MCC Podcasts
Working It Out - Women in Leadership
Today, we are going to try something different with this sermon time and actually have more of a lecture or a biblical teaching. It's almost like a classroom, but one of the things we're going to do is make it interactive. So I'm going to be addressing an issue that is a delicate one for some and exciting one for others, the issue of women in leadership and the scriptures teaching on that, and how in the world is our church get to the point where we can take the position we do, which is a position that our denomination takes. It also happens to be ours and still be a biblical, but we want you to be able to ask questions. So at any time during the message, if you have a smartphone, you can send a message to Jeff at this address, grow@mcc.co, that is not a typo, it's CO, not COM, so just like that. And he'll try to put some of those together during the time where we're teaching. And then at the end of this time, we're trying to preserve 10 or 15 minutes at the end to address some of those questions, and he'll formulate them and compile them, but then be in charge of coming up and asking. So any time, anything I say, question comes up, you want to take a shot, bam, bam, bam. Type it in and we'll get it to you, you get it to us and we'll, we'll try to address some of those at the end. Listen to these texts. I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church. I ask you to receive her in the Lord in a way worthy of his people, to give her any help she may need from you, for she's been a benefactor of many people, including me. And greet Priscilla and Aquila, her husband, my co-workers in Christ Jesus, they risked their lives for me, not only I, but all the churches of the Gentiles are grateful to them. Greet Andronicus and the woman Junia, my fellow Jews who have been in prison with me, they are outstanding among the apostles and they were in Christ before I was. I plead with Yodia and I plead with Cynthia to be of the same mind in the Lord. Yes, and I ask you, my true companion, help these women since they have contended at my side in the cause of the gospel, along with Clement and the rest of my co-workers whose names are in the book of life. So you have that text hugely affirming several women. And this text, "A woman should learn in quietness and full submission, I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man, she must be quiet, but women will be saved through childbearing if they continue in faith, love, and holiness with propriety." And this text, "Women should remain silent in the churches, they are not allowed to speak but must be in submission," as the law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home for it's disgraceful for a woman to speak in church or in public worship or in the gathering of the saints. And all of those texts come as parts of letters written by the same fully inspired author. Here's our dilemma. The Apostle Paul, who writes all of those words, appears to be speaking out both sides of his mouth. Anybody ever think like that? Anybody ever read some of the writings of Paul and come to the conclusion inspired as he has now had never admitted this in public, "I don't want to be misunderstood," it seems that the guy is almost speaking out both sides of his mouth because he uses women in leadership and affirms them on the one hand that instructs that they have no place in leadership and silences them in the local church on the other hand. He uses female leaders like Phoebe and Priscilla, Yodhian, Cintheke and Junia and conducts and admits in another text in 1 Corinthians 11, admits and even affirms the idea that women are prophesying in the church, albeit with their heads covered, but they're standing up and speaking authoritatively with the power and office of a prophet in the church while also demanding that they should be silent in public worship and never usurp authority of a man. Now it's no wonder that people who want to follow Scripture, who want to see Scripture as prescriptive, no matter how uncomfortable they are with what it teaches, people, it's no wonder that people who want to yield the Scripture and let it dictate the way they live and the things they value are confused on the issue of women in leadership or divided on the issue of women in leadership because the textual firepower to support the argument that some hold where there is a limit to the office or the authority or the leadership of a woman, a female can practice in the local body. And some of you are saying there is? What? Yes, the church has been dealing with this for centuries. So there's textual evidence and support for that position, but there's also textual evidence and support for those who say no, there's no limit to what a woman can do. So she can be a pastor, she can preach, she can teach men, she can be an elder or in our case, a member of our leadership team. Here's the point. The scriptural or textual support, the firepower for each of those positions is virtually equal. You give me a verse to support one, I'll give you a verse to support the other. I give you a verse to support this. You can say yes, but over here you give me this verse to support the other. And so no wonder people are divided and confused and we have differences of positions on the church, Paul seems to be speaking up both sides of his mouth and if you take a scale and you were to stack all the verses for one position on one side of the scale and all the verses for the other side of the position on this side of the scale, the scale would balance or at least maybe tip a little bit in one direction or the other. If you just went with the weight that comes from the verses or the texts supporting one of the other and it would probably balance on the side of your personal preference or conclusion. So this issue of the question of women and leadership in the church, I'm arguing is not going to be settled decisively by the texts. We get stuck because we keep saying, well this text says this and what do you do with that? And somebody else says yes, but this text says this, so what are you going to do with that? And they balance or virtually balance. You've got Paul appearing to speak out both sides of his mouth and we're not going to clear it up with the text but I do want to give you a sense for what some of the important texts are so we've listed some of them here. You can write those down now and we encourage you to look at these later. These aren't just all one side of, these are some of the texts from which each position gets its argument, look at some of those in Genesis, you have the creation text. Now Paul in 1 Timothy, which is where we are here in this series, refers back to creation and the fall to support his position or his words of limitation, apparent words of limitation. You have Matthew 23, that's just a text where Jesus is just kind of arguing for the male female sort of both being inherent and being inherent in the sight of God and he speaks with motherly language there, praying that a mother, praying that God would protect Jerusalem like a mother hen gathers. Acts 2, you have 1 Corinthians 11 and 14 Galatians 3, the texts were in today, 1 Timothy 2, and then the 2nd John texts is up there because the book of 2nd John is actually addressed to a woman and some are arguing, well that's a church. And others are arguing, no it's a literal person who happens to be female. So you can go and look at that and come to your own conclusions and then you have some of the texts that I already read, various texts where Paul affirms and thanks women. I have the asterisk here next to the name Junia because some of your Bibles are, that's a female name, but some of your Bibles actually will have the name Junias, which is a man's name. The problem is the name Junias didn't show up until about the 13th century and we have no extra biblical evidence in letters or legal documents or anything like that that refers to Junias in the male form, Junia is a female name until the 13th century plus some of the great church fathers refer to Junia all using that as a female name. So if that's true then you have a woman and it probably is true that it's a woman that's mentioned here. You have a woman being mentioned in the same sentence as the apostles. Paul used women in leadership, yet there are texts that seem to say he restricted what they could do in leadership. So we'll put the texts up there, but this argument isn't going to be settled primarily by the text. That notwithstanding, it doesn't mean we won't look at some of the texts. And we're coming from the book of 1 Timothy. We come upon this. We're going back a little bit now obviously because we're in chapter 3, 3 or 4, Jeff. I don't remember. End of 3 next week. So what we're going back because I wanted to deal with this. It comes up in 1 Timothy 2 and the text says what I read already, "A woman should learn in quietness, in full submission, I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume or usurp authority over a man." That word translated here, assume authority or usurp authority. It's the Greek word alfantane in the infinitive form. And the problem is we have one use of that word in the Bible right there. That doesn't show up anywhere else in the Bible. And only three or four examples in extra-biblical literature from that time where we also see that word being used. Scholars will go and they'll find letters and legal documents and books and all sorts of other documents with different words used in them. And from what they find in extra-biblical literature from the time, they'll establish a field of meaning and they'll assume that the authors of scripture would have used common language and generally used words the same way the community used words or other authors used them. So some words that we only have one example in scripture like this one to decide what how it should actually be translated, we depend upon that extra-biblical literature. Well we only have three or four examples of it. And so this is a very limited field of meaning. But it probably means you usurp, at least from the documents we have available to us now. There's a reference of somebody out-entaining usurping authority when they decided to take their own life. But to step beyond what is appropriate for you in that context. But the text says, "I don't allow a woman to teach or to usurp authority over a man. She must be quiet," which could be translated orderly but probably quiet. And then this text, this verse, nobody knows what this means. But women will be saved through childbearing if they continue in faith, love, holiness, and propriety. Women will be saved through childbearing. Does that mean I have to have a child in order to be saved? Does that mean I have to have a child in order to be rescued, rescued from what? You ready for an answer to that text? Definitive answer, you ready? No one knows. We have no idea what Paul is talking about there. It's fun to guess and it obviously means something. And the people who received that letter, Timothy would have known exactly what Paul meant because it was obviously more context that was presupposed, that he understood, "Well, we don't have it." And that's not uncommon in Scripture. Next Sunday we'll be baptizing for the dead right over here. Anybody excited about that? And we have no idea what he meant by baptism for the dead. But there's this one obscure reference, otherwise why are people baptized for the dead? Obviously, those people who heard that and got that letter knew what that meant, we don't because we don't have any other context, so we don't build a great big doctrine of baptism for the dead based on one obscure scripture. We just say, "We're going to live with not understanding what it means." I think this is one of those. Another one is in one of the texts that you saw on the screen. There's a challenge in the first letter to the Corinthians that women should come to church and never stand up and prophesy what their heads uncovered. And one of the reasons Paul argues that that should never happen is for the sake of the angels. What in the world does that mean? We don't know. So there are texts that we say, "There it is, and it's fully word of God, and we have no idea what it means, a handful of them." I think this might be one of them. But anyway, you have Paul saying, "I use women in powerful ways." They gave up their life for the gospel. They stood next to me in the gospel. They're even worthy, at least in one case, to be compared with the apostles. That's a great use of women, a real free use of women. On the other hand, saying they should be quiet, they should be silent. I'm saying this issue is not going to be settled just by the texts because the texts are even on both sides, apparently. Let's look at the text anyway, and especially 1 Timothy 2. Here are some things to observe at 1 Timothy 2 from the context of the book. Remember, Zann referred to the Zann daily who preached here three or four or five weeks ago, referred to this. She said, "Women in leadership isn't the primary point of this text." Let's remember that. Paul is mentioning this, and we'll deal with it, but he's mentioning it in passing. He's actually making a bigger point. The point of 1 Timothy 2 and 3 is the character of a leader, not the gender of a leader. These texts, although interesting, are offered in passing, these texts that cause us to land on this issue today. Remember that. It's also important to remember that Paul in chapter 2 and chapter 3 of 1 Timothy is talking to both men and women leaders. Watch. The challenges that he addressed to men are relevant for women, apparently. And vice versa, the challenges or principles that he addresses to the women are also relevant for the men. How do you say that? Well, watch how easily Paul moves back and forth, back and forth from men to women. You can just imagine mom or dad standing here talking to their two kids, two kids standing in front of them. And you would say, now, Josh, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And Becca, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And Josh, boom, boom, boom, I'm back and forth making different specific applications to each kid. But I sort of intend for both kids to listen to everything. And Paul does that here in these texts. If you step back and look at it, chapter two versus one through eight, he's addressing specifics for the character of male leaders. Then in verse nine of chapter two, he says, and in the same way, and then launches into addressing some of the character requirements for female leaders. And then he switches back to men. In chapter three, one through 10, he addresses some specifics for men. In chapter three, verse 11 jumps right back to address some of the specifics for women. So he's easily back and forth between men and women. And you almost get the feeling he's speaking to all of them at the same time, but not afraid to dig right in in detail in some of the specifics that at least in that time, men needed to hear and women needed to hear, but they're all relevant for both men and women. So women in leadership isn't the primary point, although it's there and we're not afraid to deal with it. Secondly, Paul's talking to both men and women in leaders in that text, that's very clear. And we can suppose, I think, I don't think it's unreasonable to come to the conclusion that he's speaking to both all at the same time, even though he addresses the specifics one at a time. And then I want to point out though, that the argument for some kind of a limitation on the leadership in the leadership of women does have contextual merit. I think it has contextual merit. So my personal position, interpretive position on this, pastoral application on this, our church's position on this, and our denominations' position on this is that there's no limitation. Women can hold any position a man can hold. Those are decided based on the spiritual gifts you have, not the gender and not your gender. However, there are those who would say, no, I don't agree. I think there's a limitation. And here's what I want you to walk away understanding. I respect that other position. I actually think there's a biblical argument. Now, not all of our staff would state that as strongly as I do. So we even have great and helpful conversation about these kinds of things. But I think that you could argue that biblically. The scale balances, or at least just barely tilts one way or the other. If you're arguing only from the texts, the verses that are available. But you can't just walk away saying, oh gosh, all those people that hold to a different position that happen to be in our church, they're all biblically illiterate, or they're all just insecure men or women who don't want to take the responsibility to lead. I just haven't found that to be the case. In fact, if you go to Genesis chapter three and put that text up there. This isn't the strongest argument for them, but for instance, here's something that someone who holds the position that there's a limitation for them. Oh, by the way, remember, we're only talking about what happens, how you work out leadership in the church. Don't jump from this to how things work in your home and in your marriage. I mean, the Bible teaches about that too, but it's even, I think even less clear. You make that work in your household. Whatever you all do in your household, God bless you, good luck, make it work. I'm just busy making mine work. We're talking about the church here. Some would argue this. They would say, well, but the Genesis three text that Paul refers to to support his position, that there is a limitation that women should not usurp the authority of a man. They should not teach a man. It's not just in first Timothy. There are a couple of places that's in play. He goes back to Genesis and he goes to two places. He goes to creation 'cause he says, by the way, because you weren't crafted first, Adam was crafted first, and then woman, you were crafted out of Adam, except in the same book in Genesis, when God created mankind, our humankind, he created mankind, our humankind, as male and female, both equally human. That's what humankind is in that creation, and he gave that creation the responsibility to dominate the land and do all the stuff they were doing, and he doesn't create a hierarchy until after the fall. And here's where that happens. He says to the woman, now there's a curse to Satan, and then there's a curse to the woman, and then there's a curse to the man, to the male. Here's the curse to the woman, because this is where Paul argues from. I will make your pains in childbearing very severe. And man, I remember being there, and it hurt, and I wasn't even the one going through the pains. I mean, my wife was screaming, "Make the bad man stop!" You know, let me do whatever it takes, and it was painful. With pain, you will give birth to children. Do you see that that's two ways of saying the same thing? That's Hebrew poetry. You have one line, somehow a line with another line, and it can say the opposite thing or the same thing, but it's clear that there's a connection between two lines. We basically rhyme with poetry, that's not all we do, but mostly that's our common poetry. Synonymous thought or contrasting thought, something like that is how you make Hebrew poetry, and that's called a district. So these two lines together, that would be an example of what's called a synonymous district, a coupling. And then you have this district. Your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you. What people are saying sometimes is, well, that really means, I will make your pains in child birth very severe. Your pain with pain, you will give birth to children. Yet you're still going to want to be intimate with your husband, even though it could result in great pain. But if that's the way you interpret that, some would argue, then this line is dangling by itself, and there's no poetic connection for it. So some would say, actually this is a contrasting thoughts. Your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you. And so they argue, the desire is for, to usurp your husband's place. There's this insecurity you want to dominate, but he's still going to rule over you. Now there are problems with that interpretation, not the least of which is, that word desire probably is a reference to a passionate desire, a physical desire. I'm just giving you an example to say, there are thoughtful ways to get to the conclusion that there's a limitation in the church for women in ministry. Not everybody that comes to that conclusion, even though I'm not among them. And our church isn't among them. But not everybody that comes to that conclusion is just an insecure person who wants to dominate and limit women. In fact, in my experience, many of the people who have the position that there's a limitation for women in leadership in the church don't necessarily like their conclusion. And it can't make sense of their conclusion. They just have such a very high respect for scripture that even when scripture troubles them as they understand it, they're willing to yield to it. And I applaud folks for that. I don't agree with this position. I don't think it's the strongest argument, although I used to hold to it. But you've got to love and respect somebody who will say, even when my position isn't possible and it's out of sync with culture, and I don't even like it. If the Bible says it, I'm going to yield to it. I think I'm encouraging us to deal with grace for someone who holds to a different position than us on this subject and actually all subjects of scripture. Doesn't mean we have no conviction. As Jeff, Pastor Jeff was praying this morning reminding us, it's just that there's a difference between conviction and pride. So conviction, yes. Pride, no. Anyway, just remember that. The argument for limitation on women doesn't come from a lack of thinking. It often comes from very clear biblical thinking with different presuppositions and it is biblically defensible. I don't think it's the most clearly biblical defensible. So here we are. Here's where we are so far. We have Bible verses. If you throw them out there, the scale virtually balances. So both positions can be argued scripturally and both should be respected when the other is respected and people are thoughtful about those things. We have a reminder, we're only talking today about how leadership works in the church. It's a completely different subject. You want to start talking about a husband and a wife and how things work in your home. And I'm not even starting to deal with that today except to say that's a different thing. Don't make that transition. And the question comes then, well then how can our church, how can you as our pastor and our whole staff, come to the conclusion that there are with all that biblical evidence that there are no differences between no limitations for a woman in leadership. So how is the covenant denomination could say we ordain women and art? You can be comfortable with that. I mean some pretty good Bible teachers would take a different position, right? Really respected Bible teachers. How do we get to that place? Reasons for an inclusive position, excuse me, for no limitation for women in ministry, women in leadership. First of all, we have the observation of Paul's free use of female leaders in his ministry. You have to admit that. If he says women ought to be silent in church, how then does he come off praising them for standing alongside him? How does he come off saying, you've got to have your head covered when you do it but women can actually prophesy in church, in a worship gathering and function authoritatively in the prophetic office. How do you make that work? And at least we have to observe and admit, Paul's very free use and excited use, endorsing even use, affirming use, of women leaders in his ministry. Now, that's not all there is to the argument but we all see that. I'm just saying here are some of the reasons to come to the conclusion that we come to. There are interpretives, secondly, there are interpretive questions about the meaning of some of the major texts that oppose a very expanded, unlimited use of women. Now, there are interpretive questions about the other texts as well. But I'm just taking note of some of the interpretive questions and how are we doing Jeff for time? We're okay? What are we, 40? So I need to be done in two or three minutes if you want to have 15 minutes for questions. Okay, good luck, ladies and gentlemen. The, remember, grow@mcc.co. You've got questions coming. Look at some of these, they're basically two texts, maybe three, but I think two that are pretty powerful, the best argument for a limit for women in leadership. And that's 1 Corinthians 14 and this text that we're in today, 1 Timothy 2. 1 Corinthians 14, let's look at that one first. 1 Corinthians 14, let me find it, here we go. That's where it says, "Women should remain silent in the churches, they are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission," as the law says, "if they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husband at home for it's disgraceful for a woman to speak in church." And at first glance, that's pretty cut and dry. But in context, it's not at all cut and dry. In fact, I listened to Zann Daily Sermon from several weeks when I think, I think she referenced this very text and did some good work in it. But you have in first Corinthians and also in this Timothy text, they both appear to be churches with unique specific challenges in need of specific correction that Paul's addressing. And so what he's doing is saying, speak into a specific thing that's contextualized in a local church and then we come and read it and think he's speaking globally to all the churches. And that just might not be the case. In fact, I don't think it is the case. And for instance, in this Corinthians text, you have women who did not have access to education and did not get the freedom to gather and ask questions. And generally speaking, in those days, the Jewish tradition anyway was for a rabbi to come and teach it would be a very engaging experience. And so the men would have basic theological education. The rabbi would come and expound on something and then it was encouraged for the men in the audience that were listening, sitting at his feet, to ask leading questions that invited the rabbi to go deeper in the topic that he was already addressing. And they were educated enough to know what kinds of questions they could ask. But it was considered disruptive for you to be talking about X and then somebody asked a question about A, you know, a less intelligent or less informed question, wait a minute, wait a minute, go back 10 steps. What does this mean? It was a very basic question. That wasn't all that helpful. So you had women who were there and now given access to that education, possibly asking those kinds of questions and disrupting the progress of the teaching. And so Paul comes and says, don't do that, that's disrupting everything. Men, be personal tutors, theological tutors to your wives at home. Which in and of itself is astounding in the context? So Paul, and by the way, Christianity is hugely progressive. Contrary to popular belief, when it comes to women's rights and opening doors for women and addressing the injustice of seeing women as possessions, in its day, Christianity was radical and it basically has been ever since. Unfortunately, it's also done the opposite in some minority cases, but it's radical. And part of that radical nature, Christianity, as Paul says, give access, give theological education, give your wives access to that, catch them up. Bring them up to speed at home. Give them tutoring and then they can come and be involved in the rest. That's probably what was going on in that text in first Corinthians. So one of the reasons for an inclusive position in women in spite of some of the texts that, excuse me, I don't mean to use that word inclusive in the same way that we use it today. One of the reasons for no limitation for women in positions of leadership is because there are some interpretive questions about some of the major texts that would argue the opposite. How about the first Timothy two texts? Well, in Timothy, in Ephesus, there was a proliferation of heresy and crazy teaching. And for some reason in that particular town, it found life in the female population. That's not true everywhere, but in that particular town, because of some of the worship that went on in the secular population and the fact that women, in some cases, were even viewed as superior over men. And they brought that into the church when they became Christians. There needed to be a correction, but the correction was probably aimed only at Ephesus. So Paul wouldn't have been saying, I want women to be silent in every single church that ever, ever launched, but he's saying, for Ephesus, for Ephesus, cool it. Because you weren't created first, Adam was, by the way, why do you think you're better than men? As a matter of fact, if anything's true, yeah, opposite is true. He's not saying that's true, but he's trying to correct that idea. And if you look at several texts, like all through 1 Timothy, one, like in verse six, seven, 19, 20, and then in first Timothy five and in first Timothy six, and even in the second Timothy, like two, 17, and three, six through seven, you see all these references to heresy. So something heretical was going on in Ephesus in ways that it wasn't going on in the same ways in other churches. And we know from history that there was some heretical teaching and proliferation of that heresy among the women of that time, it may well have been that Paul was simply addressing Ephesus and not all of the churches. Now, is that a for sure absolute certain thing? No, that would be disingenuous to say that. Remember, I said, if you put the scale out there, at best the texts lean one way or the other, but it's virtually balanced. When you're asking the question, what does a Bible really teach about women in leadership? Should there be a limitation or not? You cannot conclude based solely on the texts because the texts are equal. It's almost as though Paul is speaking out both sides of his mouth. So why then do we come down on the side of no limitation for women? It's because of the theological contributions to the discussion. So we recognize the text, respect both positions in terms of their biblical viability. Some of us respect one more than the other. But the theological contributions, and it basically around two issues of theology. First, the theology of kingdom and curse, as Paul goes to kingdom and curse when he argues his point, and the theology of the perspicuity of scripture, which simply speaks of scripture's ability to be clear to anybody who needs to read it, so that the perspicuity of scripture says this. You don't have to have a doctorate in theology to understand scripture. Anybody can understand what they, as much as they need to understand of the Bible. It's there and clear for you to the degree you needed to be clear. And the more you develop, the more demanding you are intellectually, the more complex, but also clear at that level that it is. It's the perspicuity of scripture. The kingdom of God and the curse. Paul argues for a limitation on women if he argues for one at all in 1st Timothy chapter two, based on the curse. Women have to be silent. They shouldn't usurp a 30. Why? Because it was a woman who was deceived, not the man. And Paul knows when he says that. That's not actually accurate. He's addressing this part of the truth to the need that that church has to hear the truth. If anything, the men are worse off than the women. She at least got deceived directly by Satan. We got deceived indirectly through her. Who's more duped there? So that's not the point he's trying to make. He's trying to make a case, but if he makes that case based on the curse, the theology of kingdom is this. At the resurrection, Jesus in as much as said this, everything changes today. At creation, there was no limitation. It was never God's design. Your partners in managing creation. And then at the fall, the curse brings in this hierarchy, or parent hierarchy. But at resurrection, Jesus says we now have the downbeat of the kingdom of God being here on earth. One day, everything's going to change. And between now and that day, we're moving toward that change. So he announces this to the degree that we can be, what we one day will be, we should be. And so we're saying this, if Paul was arguing for a limitation, women in leadership, and I'm not saying he was, but if he was, it's based in the curse. And he knows full well because he spent so much theological energy explaining this that all of that has now started to be reversed. We are going back to fixing and making all things right, putting us in a position that God always wanted us to be in. It's over. The beginning of being over has started. So to the degree that we can reverse the curse and a new heaven and a new earth is coming, and things will be as they were always intended to be, we should reverse the curse. Now I can't stop the law of entropy. I can't stop metal from rusting if it's left out in the weather, and I can contribute to a healthier economy, but I'm not going to undo this downward slide that tends to be happening, and things do tend to decay. But you know what? We can say that part of the curse, women having a limit in leadership is over. To the degree we can be, what we will be, we should be now listening. Somebody else has a different position than that, and it's a biblically viable position, I think. So it should be respected and heard. For our church and our denomination, for the reasons I'm trying to explain, we're taking a different position. The other one is the perspicuity of scripture. I need to finish this real fast. If the scripture is clear where we need it to be clear, then there's a logical conclusion that can also be made of parallel, in a sense. When an interpretive conclusion is severe, has severe consequences when it's applied, then the text ought to be severely clear. Does that make sense? For instance, let me give you a example. There's only one way to Jesus. All those who do not come to God through Jesus Christ are lost. Would you say that's a very severe interpretive conclusion? I mean, that's got some serious consequences if that's what that means. But it's severely clear that that's what scripture teaches. So things like the lordship of Jesus, the need to have a relationship with God through Jesus Christ, issues of sexual purity. No, there's not like a balanced scale when the texts are thrown out there. It's wam, like this, scripture's severely clear. And it ought to be when there are severe consequences for any particular interpretive application. When the scale is balanced though with the texts, like it is, I think, in women and leadership, then it's incumbent upon us to take the most gracious, broadest position. I'm going to live with that as a pastor. No, hear me. I might be just wrong as can be. But when I look, we look as a pastoral team and we say, let me see, the text, well, they kind of go either way. If we say we believe that there's a limitation of leadership for the female population of our church, even though that's biblically arguable to some degree, boy, the outcome of that, the application of that is very severe because I'm saying, Joni, you might have spiritual gifts came to you from the Holy Spirit, but you may not use them here. That's a severe interpretive application. When the text isn't nearly as clear, severely clear as it needs to be. I would rather live with being wrong before the Lord because we're responsible for everything we teach here. That'll be a fun day when we get held accountable for that. But I'd rather say to the Lord, I depend upon your mercy for letting women be for letting the sisters lead too much. Then have to depend upon your mercy and forgiveness for restricting the brilliant gifts of some of the women in the church. Now I might be wrong, I don't think so. All I want you to do is walk out here today saying this, at least I understand why our church does what it does with women and leadership. That's all, just to understand that, but that's what we're doing, that's where we're going, that's what we believe. Now we have a few minutes for some questions. - Yeah, this was, thank you for your contributions to that. My phone blew up, it was a really stupid idea to now try to figure out how to capitalize all these. It's a great idea on Tuesday morning in our staff meeting. - What's a better idea when there's 15 minutes left than when there's four? - That's right, we'll take one minute on each of these and we'll take a few minutes, we can go a couple minutes over. A whole bunch of questions came around this idea and that is, how do we know that this isn't just a slippery slope down the road that culture defines how we interpret the Bible? Is that bad or should culture define how we interpret the Bible? Some people came on the positive side and said, well this is one of the evidences that we just will believe what we want to believe in disregard scripture. Other people said, well maybe Paul was inconsistent because different cultures, different churches had different needs. So how do we deal with the, is this a slippery slope and we're justifying, how do we know how to handle that? - Well one of the ways we deal with that is to recognize that culture can never be allowed to determine what the Bible says, but culture always has and always will, puts pressure on us to deal with different issues that the Bible addresses. So the culture says, hey, it is now relevant for you to deal with this. All of a sudden this is an issue, we are forced to go to scripture and say wait, what does this say? So it does help, it informs us about what we need to address from scripture, but it can't teach us what scripture, it can't dictate what scripture teaches. And we're always involved in appreciation for context when we interpret scripture and culture helps us, challenges us to understand context. We have to admit though that we always come to every interpretive challenge with bias. That's why scripture used to be interpreted in a group, never alone. Today we pastors tend to go into their office, shut the door and figure out what it says and come and preach. But when you have five or six of you around saying, oh wait, what about this and what about that? That's a safety net really for that. But there is a tendency to let culture dictate what scripture means instead of letting culture say, here's what you have to deal with today. - So the question that people are writing that, why is it so unclear for us? I mean, how do we know which stuff in our Bible is gonna be just for Ephesus and Paul in this church and which is for the Corinthians and just them and which was for us until 1951 and which is for us today? How do we know what to do when we're reading our Bibles? - What we tend to wanna do is to create a law so that we don't have to ever think and there's nothing that's delicate and challenging. But we don't get to do that if you wanna be an intelligent Christian. If you're in a church that's involved not only in the heart and the hands but using the head to and developing that or growing our own ability that you don't get that option. But you know, the closer you get in everything in life, the closer you get on issues that are delicate to the truth, the squirlier it gets. And it's a squirrely question to ask the question, wait a minute, what was cultural and what's beyond culture? It's always true. When it's on the extreme, it's not that hard. So when he says, women should not come into the church without a prophesying church without having their heads covered. Look around you, even Bob Hess has his head uncovered but that's more about baldness than, we don't have any women in here. We have one or two ladies that love hats but that's more of a stylistic thing. Is that cultural or should we be reading the Bible and saying, how dare you come in here without your head covered? So that's on the extremes, that's easier to understand than on the more nuanced applications of culture. So to be aware of that and asking the question, wait a minute, what's cultural and what's not is part of the, ultimately it's an interpretive question. And other theologians that you're doing interpretation with are their pastors would say, ah, Greco, you are so lost trying to prove your point, you called that cultural and it's not. And here's why. So you have that back and forth and you have a better option of not missing that. - And may I add something to that? - Yeah, friends, when we study scriptures, we always remember that this was not a magic book that fell out of heaven with 3800 precepts about how to live. This was a book inspired by the Holy Spirit given to authors to then give to recipients at a certain time and a certain place for specific reasons. It's always cultural to begin with. And then we say, how do we apply that in our culture? So in other words, Paul wrote at a certain time to certain people with a certain set of situations going on at that church. It's always cultural to begin with. Then we look at other biblical evidence to try to figure out is that now something that will be in all cultures for all times or just for that culture for that time? Does that make sense? - And as an interpreter, you can manipulate that in the bad sense of the word, that's possible. You can abuse it. All we're trying to do is to say, hey, if Paul were standing over here watching us interpret, 'cause we're trying to decide what did he mean by what he said in that context. And then the preacher or teacher's question is, what bridge can we build from that, what he taught to bridge of relevance to today? How does that inform how we live and think today? And we're thinking with this in mind. If Paul standing here watching us interpret, which way is his head wagging? Is he saying, yeah, all right. Or is he saying, no stinking way. - That's not what I meant. - I did not mean anything like that. And so we have this monitor kind of going on in our heads. And we're capable of getting it wrong. - Here's the hardest question. You're gonna take, you have 30 seconds to answer this. (audience laughs) And it's gonna just, I think you're probably just gonna share your presuppositions art about the nature of scripture. The question was, there's some thinking out there that maybe the text was not written by Paul, but when we use the word corrupted over time by different theologies, different theological thinking. And that's why it looks like Paul's inconsistent with himself, because it wasn't all Paul's thinking. It was added at later time. It wasn't Paul's words, it was somebody 500 years later going, what, women can't teach? And then they wrote that in there. - As is the case with the suspicions about the name Junia to Junius. - Right. So what is, can you talk about your presuppositions about whether the text is something we can be trusted is from Paul to Ephesus in 8063. And refinements of that kind of thinking, like some people who are believers, they're Christians by the same definition as any of us. Say, well, the gospels are inspired, the epistles are commentaries on the inspired part of the Bible. There are all sorts of versions of that sort of thinking. Here's our church's position. From front to back, the Bible is 100% authoritative and inspired by the Holy Spirit. So when Paul wrote, he wrote, under the guidance and influence of the Holy Spirit, the same way the writers of the gospels wrote that. And that's why we're stuck with our dilemma with our, we're in such a quandary. - But we do believe that there is evidence, there's manuscript evidence available for us to be able to trust that this document is ancient and uncorrupted throughout the Middle Ages and Central. - Yeah, that's called textual criticism. That's the science of it. And there are documents, for instance, that we know we're from the end of the first or beginning of the second century, little fragments. And we have copies of the same text that are hundreds and hundreds of years older. And when we compare them, there hasn't been much change. And we find the more we get, the more we find in caves and things like that, the more we realize that what we have in our Bible is accurate, is exactly right. And that's the textual criticism. So it's not a brainless assumption or conclusion that what we have is dependable. - And that's a presupposition. That's a presupposition we have when we come to Paul's teaching. More study on that, for sure, if you're interested in it. Maybe we'll do that as an MCCU topic again, where do we get our Bible and how do we trust it? We've taught that course every couple of years around here. I'll leave you with this, Art, and you can answer it, let people go and bless us. And that is, somebody wrote, I love this, they thought, you know what, appreciate the dialogue. What's the significance, though, to our local body now for women in ministry in forwarding our mission, the mission of MCC to the community and to the world? So as we talk about this, what's the relevance to saying, all right, well, who are we today and where are we going and how does that impact us? And you can give us whatever charge you want. - Here's one of the ways that's relevant. I just, we just don't think it's fair for us to say, we're about theological diversity within the limits of orthodoxy and the kind of Christian diversity of thought that that invites. And then not at least explain and tell, we think it's intelligently why we're doing, why we're taking a particular position. So on the one hand, we're asking you, if you have a different view than the one I just presented, we want you to be part of our church, yet never, never at least give you the understanding or the explanation for why we come to the conclusion we come to, we want you to leave here today thinking, I may not agree, I have questions. But number one, I know my pastors respect the position I have, they could actually argue the position I have and I at least logically understand the biblical connections that get them to the position our church is going to take. It's relevant at least in that way. 'Cause I know we have folks who would say, no, I'd love you and everything and you guys are all fun and cool, but I don't see it that way at all. I think the Bible's clearly tipped on the biblical scale one. Yeah, this one, you just don't want to admit it. Well, I hear you and you may even be right. I don't think so, but it's relevant because we want to move someplace together in the same direction. Our conviction is God doesn't give some gifts to men to be able to use them and some gifts to women that they have to suppress. We're not saying men don't lead, men lead. Men just aren't the only ones who lead. That's what we're trying to say. And if you walk out today saying, I understand that, even if you don't say I agree with it, then this is relevant. 'Cause we're going to move forward in harmony with respect and humility and conviction all at the same time. Yeah? Okay. Well, listen, why don't you receive this blessing and then we'll be dismissed seven minutes. Stand and receive this blessing. Yes, God, we dare to ask questions. We dare to admit that we have differences of opinion and we dare you to send your Holy Spirit to give us the strength to remain unified and together and to prove that there is something to Jesus that's more powerful than the things that divide us. On the one hand, God, you know our hearts. We have no interest in compromising scripture and capitulating to culture. When the things that culture is teaching are damaging to human beings. But on the other hand, Lord, we hold our convictions with some level of humility and dependence and faith. Bind us together. Challenge our thinking, open our hearts and unleash us on a broken world. And the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.