catapult magazine

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discussion

The role of women

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Norbert
Jan 14 2008
11:01 pm

Again council shot down one of my nominees for deacon because she doesn’t have a penis. How frustrating. That was the sole reason. While my church is very traditional and conservative and I’ve known that for as long as I’ve known of this church, I’m frustrated that despite having language in our bylaws that allows for female deacons, we have yet to even keep one nominated to reach the congregation (which would then go to a lottery pick). If God truly doesn’t want women to be deacons in our church, couldn’t he make the choice himself (according to lottery—which is a totally different beef) and providentially prevent her name from being drawn?

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dan
Jan 16 2008
10:22 am

"thou shalt not put the lord thy god to the test" :)

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kirstin
Jan 16 2008
01:23 pm

I’m sorry your caught in such a frustrating situation, Norb. That sounds like the anti-racism organization I heard about recently that had an all white male board for many years. It’s dishonest to have it in the bylaws as a matter of principle and then not honor it. Keep working at it. Wasn’t it Billie Holiday who said something like, "The difficult, I’ll do right now. The impossible will take a little while"? Well, this might take a little while.

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kirstin
Jan 16 2008
01:24 pm

p.s. Couldn’t you just sneak a name in the hat? "Divine intervention?" :)

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dan
Jan 19 2008
12:36 am

ok, so how about this: what are you still doing at such a church? why have fellowship with small-minded barbarians?

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Norbert
Jan 24 2008
10:57 am

What would Jesus do?

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dan
Jan 24 2008
08:15 pm

i don’t know, he might call a spade a spade. he wasn’t exactly known for his tact. not that i’m recommending you follow his example.

i just wanted to emphasize how OUTRAGEOUS the perspective of these people is. talk about false gods…

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grant
Feb 06 2008
02:59 pm

I recently saw an interview on Charlie Rose with Marin Alsop, the first woman to conduct a major American orchestra. She admitted to walking into an airplane with two female pilots and actually taking a step back in concern for her potential safety. She said it ended up to be the smoothest flight she’d ever had, but her point was that the issue of women in leadership roles depends on how many experiences we have seeing good leadership by women. She says the media in England rarely brought up the fact that she’s a woman conducting orchestras, probably because they have had experience being led by a woman and it didn’t seem odd to them anymore. She believes having a successful woman president would most likely change people’s associations so that they will no longer consider women in leadership roles to be an odd or unique event.

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dan
Feb 06 2008
10:53 pm

thanks grant—i forgot about that. i guess if you’ve never seen a woman in leadership you might be excused for being against such a novelty. same goes for a black president i guess…

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kirstin
Feb 06 2008
11:02 pm

I think this is an interesting concept and certainly relevant for a lot of roles, but the obstacles to women in church leadership seem less surmountable than just [i:d2b3f1aad1]seeing[/i:d2b3f1aad1] women in positions of leadership. Spending an afternoon in Boys Town isn’t likely to change a church-goer’s position on homosexuality simply because of exposure to gay people in relationship. There’s an ‘infallible’ biblical objection. However, I’m thinking as I type…perhaps exposure is one of the ways the Spirit changes us. I’m thinking Peter and the Gentiles in Acts, when he simply couldn’t deny the presence of the Spirit in the household in which he fellowshipped. It would be interesting to see if Hilary as president caused any kind of cultural shift in perceptions of women in church leadership—and perhaps even more interesting (for better or worse) if the Republicans ever successfully nominate a woman for president.

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Norbert
Feb 07 2008
10:30 pm

The primary problem here is that the powers that be, for the most part mind you, believe that a strict adherence to 1 Timothy: 11-15 (A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.) trumps the spirit of Galatians 3:28 (There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus). They do good lip service in to women being equal to men, but should/must have different roles or different authority. This seems to smack of the separate but equal crap that dominated the first part of the 20th century.
The crazy thing is that we have some women who have quite a bit of authority in the church. Half of our ministry leadership team is comprised of women (the worship and care committee coordinators). We have plenty of female Sunday School teachers. Our current Adult Sunday School teacher is a woman. We have female leadership in the church, but not in an [i:5a78b03c74]official[/i:5a78b03c74] capacity.