow of God’s Spirit within. God refined and grew me in this tunnel—still is.
In my context I desire the Christian and Missionary Alliance to be a place where all women as well as men can thrive, not just navigate .
God’s Majesty
It is Christmas. If we proclaim a God not confined by human boxes, we cannot rightly overlook God meeting first with Mary (not Joseph) when we define church praxis. Yet the full spectrum of “complementarian” does, in fact, do so.[b]
In 2014-2016, out of one side of their mouths my pastors celebrated the God of the Bible, and out of the other claimed a different impetus working in my life.[c] The soft complementarian part was leaders repeatedly approaching my husband about me rather than me about me—deeply dehumanizing treatment. Any contact we did have was clouded by the decisions they’d already made about me, the labels.
God used this pain to draw me into serious study of the Bible on the issues of men and women, roles, and God’s prior workings.
By walking this tightrope holding on to God’s presence for dear life, I fight to avoid bitterness; Instead, I am thankful.
Before this experience I had no idea of the loss of personhood that so many women experience under soft complementarian, soft benevolent male headship. (Women cannot be elders; it affects multiple outliers.) It is easy to see how outright patriarchy is not of God. A version that mixes in some light is smooth and shiny—yet just as destructive at times.
This pain inflicted is not intentional, and it is not my intention to hurt my dear friends walking in the misunderstanding of “male headship” that has been widely accepted as presiding truth.
My intent, my call from God, is to
expose the lie.
❄❄❄
Could they have been right? Could a mental breakdown have been behind what I was sure to be God in September 2014 (and beyond)?
I will tell you what I know. Three years prior I had given my focus to God every second in full reliance to overcome a 15-year stronghold in my life. The point for this post is that I knew I could not overcome the pattern in my own strength after 14.5 years of trying. I could not claim autonomy (with prayer and “God’s help” and any other route I’d tried). Thus
God had my full allegiance.
For the next three years I trusted God as I took off the mask of my false self and engaged in real, meaningful relationships. This stretched my comfort zone. I had single devotion to knowing God more which included walking in active trust.
When I perceived God to lead—I followed.
Then came the aftermath: years of assumed illness (blood tests revealed health), leaders not taking seriously the truth God commissioned me to point to, and now an un-medically-explained physical symptom based in the stress/trauma of such an environment (8 blood draws, a doctor, and a specialist reveal no physical cause). With the pain this has caused my family, I am not sure I would again trust God in the same actions, as I did seven years ago. This deeply grieves me.
❄❄❄
On the other hand, I have gone back to school to add a minor in Biblical and Theological Studies and on to seminary for a master’s degree.[d]
“Hey, Kyra, does God color neatly in the lines, like on a coloring page?”
“No.”
I think you’re right, because who draws the lines for God?
[a] Hebrew class taught me the definitions of ehyeh and asher in the phrase ehyeh asher ehyeh in Exodus 3:14. Seminary taught me worldview and context for the text. I AM who I AM is otherwise translated “I will cause to occur what I will cause to occur” or “I will be what/who I will be.” See Exodus-314.com for a discussion over translating this verse.
[b] God’s gifting matters only second to gender in roles and titles—a blasphemy I would tremble to lead others in.
[c] To be outright, the pastors assumed medication and perhaps hospitalization were what I needed. They assumed mental illness without taking my life story, my seasoned journey with God, into account—or even talking with me about the situation first. There is so much more to this story.
Medication can be very helpful when called for; I make no attempt to imply otherwise.
God is also real and active and the same God we adore in Scripture.
[d] Grades in school matter naught toward God’s ability or prerogative to choose a person for a task; God seeks a heart fully devoted, not perfection (David) or emotional cool (Elijah), not gender (Huldah), nor age (Samuel, Mary). Earning the top grade in my Greek class and second in Hebrew (by a fraction, to another C&MA woman) were mere vindication of a sound mind. Taking classes again was so much fun—hard work that I loved for multiple reasons!
The egalitarian worldview lived out by Christians around me in RCA spheres was instructive—and healing—as I added a minor and went on to seminary to earn a master’s degree. I was back in a space where I was seen and valued for who I was. Egalitarian, in my use, means mutuality rules conduct: Gender is still valued; it’s just not a rubric for opportunity.
I thought I could help my own denomination (C&MA) make the switch. My seminary study was tailored to equip me to lead needed reconciliation; training in the language and cultural knowledge of translation, which includes and influences interpretation of key passages related to gender; and the healing needed for those on both sides of the power dynamic. It has been profoundly significant to be part of a Christian community where gender does not limit role. My history in the Alliance (soft complementarian) and RCA (egalitarian) allows me to readily identify the differences in culture. We do not see the water we are swimming in.
After repeated rejection, I am no longer sure that this work in the denomination will be my joy and challenge. Nevertheless, God’s Ruah can breathe life into dry bones. Though I have never backed down from difficulty, my health, and perhaps God’s call, require me to breathe with those who’ve moved beyond this question. This seven-year journey is analogous of me running the 2019 San Diego Marathon with a broken foot—though that was far easier. I wish every person well; I also need to rest in spaces where I find opportunities to grow, agency, and community.
Then Rep. Harry T. Burn received a letter from his college educated mother who ran the family farm; she encouraged his tie-breaking vote, toward “aye.”
Years later Harry stood by his decision. “I think it was morally right,” he said. “I thought it then; I still think it.”
“That change of vote enfranchised millions of women.”
“A giant step toward a more perfect union,” reads the inscription at the base of a memorial to women’s suffrage.[1]
A more perfect union.
I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
Jesus (John 17:20-23)
I write this to the Christian and Missionary Alliance men and women evaluating if women can be called by God to lead and teach the full church. Please consider God’s broad vision of wholeness for each and unity for the church.
At some point we must get our heads out of fine point arguments (after reading both sides) and consider God’s grand vision for God’s kingdom. Look at the big picture of life and a creation longing for renewal.
“There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” … For you are all one in Christ Jesus.
Consider Galatians 3:28 and how restrictive ideology seeks to separate equal worth and equal opportunity (equal in worth, different in role)—many did this to uphold racial segregation, too. Before that Christians fought long and hard to “prove biblical basis” for slavery; many do the same today, to uphold the hierarchy of male primacy in the church.
Is that right? Is that the heart of the God you know and love?
“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves,”
Philippians 2:3
Jesus came from a position of privilege, and surrendered it to raise us to God.
What do the arguments negating Deborah’s position as judge and military leader of Israel, uphold? What is the goal of discounting Junia’s commendation as apostle? How do you dismiss Jesus’ choice to appear first in a woman to deliver his humanity, and then to women to deliver the paradigm-shattering news of his resurrection? Are these decisions faithful?
Photo courtesy of Tim Mossholder on Unsplash.
“Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” ~ Jesus (John 15:4-5)
Photo courtesy of Zbynek Burival on Unsplash.
In a larger view of life, please answer the following: Why would women seek equal opportunity to serve in the church, if not by God’s hand? The path to power—or simply being honored in vocation—is paved outside the church, if that’s the goal. What are women who are called by God to serve God’s people in a leadership capacity, to do? Are they to “settle” for being lawyers or doctors or accountants or politicians? Perhaps consider what God’s call feels like in your own life and how women are also compelled to walk in this highest obligation.
If women are called by God to lead God’s church yet are sidelined by people upholding a system, which party is usurping authority?
If you were Harry T. Burn, would you have the courage to vote “aye” for women?
Coffee with Kristin 