Complimentarianism: A Short Defense, Part 1

Over the last couple of weeks, I have been confronted with, from more than one place, the idea of women in roles of leadership in the Church both pastoral or otherwise. It's no secret that the official position of the Association of Vineyard Churches USA is egalitarianism, or the view that women should not be held back from leadership positions in the Church. However, this is only on the translocal level. On the local level, that determination is left to the local church. But the egalitarian view is clearly the majority opinion in the Vineyard.

The other side of this question, and the position that I embrace and am now prepared to defend, is complimentarianism. In short, this view states that God created both men and women equally in His image, but assigned to each different, but complimentary roles in the family and in the Church. In other words, there are certain roles that only a man can fulfill, but that a woman compliments him in. Conversely, there are certain roles that only a woman can fulfill, but that a man compliments her in.

Before I move on I would like to state a few things. Firstly, I do hope that my statements are taken in the sense that I mean them. I do not wish to tear down, denigrate, or in any way hurt others in the Body of Christ, especially those with whom I disagree on this issue. It is not my intention to question the reality of any person's salvation, sincerity, or their love for our Lord Jesus Christ. I realize that this is a sensitive issue and will attempt to proceed accordingly.

Secondly, my statements are not meant to communicate any sort of chauvinism or mysogynism. I do not have some sort of sexist axe to grind. I honor womanhood and motherhood and would not be who I am today without either. I honor and love my own wife, mother, grandmothers, aunts, cousins, sister-in-law, and niece in my own family as well as the many friends I have who are female.

Thirdly, although I have the best of intentions and take great care, it is possible that I may none-the-less offend someone in the Body of Christ. It is also possible that I may also slip up and display some sort of immaturity or insensitivity. If such occurs, feel free to call me on it, in a Christ-like manner of course, and if I see it, I will immediately repent and apologize. This is a learning and growing experience for me too. I am still new at this.

Fourthly, I do this because I love the truth. I believe this issue is important and one that needs to be discussed. God has ordered the Church to function in a way consistent with His revelation in Scripture and I believe that the Scriptures do speak to this issue particularly. But I also know that the truth is to be spoken in love (Ephesians 4:15), so I endeavor to do exactly that.

The question before us that I intend to answer biblically is what does Scripture say about the role of women in the local church, specifically in regard to leadership? Historically the answer has been that only qualified men can and should fulfill this role. Recently however, the pendulum has swung the other direction, particularly in the Pentecostal/Charismatic/Third Wave traditions. Methodism, the Churches of the Nazarene and other offshoots of Wesleyanism were already ordaining women.

The Lutheran, Anglican, and Episcopalian traditions have followed suit I do believe. Many of the Baptist, Presbyterian, and Reformed varieties however have still held strongly to the traditional view of qualified male leadership.

Among those like myself who believe in the continuation of all the gifts of the Holy Spirit and in the ministries of signs and wonders/deliverance, the Qualified Male Leadership view (hence QML) is a distinct minority viewpoint (although Sovereign Grace Ministries and New Frontiers International are notable exceptions).

It would be tempting to start our discussion at 1 Timothy 2:12,13 but instead I want to start at Genesis 1:26,27.

Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. (NASB)

The reality of humanity as created in God's image is one of the central beliefs of the Christian faith. But what exactly does it mean to be created in God's image?

I believe that reflecting God back to Himself is what that means. In other words, we as human beings look like God. We sound like God. We smell like God. God created us almost like mirrors that He gazes at Himself in and finds pleasure in. At least that is what is supposed to happen. Sin has so damaged that image, that God really finds it repugnant and in order to restore that image to us, sends His only Son to die for us and be raised back to life for us. Christ's passion is designed to make human beings look like, sound like, and smell like God again for His glory.

Another basic Christian truth is the Trinity. Simply put, the Trinity is the belief that there is one, and only one, true and living God who is revealed as three distinct, but co-equal persons - The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit. These three are one, and only one God.

So how do these basic truths of the Christian faith tie together to argue for the QML viewpoint? I'm glad you asked!

As human beings who reflect God back to Himself, we are called not only to reflect God's rulership over the universe, and His love and compassion to each other, but also to reflect His Trinitarian existence.

In the Trinity, although the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all equal in essence, there is still headship and submission. The Father exercises headship over the Son. The Son submits to the Father. Jesus said to His disciples once, "...The Father is greater than I" (John 14:28). Our Lord certainly did not mean that He was inferior to the Father as some cultists teach, but that in the Trinity, there is a pecking order if you will. Similarly, the Apostle Paul states: God is the head of Christ. (1 Corinthians 11:3) The Father takes a leadership role in the Godhead while the Son submits to His Father's will.

Tying that in with our current discussion, I believe that the Scriptures indicate that in the home and in the church, God has set a pattern of male leadership to reflect His intra-trinitarian relationships (I do not believe that women should be held back from positions of authority or leadership outside the home or church. Women can hold positions of authority in the marketplace or government for example and all those under a woman's leadership are obliged to submit).

Consider again with me 1 Corinthians 11:3 in its context:

Be imitators of me, just as I also am of Christ. Now I praise you because you remember me in everything and hold firmly to the traditions, just as I delivered them to you. But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ. (NASB)

Paul, I believe, is laying out the divine pecking order. God [the Father] is over Christ. Christ is over man, and man (in this context, in the church's gathering) is over the woman. But, lest the man become arrogant, Paul reminds the men that every man (excepting Adam of course), came from a woman.

What I think is important as we consider this text as it relates to the issue at hand is that when we consider Christ's obedience to the Father, we always see Him joyfully submitting to His Father and lovingly carrying out the plan of God. He never considered that it might diminish His essential equality with God.

In the next part of this discussion, I'll deal more with how Christ is the model for both the male and female.

-Christian

Just Got Back From My First Vineyard Conference

I just got back on Thursday from just north of Atlanta, GA for the Vineyard Southeast Regional conference. It was an awesome time where so many good things happened. I rode up with one of the pastors, his wife and daughter, and the youth pastor. We drove up on Tuesday morning and got to the Atlanta Vineyard around 1:30 pm. I was able to stay at my pastor's son's home for the two nights we were there.

The speakers were Gary Best, the national director of the Vineyard in Canada, H.B. London of Focus on the Family, and Bert Waggoner, the national director of the AVC in the United States. I actually was able to meet both Gary Best and Bert Waggoner and even talked briefly with Waggoner about postmodernism, epistemology, and the emerging church. Those were some of the highlights. I also got a copy of John Wimber and Kevin Springer's Power Evangelism.

The pastor, his wife, and some members from the Vineyard in Inverness, Florida went up too and we had a good time fellowshipping with them. Also met some of the pastors from other Vineyards in the southeast.

One other highlight was when Gary Best encouraged us at the end of one of his talks about healing was to have everybody in the sanctuary who had never given words of knowledge about healing in such a big setting to stand up and...give a word of knowledge about healing. Well that included me and Gary went around the room asking us to share a word if we had received one. I shared that I thought someone had ligament damage in their left knee that should be prayed for. A girl stood up and myself and several others prayed for her and she got healed! The knee didn't hurt anymore and felt very good she said. Some might not look very highly on that but it was my first real experience at healing.

H.B. London's messages were about guarding your family life in mininstry. It really gets ugly when a minister lets himself get too busy ministering that he forgets his family and they pay the price.

Bert Waggoner's message was reaffirming what the Vineyard is all about...The Kingdom of God! He said something that I have said before - that dispensational theology and the Vineyard do not mix. Dispensationalism's view of the Kingdom is completely incompatible with what the Vineyard is all about. He stressed that some in the Vineyard needed to have a theological conversion.

He also spoke of how the Vineyard is a movement that stresses the Kingdom and not much else so there is room for diverse viewpoints on other issues. In other words, much to my chagrin, the Vineyard is not a reformed movement. On the other hand, it's not an arminian movement either, or an emergent movement or anything else. It's a Kingdom movement.

I also went to two church planting workshops. I've always been interested in it but it really got me thinking if I ever wanted to do that full time. I'm not sure yet.

Some points of concern though are in order. For example at the conference the book table was selling books by N.T. Wright. Wright is a champion of the New Perspective on Paul that I believe alters justification by faith and denies the imputation of the righteousness of Christ.

Also, some in the Vineyard are taking an emergent slant that makes me uncomfortable. Finally there was some laughter during one of the ministry times. Some time I'll blog on holy laughter.

Anyway, long story short, I really learned about some of the realities of ministry, more of what the Vineyard is all about, and more about how the Vineyard works as a whole movement. Praise God for what He did there.

Christian

His Exceedingly Great and Precious Promises

Last night in Katie and I's small group the subject of God's promises to us came up and it was an occasion to bring up some things that I have pondering lately. The essence of saving faith is in trusting Christ and Him alone for your salvation from sin and God's judgment. Trusting anything else, even Jesus plus something else is not saving faith, but is belief in a different gospel which will ultimately damn those who believe it (Galatians 1:8,9).

Trusting Christ means trusting that He will bring us into the Kingdom of God both now and in glory. It's trusting in God's goodness, love, faithfulness, grace, compassion, etc. toward you. You, if you believe in the Christ of Scripture, are one of God's dear children. He loves you (Eph. 3:14-21), He cares for you (1 Peter 5:8), He is Abba Father to you (Romans 8:15). He will give you mercy and grace to help you in your time of need (Hebrews 4:14-16), and He will ensure your perseverence in the faith and bring you into His eternal kingdom (Jeremiah 32:40, Hebrews 10:14, Revelation 21:1-22:5). And the list goes on.

All of these the Apostle Peter calls God's exceedingly great and precious promises...(2 Peter 1:4a NKJV). It's vital that we as believers grab a hold of these and bank all of our hope on them in Christ Jesus.

The people of Israel in the Old Testament unfortunately failed to do this in a key moment. You may remember that Israel was poised to enter the promised land and sent the 12 spies in for reconaissance. Ten came back and gave a bad report saying that it would be too hard and that ultimately, God could not be trusted. They may not have said that outright, but that was the attitude of their hearts.

And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, "Send men to spy out the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the children of Israel; from every tribe of their fathers you shall send a man, every one a leader among them"...And they returned from spying out the land after forty days...Then they told him, and said: "We went to the the land where you sent us. It truly flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. Nevertheless the people who dwell in the land are strong; the cities are fortified and very large; moreover we saw the descendants of Anak there..." And they gave the children of Israel a bad report of the land which they had spied out... (Numbers 13:1,2;25-28;32a NKJV)

And even though Joshua and Caleb encouraged the people to trust God and go, the majority won out and the children of Israel would wander in the desert for forty years until that generation died out (with the exceptions of Joshua and Caleb).

Israel failed to trust God's promises and goodness toward them and they paid the price. Interestingly, this generation of Israelites is put up as an example of unbelief that we should not follow(Hebrews 3:7-19).

Trusting God and His promises is not easy. Our flesh is continually trying to pull us away from God (Galatians 5:17). The deceitful promises of sin, and its passing pleasures that war against the soul (Hebrews 3:13; 11:25; 1 Peter 2:11) are continually around us. Yet we know that nothing will ever separate us from God's love (Romans 8:38,39), and that God will never let us be tempted beyond what we are able to bear (1 Cor. 10:13), and that God will ultimately see us through to the end, never letting us fall away(Jeremiah 32:40), and bringing us to eternal glory (Romans 8:30).

Trust in God's promises toward you in Christ Jesus today and pray that I will do the same.

-Christian