The Story of God and Women in Ministry

God is the master storyteller. He has delivered a time honored story first in an oral presentation, then later in a written presentation. He is responsible for all the ingredients of what goes on in a story.

What are those ingredients, you may ask? Good question! A story could simply be defined as a presentation of a question with the expectation of an answer. A story has a protagonist/hero, one who has an intention and overcomes conflict to secure a resolution. This perfectly describes the Story of Scripture.

Tom Wright¹ has suggested that the Bible can be best understood as a story which has several acts; for him it is a five-act-play. This story moves from Creation to New Creation through the maze of independence, i.e., conflict toward the goal of humankind restored completely to their interdependent status.

In the first act, recorded in the first chapter of Genesis, God creates the universe. The backstory of this Act is that of the Covenant, whose story is recorded in Act 3, stating the first stipulation of that covenant, i.e., you can’t have any other God but me. In Act 2 we have the story of Creation told again with a focus toward humankind being created to be interdependent with God, but as the scenes move forward, humankind decides that independence from God would be better than independence with God. So, they break the only stipulation in the Garden and eat of the tree that was forbidden.

Within Act 1 and 2, we have the setup of the story. God created humans to be interconnected with him, and the conflict, humans decided to be disconnected from God. The remaining Acts are told so that the reader can see how the main hero of the Story, who is God, intends to overcome the conflict and bring about a resolution to it.

Here are some things to keep in mind. First, from the beginning there was the Kingdom and the Church. God created a world over which he could have reign. The first human couple formed the first version of the Church. There are several upgrades to this version of the Church throughout the story. Second, the two humans who were created were created equally, one being second in sequence to be a helper equal to the first one. There was no hierarchy of male over female. Third, the couple together broke the only stipulation in the Garden. Fourth, the curses that were given out for disobedience were only given to the serpent, not the two humans.

One of the interpretations coming out of this story that has long influenced the concept of mutuality of female and male is the interaction where God tells the woman that the man will rule over her. There is a similar saying in close context to this saying that sheds light on how to understand what the storyteller meant. We are told a bit earlier that the sun would rule over the moon. So, to comprehend what this means, we must ask the question, what did that rule look like? It is fair to say that the sun does not, even to this day rule over the moon in the way in which we have become accustom, to understanding authority and submission in our culture.

As we progress into Act three which tells the story of God’s rule in terms of the Mosaic covenant and Israel as the next version of the Church, there are times where we see the substories which demonstrate that the place of a woman, even in a culture which is male oriented, shines out as a light of the equality of female and male in the storyline. Women from Sarah to Esther demonstrate that there is another story at play inside the overall storyline.

In Act 4, we see Jesus bringing about an updated version of the Kingdom which has come to be referred to as the inauguration of the Kingdom and the move toward a new version of the Church in his choice of the twelve as the leadership of Israel rejected Jesus early in the storyline of the Gospel of Mark. We could call that progression or trajectory. The apex of the Story in Scripture is also the climax of the Story. The conflict which began in the Garden is now solved with the event of Jesus who moved into the neighborhood showing the Church how to live a Kingdom life as truly new humans, now, but not yet. What occurred in the Garden is now undone in Jesus.

Act 5 continues to show us how the Church of the first century struggled with learning how to be the true humanity for the sake of the world. The culture in which they lived provided one story of how to live while Jesus had provided another story. Paul, the earliest writer of “help” letters written to churches, wrote about this new humanity idea in the first book of the New Testament era to be written, the book of Galatians, to demonstrate to the folks in Galatia who were Judaizing themselves. He told them that the distinctions that the old humanity had held sway over them, had been broken in Jesus and there was neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female. In the ministry of Jesus to bring about the beginning of a new creation, these distinctions had been broken and cast aside.

Remember, these books written in this period of time were ad hoc and dealt with specific problems that the churches were facing when learning to live out their new humanity in their old culture. Some of these books have passages that had to do with the place of women and their function in the church, which when they heard them allowed them to find the freedom described from Paul’s pen. While it looks like some of those books may contain passages that forbid the work of women in the ministry of the church, they do not mean what it looks like they mean with a surface reading with an old English version governing the reading. The context produces quite a different picture of what is meant.

So What?

What does all this have to do with women in ministry and leadership? The great storyteller has provided us with a story to live into as inaugurated Kingdom people. In a succinct way, God created the world in which male and female were equal. By their choice, the male and female decided to become independent from God’s design. In this independent world humans move to another story, one in which a male was superior to a female. God selected a people through whom he would send his son, who in a great climactic event would overcome the conflict brought on by independence and its results and bring resolution to the problem introduced by male and female. In this climactic act, Jesus brought a new creation, not unlike the first one before independence became the rule. In that new creation, male and female are once more equal. In this new creation, there is neither male or female, i.e., there is equality between the sexes. The concept of headship which had been produced by humankind in its independent state has been completely reversed.

So why has the Vineyard moved toward the participation of women in leadership, including senior leadership within Vineyard churches? Because we believe that we are following the trajectory of the New Testament. We believe that we are looking at this idea through inaugurated Kingdom lenses and working out the values of the Kingdom presented in the New Testament.

We are a centered set people. And that focus allows us to move forward to embrace the ministry that God has called each of us to do for the sake of others and provides equal access for both females and males to actively interface in ministry. Living into his Story calls us to move from other stories to live in this new creation. The lens of the inaugurated Kingdom demands no less.

¹Tom Wright (N. T Wright) is the Bishop of Durham in England and is one of the foremost New Testament specialist in today’s church. He is both Pastor and Theologian.

© 2009. Winn Griffin. DMin. The Story of God and Women in Ministry

Here are some resources that can help you work into this inaugurated Kingdom Story.

Story

Griffin, Winn. God's EPIC Adventure. Woodinville, WA: Harmon Press, 2007.

Bartholomew, Craig G., and Michael W. Goheen. The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004.

Audio Links

Women and Equality

Discussing Women and Leadership

Books Bert Waggoner Would Highly Recommend Reading on Both Sides of the Debate.
Compiled by Bert Waggoner 2009

Complementarian Position
Carson D.A. The Church in the Bible and the World: An International Study. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1987.

Doriani, Dan. What the Bible Teaches. Wheaton, IL: Good News Publishing, 2003.

Grudem, Wayne. Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth. Sisters, OR: Multinomah Press, 2004.

Hurley, James B. Man and Woman in Biblical Perspective. Grand Rapids, MI: Academie Books Zondervan Publishing House, 1981.

Piper, John and Wayne Grudem. Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism. Wheaton, IL: Good News Publishers, 1991.

Egalitarian Position
France, R.T. Women in Church’s Ministry: A Test-Case for Biblical Hermeneutics. Carlisle, UK: Paternoster Press, 1995.

Giles, Kevin. The Trinity and Subordinationism: The Doctrine of God and the Contemporary Gender Debate. Downers Grove, IL: InterVaristy Press, 2002.

Grenz, Stanley J. Women in the Church: A Biblical Theology of Women in Ministry. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1995.

Keener, Craig S. Paul, Women and Wives. Peabody, MA: Hendricksons Publishing, 1992.

McKnight, Scot. The Blue Parakeet. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 2008.

Morphew, Derek. Different but Equal. Cape Town, South Africa: Vineyard International Publishing, 2009.

Pierce, Ronald and Rebecca Merrill Groothuis. Discovering Biblical Equality. InterVarsity Press, Second Edition, 2005.

Stackhouse , John G., Jr. Finally Feminist: A Pragmatic Christian Understanding of Gender. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Publishing Group, 2005.

Sumner, Sarah PH.D. Men and Women in the Church: Building Consensus on Christian Leadership. Downers Grove, MI: InterVarsity Press, 2003.

Webb, William J. Slaves, Women and Homosexuals. Downers Grove IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001.

Williams, Don. The Apostle Paul and Women in the Church. Los Angeles, CA: BIM, Inc, 1977.