spotlight on women in ministry, by ken wilson

Dear Vineyard Pastor,

 

The letter from our national director, Bert Waggoner, on the recent board decision about women in leadership at the translocal levels, speaks for itself, and the for the board.  I wanted to add a few perspectives of my own as the regional overseer for the Great Lakes Region. Keep in mind, I'm speaking for myself here and not our board, per se.

 

What's the biblical basis underlying this decision?

 

While the board decision was not based on a formal endorsement of any one

summary of the biblical arguments for the position taken, there are two respected summaries of the biblical issues that I found quite helpful.  The first is Gordon Fee, the respected Pentecostal Bible scholar and pastor.

 

In his book written with Douglas Stuart, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth the authors propose criteria for determining when a biblical text is stating universal truth vs. truth for a specific time and culture, a key issue in interpreting the biblical teaching regarding women. The key chapter is  "Epistles: The Hermeneutical Questions," especially the sub section titled, "The Problem of Cultural Relativity." Fee also treats this question in his book, Gospel and Spirit.

  

Fee and Stuart list several criteria when facing the question--especially important in Paul's letters, which, after all, were written to specific churches, often in response to very particular situations and questions--of when Paul is speaking "particularly' (for a particular time and situation) and "universally" for all times and situations. 

 

1. One should first central core of the message of the Bible and what is dependent or peripheral to it.

 

2. One should be prepared to distinguish between what is inherently moral and what is not.

 

3. One must make special note of items where the New Testament itself has a uniform and consistent witness and where it reflects differences. (The more it reflects differences, the more likely the issue is affected by particular rather than universal themes.) The fact that Deborah was empowered as a judge, that Jesus entrusted the proclamation of the apostolic message of the resurrection to a woman (see John 20), that Priscilla is listed more prominently than Aquila and was used to teach Apollos, that Junias is listed as "prominent among the apostles" all involves evidence reflecting a difference in the Bible itself.  

 

4. It is important to be able to distinguish within the New Testament itself between principle and specific application.  (Sometimes culturally relative principles are used to support universal applications and vice versa; principle and specific applications need to be distinguished.)

 

5. The degree to which a New Testament writer agrees with a cultural situation in which there is only one option in the culture, increases the possibility of the cultural relativity of such a position. (So, for example the fact that slavery wasn't questioned by any ancient sources, increases the possibility that the biblical support for--or lack of objection to--the institution of slavery is culturally determined.)

 

Fee & Stuart apply these criteria to the issue of women and homosexuality as examples (supporting the no gender restriction view on women in ministry and the traditional view on homosexuality.)

 

If anyone thinks this is all just a bunch of academic nonsense, I would remind them of a couple of things. 1) We have to make these interpretive decisions all the time as pastors and disciples (that is, to ask whether a text is culturally determined) because we must; otherwise, why not have women wear head coverings in worship, which is a Pauline injunction due to the angelic hierarchies; why not support the institution of slavery where it exists today on biblical grounds?  And 2) the Bible itself bears witness to the existence of difficult to understand texts (2 Peter notes the "some of Paul's writings are difficult to understand.") 

 

William Webb, author of Slaves, Women & Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis  adds some very important theological considerations.  Webb argues that the Bible itself, on the issue of women, bears witness to a kingdom influence on existing culture that always leans toward empowering women.  The influence of the kingdom in the Old Testament era

had the effect of bringing more empowering to women than did the existing culture. The influence of the kingdom in the time of Jesus dramatically empowered women, compared to the existing Jewish culture. When interpreting a given text, we need to ask the question, "Where is the kingdom headed on this issue"? In other words, it's not the biblical intention to identify the first century near Eastern culture, and the gospel's interaction with that culture as the final kingdom perspective on empowering women. There is a dynamic of the coming kingdom breaking into the present which moves in a particular direction and we need to be respectful of that direction when applying the teaching of Scripture.

 

Because of our deep commitment to the theology of the kingdom as a unifying

theme of Scripture and the center of our "centered set" within Vineyard, I weigh this kingdom perspective very heavily.

 

What's going to change immediately as a result of this decision?  

 

The primary change is simply this: we will no longer limit, as a matter of principle, any position of leadership at the translocal expressions of Vineyard (areas, regions, national) to men.  We will make these decisions based on pastoral wisdom and our best understanding of the leading of the Holy Spirit.

 

At the same time, we will, of course, respect the autonomy of the local church in deciding who to ordain as pastors.  

 

When blessing and empowering leaders we will operate by our best discernment about whom the Lord is gifting and calling for ministry, and not by "quota" systems, since we've never been a "representative leadership" movement.

 

How does this fit with where we've been?

 

When it comes to ministry, the emphasis in Vineyard has always been "everyone gets to play."  I see this as an extension of this principle to women in leadership.

 

We've never viewed our approach to gender issues and ministry as central to our identity as a movement. (John Wimber, who set the tone for the early years of our movement, never approached this issue dogmatically or as a central feature of our movement.)

 

We've always been a movement that is eager to remove obstacles to the spread of the gospel, a primary motivation in this decision.  I certainly experience this in bringing the gospel to a Blue State, Michigan, and in a town with a higher than average number of people not socialized to the sensibilities of the Bible Belt.

The cause of the gospel is a factor that shifts the "burden of proof" in making tough interpretive choices as one must make--either way--in resolving the issue of how to understand and apply the biblical teaching on women. I haven't met a single Vineyard pastor, whether "complimentarian" or "egalitarian" [labels I don't really think do a good job] who didn't make tough interpretive choices in how to apply the biblical teaching on women.  I know that when our church held the view that there were gender restrictions on women (my view on this shifted in the early 1990's) we were very ineffective in reaching the lost in Ann Arbor.   

 

Within the Vineyard, so far as I know, we've never defined ourselves as a "preservationist" or "restorationist" movement seeking to restore gender roles to an earlier era.  

 

Our approach to church government has always leaned toward the pragmatic, toward functional structures that "get the job done" rather than toward an attempt to carefully reproduce a New Testament church order.  For example, we've always had an emphasis (certainly not exclusively) on the value of couples serving together in church planting and pastoring, even though there doesn't seem to be any New Testament teaching on church leadership that advocates couples serving together in leadership.  This is an example of a more pragmatic approach to church leadership that has shaped the Vineyard from the earliest days.

 

How does this fit with where we're going? 

I believe this decision is in keeping with our desire to properly contextualize the gospel for maximum impact in our culture. Vineyard is a movement that takes seriously the missionary task in North America. This is our mission field and we are called to approach our task as any good missionary would, striving to remove culturally conditioned obstacles to the gospel while remaining faithful to the demands of the gospel.

 

Finally, as I've interacted with pastors in our region over this issue, I've been really pleased by the spirit in which this discussion has been taking place. I see a great deal of mutual respect and honor between people with varying views, and this I think is itself a sign of the kingdom among us.

 

Blessings,

 

Ken Wilson

Senior Pastor

Vineyard Church of Ann Arbor

Regional Overseer

 

 

 

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