coming clean about the women in ministry issue: today, at deeper story

Today, I’m sharing over at Deeper Story

Depending on whom you ask, it’s the hot topic in the Church these days.

What are we to do with the women?

Whether it’s long and ridiculous lists outlining what constitutes an important enough position in a church to determine if a woman should be allowed to fill it or a much more thoughtful series of reflection, such as that being hosted by Ed Cyzewski, the blogosphere has done nothing but exacerbate our collective access to every opinion under the sun as to how we are to actually read Corinthians or Timothy or what culturally historical position should be taken to reinterpret into today’s context or … and it goes on.

And I must confess to you, I’m not sure which camp I completely fall into.

I have written in the past some particularly pointed posts in which I advocate a strongly feminist position, if we are going to define feminist as someone who recognizes a woman to be in fact human, moreover made in the image of God. Indeed, many of my friends around the blogs are women who have no qualm asserting themselves as egalitarian.

And I love them, I love what they do, I love how God works through them.

But today I want to come clean.

I want to confess to you that I haven’t fully made up my mind. I still need time to think and pray. For I am at heart, I think, a complimentarian. At least in so far as I think men and women do have complimentary roles to one another in marriage. Now if that means that I have to say only women should stay home or that a man is the only one allowed to work, then cast that label aside and find something else to call me. But if egalitarian means that anything a man can do a woman can do with no qualification whatsoever …

Part of me cries YES! and part of me cries NO!

I am not the person who has read an NIV version of Corinthians and Timothy and made a case for gender roles in church based on translation. I have read the Greek, I have read under people who read the Greek from both sides of the camp, and I am still pondering and praying it out.

But I can tell you what I do know. At least, what I know right now. I can share some of the threads that weave my soul.

Keep reading and join me, today, over at Deeper Story?

© 2012, Preston. All rights reserved.