Show notes
When John MacArthur responded to a question about his feelings towards Beth Moore by telling Moore to "go home," Christians responded in a number of different ways. Some people took a hard stance on women not being allowed to preach in churches, while others took to Twitter to affirm Moore and her ministry. Moore herself responded via Twitter and said, "I did not surrender to a calling of man… I surrendered to a calling of God… You don't have to let me serve you. That gets to be your choice. Whether or not I serve Jesus is not up to you… One way or the other, I esteem you [MacArthur] as my sibling in Christ."
The controversy of MacArthur's remarks began a conversation among many Christians not only about the place of women in ministry, but how men and women, and husbands and wives, should treat each other in general.
Some Believers have pointed to Titus' words in the Bible, saying that the woman or wife's place is at home, as MacArthur said. Others have looked to Paul's texts and feel that women should stay silent in churches. To these passages, Greg affirms in this episode that we have to take the texts of the New Testament in social context; the early Christians were trying to not stick out or bring about massive social revolutions. Instead, they wanted to be known for how and Who they loved.
With this knowledge, we need to remember to work together as Christians for the sake of the Gospel instead of tear each other apart, or harshly say what some can do and some can't do. From the beginning, God created Man and Woman, Adam and Eve, to work together and be a partnership. We need to remember that it is not an "either or" when it comes to men and women working together in ministry, it's a "both and." It's also not about what we think are our rights or what we think we deserve from God vocationally, it's about what God has called us to individually, for His glory and wisdom. With this in mind, RD confirms that a church has to have ways to grow men and women equally, since they are both made in God's image and thus equally important to bringing the Gospel to the world.
To help having a well-rounded conversation around these topics, Greg and RD bring in their wives, Jen and Emily, to the episode.
Jen, Greg's wife, shares that she grew up in a ministry family, and felt the call to ministry when she was in her 20's. When she started studying the Bible for herself, she tells listeners that she found freedom as a woman in ministry, and has had lots of encouragement from men in the church to think outside the box in ministry and lead in lots of different ways. Jen explains that it's not about "the cause," it's about serving Jesus.
Emily, RD's wife, shares that she is passionate about keeping the "main thing" the main thing, and doesn't want to focus on women's ministries, but instead she wants to focus on Jesus and His ministry. She explains that she has had people in her life who have fostered and encouraged her to be a leader in her own individual way.
Throughout their conversation, RD, Greg, Emily, and Jen keep coming back to the idea that society has formed a lot of what Christianity has taken on as gender roles. For example, there is nothing Biblical about who has to do what in the home and in a marriage; society has put ideas in our heads like the wife has to stay home and cook dinner, and the husband handles the money. In our culture, this is what submission in a marriage looks like, but this is not what Biblical submission looks like.
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