This is a letter to my younger self. The insecure and self-confident younger self who was a brand new Christian in the late 1990s. The younger self who attended excellent churches in the FIEC and newfrontiers tradition, which I am evermore grateful for. But the idiot who had not yet had the chance to mature in his discovery of the many ways God gifts, uses and graces women in ministry.

It’s not a letter to mature complementarians. It’s not to those mature believers who have searched both the scriptures and their own flawed depravities to ponder whether their Scripture interpretation that men and women have different ministerial functions had its root as much in their upbringing / social conditioning / simplistic hermeneutics, as in the mind and imagination of the God who made man and woman together in his image, and called it very good. There is an honoured Scriptural interpretation that searches the Scriptures, and even stands back from the proof texts, and still wants to affirm difference. But it is written to my idiot younger self – and maybe scores of others like him – who had not at that stage been blessed with the insights, experiences and Scripture reflections that he would later hold dear.

In the past week I have been struck by two women. One at University, used to extraordinarily powerful, biblical and engaging preaching from her vicar (a woman), who has emerged on the student scene to find certain churches packed with people who managed in the first week of meeting her to emphasise like it was of primary importance that women could/should not be in ministry – by their words, actions, platforming and direct challenge. She was struck that one of the student workers managed to use completely the wrong book of the Bible to justify their position (misquoting 1 Timothy as Titus). The other was a central church employee who told me she had grown up in a charismatic, evangelical church that did not allow women in ministry and was still recovering from it.

It took me back to my third year as an undergrad by when my ‘idiot’ self was already beginning to adjust my position. More on why later. I was dining with five other strong Christians, three men, three women. Each of the men had an enormous appreciation of the women at the table and were struck by their giftedness. Each of the gifted women were in complementarian churches. For an amusing(!) hour the men tried to persuade the women that they were called into teaching ministry in the church. The women resisted. Fast forward five years and the women were teaching abroad on the mission field. Fast forward 30 years and they are back in the UK teaching the church in a wider variety of ways.

It took me back to the last visit of a newfrontiers pastor who regularly stays at our house – a vicarage, where (plot spoiler) my wife is the vicar. Nicola has a ready patter of teasing for him when he visits, as he has maintained a careful, exegetical, belief that women are not called to eldership or overall teaching ministry in the church. So on this occasion she launched in to the ageing banter that usually provokes a smile, not realising that our friend had just been confessing to me his changed position, and he had come to see the grace God had put on women in his network and church to preach and lead and re-read Scripture without his goggle lens on. His eyes felt opened he was a new man.

This vignettes, of course, cover over a multitude of hurt. I remember with a shame the vitriol with which I challenged an undergrad theology student when I was a second year, about her sense of calling, ready to jump on any slippery interpretation of ‘kephale’ [headship] that seemed out of sync to me. I remember this challenge though not as one coming from a place of deep certainty in me, but one of noisy exploration – loudly insisting that she defend her position, while wanting to test the boundaries of my certainty and see if I needed to learn. Not realising all the time what a burden that was putting on her. Not hearing the implied superiority in my challenge. Not aware of the limitations I would be imposing on her.

I’d like to say it was learning that won me over. My deep appreciation of Greek or Hebrew. My reading of Andrew Perriman’s Speaking of Women (a great text from London School of Theology), or the likes of Elaine Storkey, a luminary among evangelical theologians. Or that it was experience. My memories of meeting with Jackie Pullinger, the pioneering missionary and church planter with an ‘apostolic’ teaching ministry who has wowed by younger heart. Or Joyce Huggett’s pastoral writing on Listening to God which had explained to me deep truths on prayer that no end of (male) sermons had failed to communicate.

But, inevitably perhaps, dear idiot, it was love.

At 20 I fell in love with a woman who had had a calling to church leadership and teaching since she was 8, and before women were allowed to be vicars. She had seen miracles, given a sermon when she was 11 and prophetic words as a child when she that released people from bondage and fear. As a student she had walked into a conservative environment and tried to shut her calling down to ‘shall I be a vicar’s wife’. As a potential vicar that was frankly more convenient for me and I was not quick to combat it… why share the stage when you can take pride of place after all? Dear idiot. You were a monster.

But slowly, and extraordinarily in a conservative leaning church, that bottling of calling exploded. As Andrew Dow preached his annual call for vocations at Christ Church Clifton, a soon to be married Nicola, fresh from a pivotal year on the frontline of mission work in Asia, was deeply moved through the sermon, clearly called and acknowledged to be by leaders of two churches. She trained as a lay reader the next year (aged 23), and as an ordinand four years later. She now leads an extraordinary church that teaches the whole counsel of God unapologetically, and regularly raises up men and women for ordained ministry (four in training this year alone).

By this stage I was four years into my own journey with the Bible rethinking the weight I had previously felt that verses talking about headship, women being silent in church and the absence of women in the lists of elders (and perhaps deacons) in the pastoral letters. But it was still a stage (2004) when our church tribe (charismatic evangelical anglicans) had not quite shifted to the almost universal appreciation of women in leadership that we now hold to today.

Then a couple of years later John and Anne Coles did a sensational seminar at New Wine. They explained their shift to embracing the ministry of women as leaders at every level of the church. They had processed a lot of their thinking with the aforementioned Elaine Storkey. The gist of their seminar (filtered through my own developing thought – errors all mine) was this:

Sorry. We have been taking our theology from focusing in on just a few verses in Scripture. What we have failed to do is scan outwards and see the whole picture of the Bible. To put these verses in the context of creation – fall – curse – law – prophesy – Christ incarnated – Christ crucified – Christ resurrected – Spirit send – church formed – church mess – church corrected – second coming – new creation. When you do that a different trajectory of Scripture emerges.

  • The creation where Man is not good on his own
  • The creation where Man and Woman together represent the image of God.
  • The woman as a leader and influencer in the garden.
  • The fall creating shame and separation between them.
  • The curse where men and women move from side by side, to a hierachy of power – where the man rules over and the woman tries to pull down. (made from his hip to be by his side not from his feet to be under him).
  • The law where a woman gets sent out of the camp monthly, the 10 commandments are written for men (‘do not covet your neighbour’s wife’) and female slaves are worth half (or 60%) of what their male counterparts are.
  • The prophesy where God promises he will pour out his Spirit on all flesh… both male and female.
  • Christ incarnated, where Mary is a paradigm of faith, women are allowed and encouraged to sit at his feet, and often portrayed (especially in Luke) as the most faithful of disciples.
  • Christ crucified, for all humanity, witnessed by all his female disciples but just one of the men.
  • Christ resurrected and choosing a woman (Mary) as the first ‘sent one’ (apostle) of the resurrection.
  • The Spirit sent – as promised on all flesh – men and women. Women prophesying, hosting/leading churches, preaching and mentoring teachers in Acts and epistles. The fall and curse are reversed as people come under grace.
  • Church formed – sometimes at the homes of women, with a clear teaching that we are all one in Christ and all part of the body. Women elevated to status of someone who should be submitted to ‘submit to one another out of reverence for Christ’.
  • Church corrected – including female leaders for breaking the bond of peace… ‘I plead with Euodia and I plead with Synchete…’ In Christ there is no male or female.
  • Second coming – where we will be like the angels… no marriage according to Jesus and any gender distinctions seem to shift.
  • New creation where all things are new, and no law or curse have any impact on us.

When this framework is the backdrop to the individual verses different priorities can begin to be seen in them…

  • In 1 Corinthians does Paul really mean he wants women to be silent in church (as teachers), when he has already talked about them prophesying in church – speaking out God’s words for today.
  • In 1 Timothy, when Paul talks about an order in creation, (Adam came first then Eve), is that setting an ongoing hierarchy, or simply combatting the myth of Artemis of the Ephesians that led to female supremacy in churches as se came first and then her twin brother was born three weeks later.
  • Are women really saved through childbearing (which neither makes historical/medical sense not spiritual sense), or is it a continuation of countering the Artemis myth where she saved her mother while she gave birth to her twin and women in Ephesus ‘praised her glorious grace’ for saving them through childbirth.
  • Is the husband as ‘head’ of a wife he has to be prepared to lay down his life for, really an excuse of any and every man to see themselves as over any and every woman…?
  • Is Junias (among the apostles in Romans 16) really likely to be a man? How about Phoebe, Priscilla, Lydia etc…?
  • Are gifts given to ‘each one’ as Christ has apportioned them, or ‘each man’?

etc…

And there is much more besides…

So dear idiot, as you shift from 18 to 19, and on into being 20 why not take a pause and think, ‘am I really as sure as I think I am the bible teaches what I think it does…’ or do I need to let it read me first…

With love,

your still passionate, biblically confident elder self who can’t wait to introduce you to your incredible wife and daughter whose ministries will blow you away.

Richard