Many, if not all of you know that I attend Mars Hill Graduate School in Seattle WA. And many, if not all of you, have an opinion of this school — for good or for ill. This school is only 9 years old, or young, or wahtever indicator of time you want to attach to it. It has been through high-hi’s and low-low’s and for the past three years I have had the opportunity to be a part of, and influence a few of these. And now, as I am in my final breathes of my life with the school I am once again fortunate enough to be a part of a conversation that, if done with patience, grace, and humility could drastically influence the face of the Church for the next millienium. This conversation is the conversation of harm that has been caused to women by the Church. Some people like to call it the conversation of ‘women in ministry’ and others like to call it ‘ordaining women.’ But for the sake of this post I will refer to it as neither of these, I will refer to it as standing at the edge of the image of God.

For years, too many years, we have lived in a world that has structures that are solely male, educational systems that are solely male, leadership structures that are solely male, and theological conversations that are black and white, in part, because of the male curse.

So here we are. Arguably the most progressive church movement in America (Emergent) is dominated by males. At the recent National Pastors Convention a group of people associated with Emergnet got invited to speak about the Emergent conversation — guess what? They are all males. Emergent Y/S published rouglhy 25 books — 3 of them are by women (two of the three women authors, at one point, have been associated with MHGS). The emergent board is almost all male. And yet, if asked in conversation, each one of these men that are associated with emergent will say that they are for women in ministy. And yet, there is this strange glass ceiling that is still present. What is that all about?

I wish that Christian men, not just men in Emergent, would have the grace to say to a woman, “I need your voice” Better yet “the Church needs your voice.” If we do not do this soon we will only propogate much of the same ill’s that pain us from the past 500 years.

Men, it is time to recognize that redemption is possible. It is time to recognize that we continue to voluntarily play into our fall and ‘dominate’ women. It is time to recognize that redemption begins with forgiveness and brokenness.

God — break us men and forgive us for the ways in which we have caused great harm to women. may this conversation that I have stumbled into continue and may I fall face down and weap for the harm that my gender has caused.

humbled
joel

p.s. My using Emergent as an example is as much that — an example — as it is a frustration of mine. I continually get frsutrated by people who say one thing and live another. We need leaders of character.

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