Myths and Maxims of Ministry

Recently a friend told me that she was somewhat overwhelmed with the details of a particular ministry she had started and had trouble finding joy in it until she reminded herself of the reason she began it in the first place. That got me to thinking about some of the misconceptions I had about ministry over the years, and  I thought I’d share some of those here. I’m not talking about “the” ministry: the paid professional, full-time minister of some sort, though some of these may apply there as well, but rather I am talking about the average Christian who participates in some ministry and then gets dismayed with it.

Here were some of my faulty assumptions:

1. Since this is being done for the Lord, everything should go smoothly. I can picture some of you smiling. Though I don’t see the devil behind every little problem, we do have an active enemy behind the scenes, and we do live in a fallen world where things break down and problems occur. The icemaker doesn’t know it’s in a church and shouldn’t fall apart just before a banquet that has been planned for months (just one of my “things gone wrong” scenarios.) The microphone makes an excruciating noise just as the soloist steps up, the babysitter forgot she should be there, etc. etc. It just happens.

2. Since we’re all Christians here, we should all agree on how everything should be done. If you read through the book of Acts, you see that the early church leaders had to hammer some things out. Even Barnabas and Paul had a major disagreement, causing them to part ways (and the Bible doesn’t really say who was right and who was wrong there. Some have faulted Paul for not being gracious, but maybe John Mark needed to know how serious his previous failure was. At any rate, they all reconciled later and God used it to multiply the number of people sent out). Leaders should not expect a panel of “yes men” (or woman), no one should be oversensitive about their proposals or ideas, we should all be open to differing opinions but be prepared to stand firm when something needs to be done a certain way.

3. Since we’re all Christians here, we should all have the best attitudes and act in an exemplary way. We should. But we don’t. We’re sinners. That’s not an excuse, but it is a truth. We fail. We disappoint each other. We display selfishness. We need to react to each other with grace, remembering our own faults and failures and need for grace. We might get our feelings hurt, but we need to take it to the Lord: we might need to go to the other person and let them know and try to explain and apologize to each other, or we might need to just let it go, but what we should not do is get bitter and drop out of church or avoid that person forevermore.

4. I should always feel joyful in my ministry. There are times when we get bogged down in details, feel overwhelmed, get tired of it, just don’t enjoy it, wish we hadn’t signed up, etc. And if we think about it a minute, we can feel that way in other areas of life as well. We don’t always respond to our loved ones with love and joy, though we want to and strive and pray for help to. We can get bogged down in the daily duties at home and get irritable about them instead of lovingly ministering to our families. A lack of joy in a ministry may be an indication it’s time to make changes, but more often than not it just means we’re human and, like my friend at the beginning, need to remind ourselves of why we’re doing what we’re doing and for whom we’re doing it. And I usually find that the joy comes not before or even during a task, but afterward.

5. If God calls me to do something, I should always feel sufficient for it. I have found just the opposite to be true. Usually, like Moses, I feel insufficient for it even before I start, but sometimes even if I am asked to do something that I feel God has equipped me for, there is always a point where I feel overwhelmed (I mean locked in the bathroom crying type of overwhelmed). But that’s a good place to be, because that’s when we learn by experience and not just principle that His strength is made perfect in our weakness.

6. If this ministry is in God’s will, there should be plenty of people willing to help with it.  Not necessarily. A lot of ministries end up being understaffed because others don’t catch the vision or feel just too busy. Once when I needed to round up some helpers for a particular endeavor, I asked someone who looked to me like she’d have time, but she didn’t feel she did. Then another lady whom I would never have asked because she had so much on her plate volunteered. You just never know, but instead of getting frustrated, just pray about whom to ask. In some cases, it might need to be laid aside until enough people get burdened for it. Once when we were part of a Christian homeschooling ministry, the lady who had started it had her seventh child and just could not carry on with it. We went without it for a year, and then several ladies volunteered to take it up again, breaking it into more manageable pieces for each one rather than having the whole thing on one person’s shoulders. Praying for laborers isn’t restricted to the mission field.

Those are some myths, or misconceptions. Here are the maxims, which will overlap a bit with the above.

1. Something will go wrong, some times worse than others, no matter how well you plan. Take it patiently and pray for wisdom about what to do. God’s given me some marvelous ideas right in the midst of a crisis. And on the other side, if a lady comes tearing out of the church asking you if you’d be willing to go buy some ice because the icemaker  stopped working and the banquet starts in half an hour and 100 ladies are coming — please don’t act grumpy and displeased and take 20 minutes to get going (yes, that happened). You don’t know what a balm you can be for someone in the throes of a major problem. And if you come to an event and it’s starting late, don’t be critical: you never know what has happened behind the scenes.

2. Disagreements will occur no matter how much you prayed beforehand. But don’t just dismiss them: sometimes they are God’s way of showing you an aspect you may not have thought of. Even if you can’t make a change and do what the other person suggested, you can make sure they feel heard and respond graciously.

3. You won’t always feel like doing whatever it is you’ve agreed to do. Pray for grace and do it anyway. You’ll probably feel better about it afterward.

4. Realize you can’t do it on your own. Jesus said, “without me ye can do nothing” (John 15:5b), but “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me” (Philippians 4:13).

5. People will fail you. They failed Jesus, too. We have failed Him and others. We may need to discuss the specific matter with the person involved as part of their growth and training, but we also need to forgive as we have been forgiven.

6. People will surprise you with sometimes with their willingness to pitch in and help, to support you, to do what needs to be done, to have a great idea just when you can’t think any more, to say a word of encouragement to edify you.

7. Ministry will stretch you. If we never venture out of our comfort zones, we’ll never grow. It’s scary, but we can find God meeting us in our need and providing in the most wonderful ways when we let Him stretch us.

8.Get adequate rest before or in the midst of extra-busy or pressured times.

9. Delegate. Easier said than done sometimes, but pray not only for helpers, but the right helpers. Be prepared that they might not do everything just the way you would and pray for wisdom about when to insist on something being done a certain way and when to go with the flow.

10. Sometimes it is best to say no or step down. A principle instilled in me early on is not to say “no” unless I’ve prayed about it. But sometimes the answer should be No, and sometimes the desire to step down from the ministry is from the Lord. I don’t know how to tell you five easy steps to discern that, but as you walk with the Lord, He’ll show you. Don’t throw in the towel at the first sign of weariness or problems, but take it to Him to see whether he wants you to lean on Him more to carry on, or whether He wants you to make way for someone else to step in.

11. There is nothing like seeing God provide strength and ideas and and even tiny barely-significant details that make you marvel at His attention and care.

12. There is nothing like being used of God (which is what ministry comes down to: allowing God to work through you in some way to minister to another). When someone lets you know that they were blessed or instructed or encouraged through some small thing you said or did, and you know it was only through His grace that it was accomplished, it rejoices your heart, encourages your faith, and spurs you to minister for Him even more. And even if no one else notices, you can be sure that God does.

13. We’re all called to ministry. We may not be a part of an official ministry within the church, but all those who know God are called to minister to one another, to exercise the spiritual gifts He has given, whether in an official church-based capacity or just quietly behind the scenes.

14. Keep first things first. Like Martha, we can be “cumbered about much serving,” “careful and troubled about many things,” and forget the one needful thing: fellowshipping with our Savior. Serving is no substitute for engaging with Him, getting to know Him better, growing in love for Him, believing in Him. Sometimes weariness in service is an indication we’re off track just here.

A beloved former pastor, Jesse Boyd, once said:

Worship without service is a hollow farce.
Service without worship is a hectic fervor.
But worship which issues in service is a holy force.

There is much more that can be said about ministry: there are whole books written on the subject. But I hope some of these thoughts help encourage you in your ministry for the Lord.

What have you learned about ministry along the way?

Other posts about ministry here at Stray Thoughts:

Am I Doing Any Good?
Women in Ministry.
Why Older Women Don’t Serve.
How Older Women Can Serve.
God’s Help for God’s Assignment.
Whose life is it, anyway?
Mentoring Women.
Church Ladies’ Groups.

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“Am I doing any good?”

Old Woman Dozing by Nicolaes Maes (1656). Royal Museums of Fine Arts, Brussels

My mother-in-law sleeps a lot these days. Usually when I go to see her, she’s dozing in her wheelchair and I have to wake her up to visit. She used to encourage me to wake her up because she could sleep any time, but she didn’t get many visitors and didn’t want to miss a visit because she was sleeping. Nowadays she is more inclined to sleep. Once when I woke her up to visit, she actually told me, “Next time, don’t wake me up.” Usually, though, she does her best to be pleasant, but even then, after just a few minutes, she starts yawning and rubbing her eyes, her head starts drooping, and if she has a pillow propping her up in her wheelchair, she’s nuzzling against it to get comfy again.

Sometimes I am tempted to wonder if it is worth a 40 minute drive round trip to wake her up for 5-10 minutes of groggy conversation that she likely won’t even remember.

Sometimes I can do something that makes me feel more useful: get her a pillow, change her hearing aid battery, wipe her hands and face after lunch if the staff hasn’t had a chance yet, advocate with the staff for her concerning some need or oversight, bring her mail.

But really, visiting her shouldn’t be about making me “feel useful.” It’s about letting her know she’s loved and not forgotten and ministering to her in whatever way she needs.

I think of moms going over the same issue for what seems like the hundredth time with their kids, missionaries toiling away in a foreign country with few visible results, men working faithfully the same jobs to pay the same bills, teachers trying to impart knowledge and wisdom to those who don’t seem to want it. Sure, there are times to evaluate methods, ministries, job situations, etc. to see if there is a better way to accomplish the goal and to evaluate whether some change is needed. But sometimes the only answer is to keep going even though we don’t seem to be accomplishing anything. If we’re where God wants us to be doing what He wants us to do, we can rest in the fact that we’re being faithful no matter what the results seem to be. If we do everything we do as unto Him and for His glory, we are indeed accomplishing something good.

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Women in Ministry

Over the years I’ve written a number of posts about women ministering: Church Ladies Groups,  Mentoring Women, Why Older Women Don’t Serve and Ways Older Women Can Serve. But I’ve skirted around the issue of women preachers and pastors. I think partly I just wasn’t ready to get into the controversy, and also I know some of my online friends are of a different opinion about this issue. But I think the time has come. I do think this is something we can disagree on and still be friends. I hope you feel the same way.

I do want to be very careful in my tone. I actually began this post in early January and amended it as I’ve thought and studied and prayed over it. Some of these thoughts have been incubating for years and I am just now putting them down, but I didn’t want this particular post to be “off the cuff.” I’ve seen harshness, scoffing, sarcasm, derision and false accusations about motives from both sides of this issue. I’m all for discussing differences of opinion, but I hope we can keep it gracious.

I believe a woman should not pastor or preach to men for the following reasons:

1. Explicit statements of Scripture

I Timothy 2:11-12 says, “Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.  But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.”

I Corinthians 14:34-35: Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience as also saith the law.  And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.

These passages are the main crux of the matter. I’ve never heard these verses adequately argued away. A former pastor once said that any interpretation of Scripture that leaves different passages in contradiction to each other is wrong: they’re to harmonize with each other. But usually what happens when there is a seeming contradiction is that people take one side or the other.

I’ve heard these statements brushed off as cultural. One women ventured that women had not been allowed in services before this time, and they were so excited and chatty that Paul had to tell them to be quiet. But Paul goes on to explain his reasoning in I Timothy 2:13-14, and it doesn’t have anything to do with the culture of the times. Even if it were a cultural issue, the Holy Spirit did not waste space in the Bible. Of all the things that could have been written, He chose what material to share. When a cultural issue is mentioned in the Bible that we don’t deal with today, like the matter of meat offered to idols, there are still principles we’re to draw from it. We don’t pass over any Scripture as worthy of being ignored because it was “just cultural.”

I don’t think these verses mean that a woman is not to open her mouth to say anything from the moment she steps into the church til the moment she leaves. I don’t know anyone who takes that extreme a view. I Corinthians 11:5 speaks of a woman not praying or prophesying at church without her head covered, so obviously women did speak in church sometimes. There were women prophets in the Bible. But the context of the of the I Cor. 14 passage above was both speaking in tongues and prophesying. Did women prophets prophesy away from church, or only to women? I don’t know. But it was evidently not considered the same as teaching and not viewed as usurping authority. And then you have the whole issue of whether prophecy, or at least a certain type of prophecy, is a spiritual gift that was exercised in the first century but which was done away once the full Bible came into being, but that’s a whole ‘nuther can of worms. But the fact that I Cor. 11 says the woman should have her head covered when she prophesies and I Cor. 14 that says she shouldn’t prophesy in the public assembly leads me to believe there were two different types of prophesy. I’m of the opinion that there was one kind of prophecy (which I Corinthians 14 does forbid women to engage in in church, along with speaking and interpreting tongues), but there is a general type of prophecy that’s just “forthtelling,” not new revelation, but something else. In I Chronicles 25:1, David separated certain men out to “prophesy with harps, with psalteries, and with cymbals.” I don’t think that means prophetic utterances were accompanied by music: I think that means music is one form of expressing God’s truth.

But whatever exactly prophecy is,  these passages makes it pretty clear that women aren’t meant to preach or teach Scriptural truth to men in an authoritative manner in a church setting.

2. Biblical example.

With the exception of the prophetesses, you don’t see women teaching, preaching, or being ordained in the Bible. You also don’t see any of the passages of instruction specifically to or about women mentioning them in this role.

Over the years I’ve seen a number of objections to the view that women can’t teach or preach, I’ll go over just a few of them.

“Aren’t those passages just Paul’s opinions?” There are places Paul says that what he is sharing is his own personal opinion or application, but these aren’t among them, therefore we must take them as inspired by God.

“If women aren’t allowed to preach, that makes them feel like second-class Christians.” It shouldn’t. This is one of the most erroneous assumptions. A person under authority is not inferior to a person in authority. Jesus was in submission to God the Father, yet they were equals. David was not a second-class citizen to Solomon when God chose Solomon to build the tabernacle and not David. The rest of Israel was not inferior to the Levites since the Levites were the only ones who could minister in the temple and tabernacle.  It’s a matter of function, responsibility, and God’s will and calling. And Biblical limitations aren’t in place to make us feel bad. Both men and women had various limitations set on them throughout the Bible. Elisabeth Elliot said limitations help define ministry.

“Some women are gifted to teach.” Yes, they are. I’ve been blessed to read and listen to many of them. But that doesn’t mean they’re meant to teach men.

“If I desire to be a pastor or Bible teacher, doesn’t that mean God is leading me to do so?” Desires can be indicators of the Lord’s will, but they’re not fool-proof. David desired to build a temple, but it was not God’s will for him. Moses desired to go to the promised land, but God said no. Paul desired to be healed of his thorn in the flesh, but God said no.

“What about women teaching men in college classes or being supervisors over men at work?” The passages in question are talking about spiritual authority in the assembly of believers. I don’t see a problem with a woman teaching men math or English or being a man’s supervisor on a secular job.

“Mary was given a message to give to Peter and the disciples after the resurrection.” Yes, but that was hardly a sermon or a teaching situation, nor even an authority issue.

“What if a woman teaches in a book or online and a man sees it? Or what if she’s speaking and there is a male overseeing the sound system?” If her intended audience is not adult men, I don’t think she has to worry about whether one overhears or happens upon what she says. God recorded Mary’s Magnificat and men have learned from it and preached from it, but as far as she knew she was only speaking to God and Elisabeth at the time. God also recorded Hannah’s prayer in I Samuel 2, but as far as we know she was only speaking to Him. Lemuel’s mother’s instruction was preserved in Proverbs 31, but it seems she had given it directly to him. These passages are not saying that a man can never learn or benefit from a woman’s words, just that she is not to express them in a position of authority over him or as if she were teaching him.

“What about Priscilla and Aquilla, who took Apollos in and ‘and expounded unto him the way of God more perfectly’?” Priscilla wasn’t acting independently of her husband, and talking over the kitchen table or in the living room (which is how I picture this scenario) is a different thing than leading a Bible study or preaching in church.

“What about single women on the mission field?” That’s a thorny issue I don’t have all the answers to. The single female missionaries I’ve known have ceded authority to the national males as soon as possible.

“What about Deborah?” Deborah’s judgeship occurred before this was clearly written in the NT, and she was not in a NT church. Though a judge is a position of authority, it’s different from teaching and preaching. It’s clear that the main authority structure was male.

“Galatians 3:28 teaches that ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus,’ so there are no distinctions.” Obviously this verse doesn’t remove every difference between any of these groups, because Paul writes in other places specifically to men, women, Jews, slaves, masters, etc. about their unique roles. The context shows that this is speaking of our standing before Christ. We all come to Him the same way (v. 26) and are one body.

Sometimes I wonder if, like Eve, who could have eaten from any tree of the garden of Eden but fixated on the one she was not supposed to have, some women are discontent with the multitude of things women can do and fixate on the one thing they’re not supposed to. Someone shared with me a statistic that 80% of the world’s population is women and children. I haven’t been able to find that online, but it does seem to me we have an ample mission field and more than enough to do.

Here are some of the ways we see New Testament women ministering:

“And certain women, which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils,  And Joanna the wife of Chuza Herod’s steward, and Susanna, and many others, which ministered unto him of their substance” (Luke 8:2-3).

“And I intreat thee also, true yokefellow, help those women which laboured with me in the gospel, with Clement also, and with other my fellowlabourers, whose names are in the book of life” (Philippians 2:3) (Some have claimed this as a passage one promoting women pastors/teachers, but “laboring in the gospel” is not confined to those offices.)

“Now there was at Joppa a certain disciple named Tabitha, which by interpretation is called Dorcas: this woman was full of good works and almsdeeds which she did…Then Peter arose and went with them. When he was come, they brought him into the upper chamber: and all the widows stood by him weeping, and shewing the coats and garments which Dorcas made, while she was with them” (Acts 9: 36,39).

“The aged women likewise, that they be in behaviour as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things;  That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children,  To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed” (Titus 2:3-5).

“And he began to speak boldly in the synagogue: whom when Aquila and Priscilla had heard, they took him unto them, and expounded unto him the way of God more perfectly” (Acts 18:26).

“I commend unto you Phebe our sister, which is a servant of the church which is at Cenchrea:  That ye receive her in the Lord, as becometh saints, and that ye assist her in whatsoever business she hath need of you: for she hath been a succourer of many, and of myself also” Romans 16:1-2).

“Well reported of for good works; if she have brought up children, if she have lodged strangers, if she have washed the saints’ feet, if she have relieved the afflicted, if she have diligently followed every good work” (I Timothy 5:10).

“And she [Anna] was a widow of about fourscore and four years, which departed not from the temple, but served God with fastings and prayers night and day. And she coming in that instant gave thanks likewise unto the Lord, and spake of him to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem” (Luke 2:37-38).

“These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren” (Acts 1:14).

“In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array;  But (which becometh women professing godliness) with good works” (I Timothy 2:9-10).

There may be other ways I am not thinking of right now, and things like “good works” can be expanded on beyond some of the specific mentions here (for instance, many churches have ladies who coordinate meals for those who are sick, or have some kind of women’s missionary group, or send care packages to college students, etc.). But even if one were to quibble about the meaning of the verses discussing women teachers, it’s clear from Biblical example that by and large, women ministered in various other ways and that their teaching was primarily to women.

I did hear that one preacher taught that women should only teach even women the things mentioned in Titus 2:3-5 and not doctrine, but I have not heard of anyone else who takes that view. All of those traits are based on doctrine. Teaching a woman to be chaste, for example, is based on God’s holiness and our reflection of Him.

One of the things that concerns me most in this debate is the tone on both sides. I think, I hope, anyway, that we can concede that those on both sides of the issue truly want to seek God’s will in the matter even if we come out with different conclusions. Those who feel women aren’t to preach or exercise spiritual authority over men are primarily motivated by the verses mentioned at the beginning and a desire to make sure everything we do is in accord with Scripture, not by a desire to put women down. I’ve seen some awful accusations that are just unfounded but are expressed with sarcasm and condescension. If this is a limitation God has put in place, then we need to take it as from Him and serve Him in the ways He wants us to.

I welcome your comments but I do ask you to keep them gracious and respectful, not only to me, but also to other commenters.

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The Winter of Life

I used to say I want to live until I’m 100. I’ve amended that. I want to live until I’m 100 in my right mind with all my physical functions working like they’re supposed to and the ability to live independently. But that’s probably not very likely, is it?

Since my mother-in-law moved to be near us three and a half years ago, I’ve had a front row seat observing her weather the indignities of aging. Loss of physical stability led to falling, leading to the inability to live alone for safety concerns. Forgetfulness gave way to confusion, loss of reasoning and logical thinking. Further physical deterioration led to use of a walker, then a wheelchair, loss of privacy as someone was needed to help with baths and then with bathrooms functions, til now even sitting up straight or finishing a meal is beyond her ability. A friend who is a doctor whose mother passed away last year said that once they start declining, it seems to go faster and faster, and we’ve found that to be true so far.

Yesterday as I left the assisted living place where my mother-in-law stays, I was overwhelmingly sad, both from her deterioration, and the lady who cries all the time and the one who is constantly trying to escape and the one who wanders from room to room. Jason made the observation that at her old place, everyone was at Grandma’s level or better, but at this place everyone is at her level or worse.

I can’t help wondering why God leaves some of His dear children here in such a state. I believe God is the author of life.  I believe He has a purpose for every life at every level and ability. One thing the elderly can teach us is compassion and caring. Another is to remind us of our own mortality. One pastor said that one reason God allows our bodies to decline with age is to loosen our grasp of them. My friend Esther Talbert says in A Psalm For Old Age about caring for her mother-in-law with Alzheimer’s:

There is a reason God leaves the elderly and infirm among us, and it is often not for their benefit but for ours. If we are not too busy and self-absorbed, we may learn the qualities of Christ that we lack and that He desires to mold in us, the transformation of character He intends to accomplish in us, by confronting us with their presence and needs. By the time something like Alzheimer’s strikes, God is about done with His earthly work in someone like Mom. “Why, then, does He leave someone to linger like that?” we wonder. His earthly work in Mom is done, but much of His earthly work in us and others, through Mom, is just beginning. He strengthens us daily to love and care for her. In the gentle rebuke of His mercy, He is molding and changing us—revealing our selfishness, unfolding His fifth commandment in new ways. Only as I myself am moldable will God’s power, in my turn, shine through me to “this generation and . . . to every one that is to come.”

In the mean time we trust in Psalm 71:18 and other promises for her: “Now also when I am old and greyheaded, O God, forsake me not; until I have shewed thy strength unto this generation, and thy power to every one that is to come.” And we seek His grace to “comfort the feebleminded, support the weak, be patient toward all men” (I Thessalonians 5:14b).

I recently heard of one’s last years being called the winter of life. I’ve never liked winter. I don’t like the cold, the loss of color, the lack of growing things, the lack of sunshine.

There are some things to like about winter. Cozy blankets, hearty soups, occasional snow, coming in from the cold. But the one thing that makes winter tolerable is knowing that spring is coming.

Someday Mom’s eternal spring will come, when she’ll be without pain, more fully in her right mind than she’s ever been, rejoicing with those loved ones who have gone before and with the Savior she has loved for decades.

Gone they tell me is youth,
Gone is the strength of my life,
Nothing remains but decline,
Nothing but age and decay.

Not so, I’m God’s little child,
Only beginning to live;
Coming the years of my prime,
Coming the strength of my life;
Coming the vision of God,
Coming my bloom and my power.

~ William Newton Clarke

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How Older Women Can Serve

I wrote a post a few weeks ago about Why Older Women Don’t Serve at church in an in-front-of-people way or a “take charge of big things like VBS” way. But even though older women may have physical issues and may not have the energy to serve in certain ways doesn’t mean they should not serve at all. Psalm 92:14a says, “They shall still bring forth fruit in old age.” God has given to every member of His body gifts to exercise. Older women are given a specific assignment in Titus 2:3-5.

If you’re “older” and can still coordinate the ladies’ group or cook for 200 members for a banquet or teach active five-year-olds in Sunday School, go for it! A friend of mine had an aunt who still delivered Meals on Wheels at 92. But if you’re not quite up to that, here are a few other ideas of ways you can serve:

1. Prayer. You may not have the energy to “go” and “do” a lot, but you might have more time than others to pray. There is a lot to pray for: your pastor, church, missionaries, young people seeking God’s will for their lives, adjustments for newlyweds, harried moms with young children, older moms in the “taxi years” taking their kids hither and yon, moms facing the empty nest, single ladies at any stage…there is enough to keep any of us busy praying for much longer than we do. This doesn’t mean we necessarily need to spend hours on our knees: we can pray while cleaning the kitchen, driving, resting, etc.

I can’t tell you what it meant to me when, while recovering from a serious illness, an older lady from a previous church in the town we had moved from called me to see how I was doing and to tell me she was praying for me. Some of my favorite missionary anecdotes involve people being prompted to pray for a certain missionary at a certain time, and in the days before texts and e-mails it may have been months before they knew what the specific need was, but as they and the missionary compared dates, the missionary had a specific need just when the individual was prompted to pray.

2. Show interest. As you cross paths with other ladies, ask how they’re doing. “How’s that new baby? Sleeping through the night yet?” “How did that job interview go?” “How’s Johnny liking school this year?” Just having someone take a moment to show personal interest can lift someone’s day. Watch out for new people and making them feel welcome. One lady with multiple health problems whom no one would have blamed if she stayed in bed all day instead came with her husband to every sports event, home and away, of our Christian school even though they had neither kids nor grandkids in the school. That meant a lot to those involved. Even in nursing homes and assisted living facilities, there are those who withdraw and keep to themselves and those who try to smile and brighten others’ days.

3. Word of encouragement. When you do show interest in others, you can offer words of shared joy when things are going well and words of encouragement when they’re not. One of my favorite posts of Shannon‘s was It Gets Easier for younger moms (though Shannon’s not in the category I’d generally think of as “Older Women,” we are all older than someone and can offer encouragement to those in the paths we’ve come through).

4. Offers of help. One older lady I knew would sometimes go and help a new mom after the birth of a baby when that lady’s own mother could not come, or when a pregnant lady was on bedrest. Practical help like doing dishes, laundry, tidying, making a meal can lift one’s spirits tremendously when one can’t keep up. Be alert even to little ways one can offer help: when a mom holding a baby is trying to help a toddler go potty in the ladies’ restroom at church, offer to hold the baby; when a mom is trying to coordinate a baby carrier, diaper bag, Bibles, and two preschoolers from the car to the church, ask how you can help (don’t just swoop in — the baby may cry if anyone other than mom holds her, the children may panic if you just take their hands and offer to take them in: ask, “Can I help you somehow? I’d be happy to take the baby or carry the diaper bag” or something similar.)

5. Sharing what you know. Once a lady told me she’d love to have a ladies’ meeting where someone demonstrated how to bake bread, because she couldn’t get a handle on it, and she could learn it more easily by seeing someone do it and being able to ask questions. But we couldn’t think of anyone who made their own bread. If you know how to make bread, can vegetables, knit, etc., you may or may not want to do so in a ladies’ meeting, but maybe you could invite one or two others over, or go to their houses to show them. I know one lady who went to help another younger mom harvest and put up her produce from her garden, and I know another mom who asked a retired school teacher to teach her daughters to sew, so that they could be influenced by her sweet godliness as well as being taught the basics of sewing.

6. Having one or two women over. I mentioned in the previous post a retired lady I looked up to who found various unique ways to serve. One thing she did was to have a couple of ladies at a time over to lunch at her house. She didn’t do so specifically to Try To Be a Good Influence, but people who walk with God do carry a sometimes unconscious godly influence into the lives of others.

Indwelt

Not merely in the words you say,
Not only in your deeds confessed,
But in the most unconscious way
Is Christ expressed.

Is it a beatific smile,
A holy light upon your brow;
Oh no, I felt His Presence while
You laughed just now.

For me ‘twas not the truth you taught
To you so clear, to me still dim
But when you came to me you brought
A sense of Him.

And from your eyes He beckons me,
And from your heart His love is shed,
Til I lose sight of you and see
The Christ instead.

—by A. S. Wilson

6. Visiting shut-ins. We tend to think of this with shut-ins who are alone, but when they have family nearby we assume the family is meeting all their needs and they’re well taken care of. The lady I mentioned above also brought another lady with her to visit my mother-in-law in an assisted living facility. One of us saw her every day, but it brightened her week as well as ours when these ladies came to visit her.

7. Sending notes. Or cookies. Or both. How many people send hand-written notes any more? Yet we all still love receiving them. You can brighten the day of a college student, military personnel, your pastor, or just about anyone with a little note (or even an e-mail or a Facebook post). And you may not have the stamina for a marathon cookie baking session, but maybe you could bake just a few and send a package to one person at a time.

8. Volunteer. When my dad was in the hospital, the “pink ladies” were older volunteers who kept the coffee pot going in the waiting room, stocked donuts, helped people find which way to go, and just generally made themselves available and useful. Having a sweet, friendly face in that place helped a lot. Similarly, Christian schools are having a tough time of it with decreasing enrollment, and volunteers can help provide services that the school couldn’t otherwise offer. At the Christian school my boys attended for twelve years, one older lady oversaw the library part-time while moms or sometimes grandmothers would handle each class’s library time, checking out books and reading a story to the class. Some helped with class parties, some helped sorting papers for students’ weekly folders, some helped in the lunchroom. And the students seemed to love their grandmotherly influence in the school. When I was coordinating our ladies group, sometimes when we would work on a project like cards and bookmarks for missionaries or favors for a ladies’ luncheon and wouldn’t quite get finished, ladies who took some of those things home to finish helped me tremendously.

9. Blogging. Sharing what God has taught you along the way can be a blessing to others who read.

A younger woman may be thinking, “Wow, I’d love to find an older lady to help me in some of these ways!” Pray about it and maybe take the initiative: they may be suffering from a crisis of confidence either in the loss of some of their abilities or the thought that perhaps they’re not wanted. I think many of these kinds of ministries work together: maybe as you invite someone over for coffee or ask them to show you how to do something, that can spark a relationship where some of these other things can flow.

Not everyone will be able to do all of these things, of course. Time and energy will vary from person to person. But if you’re older (in any way) and wanting to be used of the Lord but don’t know how best to serve, pray, seek His will, and start where you are with a word of kindness here, an expression of interest there, prayer here, an offer of help there. He does have work He wants you to do, and He will guide you to it and enable you to do it.

(Graphics are courtesy of Microsoft Office clip art.)

This post will be also linked to “Works For Me Wednesday,” where you can find a plethora of helpful hints each week at We Are THAT family on Wednesdays, as well as  Women Living Well.

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Book Review: Goforth of China

Goforth of China by Rosalind Goforth is a book I have read many times, and I recently felt an urge to revisit it. It has taken me a while to talk about it, though, because I have so many places marked in it, it would be impossible to share all of them.

Jonathan Goforth grew up as the seventh of eleven children on a farm in Canada. Though an excellent farmer, he felt the call of God to go to China as a missionary after hearing someone speak on Taiwan. Jonathan’s mother was an excellent seamstress, but Jonathan was marked for teasing by his more urban classmates at college due to having home-made clothes and being somewhat naive and unpretentious. His fellow dorm mates went so far as to take new fabric he had bought to have new clothes made, cut a hole in it, put it over Jonathan’s head, and made him run up and down a hallway through a number of other laughing students. He felt afterward that this kind of behavior should be reported, but was told by the college authorities that it was just a harmless prank. It hurt him, not so much that this had been done to him, but that it had happened at a Christian college. Rosalind writes, “That night he knelt with Bible before him and struggled through the greatest humiliation and the first great disappointment of his life. The dreams he had been indulging in but a few days before had vanished, and before him, for a time at least, lay a lone road. Henceforth he was to break an independent trail. It is not hard to see God’s hand in this, forcing him out as it did into an independence of action which so characterized his whole after life” (pp. 31-32). By the time he graduated, he had the honor and support of the whole school, and many came to apologize for their actions that year. One particular student prayer meeting at a much-needed time helped make a definite change in his ability to use the Chinese language (told here).

College not only honed his intellect and forged his character, but it also was saw the beginnings of ministry as he reached out in various ways to lost people. He was a missionary long before he left the shores of his home country. He met his wife, Rosalind, as a fellow mission worker. Once when Jonathan left his Bible on a chair, Rosalind picked up his Bible. Finding markings throughout and the book itself falling apart, she thought to herself, “That is the man I would like to marry” (p. 49).

The Goforths headed to China at a time when the Chinese were greatly suspicious of “foreign devils.” Some of the stories circulated about the foreigners (such as the one that their medicine was so effective because it had the eyes and hearts of children in it, leading the people to fear the foreigners would kidnap their children) seem so ridiculous to read now and to think that anyone actually believed them, but suspicion was a great hindrance to their efforts to reach the Chinese. In an effort to counteract this, they held frequent tours of their home to let the Chinese see whatever they wanted to see (and sometimes the Chinese saw whatever they wanted to see by touching a dampened fingertip to the paper windows, making a peephole!) The result of one such incident I shared earlier near the end of this post.

The Goforths not only had to deal with everyday frustrations, but also major, heartbreaking trials. Four times in their ministry they lost nearly all their possessions, once by fire, once by flood, once during the Boxer rebellion (a harrowing time with a miraculous deliverance in itself), and lastly while on furlough when a new inexperienced missionary moved some of their belongings into an unlocked “leaking, thatched cowshed” (p. 211). After the last time, “when, in the privacy of their own room, the ‘weaker vessel’ broke down and wept bitter, rebellious tears, Goforth sought to comfort her by saying, ‘My dear, after all, they’re only things and the Word says, ‘Take joyfully the spoiling of your goods!’ Cheer up, we’ll get along somehow.’” He wasn’t being calloused: he had a generally faith-filled, buoyant spirit, while his wife had…one rather more like my own. The worst loss of all, though, that even shook Goforth himself was the loss of several children.

Despite and sometimes even through the trials they endured, God used them to bring many to Himself. Describing one of their evangelistic meetings, Rosalind said, “Oh, friends, who wrote in those days pitying us, would that you could have experienced, as we did day by day,…the keenest joy a human being can I believe experience, [seeing] men and women transformed by the message of God’s love in Christ” (p. 168).

Besides Goforth’s spirit mentioned above, one of his other major characteristics was his firmness of doctrine. Modernism was creeping into the church and eventually into its seminaries and missions, undermining its foundation, and Goforth saw firsthand the devastation it could wield on a person’s faith. He wasn’t afraid to speak out where he saw wrong, even if it wasn’t well-received and even (especially) when it infiltrated the church.

It was during such a time on furlough when some were even closing their pulpits to him that this was written, blessing my women’s-ministry-loving  heart: “Many times as he went throughout the churches he remarked on the blessed and powerful influence of the Women’s Missionary Society. When inclined to be depressed at the general deadness of the church, cheer and comfort would often come from the warmth of receptions given by the women” (p. 340).

God greatly used the Goforths not only in various countries in their own time, but ever since then as well through Rosalind’s writings. A few years ago Lifeline Ministries reproduced the original unabridged version of Goforth of China, and I was so glad to get it. Some years back Bethany House produced an abridged version titled Jonathan Goforth (which sadly doesn’t appear to be in print any more, but used copies can be found, or perhaps you can find it in a church or Christian school library). I’m afraid I’ve misrepresented that version in the past by complaining that the point of view switched from third to first person, but as I reread the original version, I saw Mrs. Goforth did that herself: overall she acted as narrator telling their story, but in some parts she slipped into the first person as she described particular incidents, especially those involving herself directly. It’s not as hard to follow, though, in the original: maybe some of the transitions didn’t make it to the abridged version. In many ways the abridged version is easier to read: the unabridged lists a great many names and places that wouldn’t mean as much to people not living at the time of the writing. My particular copy of the reproduction of the original has what appears to be some ink level problems: on some pages the print is very light, but on others it is very heavy, almost bleeding through the page. Hopefully they fixed that in subsequent printings.

Mrs. Goforth also wrote Miracles Lives of China (which I haven’t read), How I Know God Answers Prayer, and Climbing, one of my all-time favorite books. Jonathan wrote By My Spirit, telling of the revivals God sent to China. Another book which I haven’t read but which I think is geared toward children is Jonathan Goforth: An Open Door in China by Geoff and Janet Benge, part of the Christian Heroes: Then & Now series.

In an earlier post about why I love missionary biographies, I said, “There are heroes of our spiritual heritage who inspire us in love and dedication to God and to greater faith in remembering that the God they served and loved and Who provided for and used them is the very same God we love and serve today and Who will provide for us and use us.” The Goforths are such heroes, though they might balk at such a designation. Reading about them not only inspires faith but encourages us to follow in their footsteps of dedication. I hope you’ll read more about them.

(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

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Why Don’t Older Women Serve?

A lady asked that question some years ago on a Christian message forum online. She was asking why older women didn’t serve within the organized church programs. I don’t remember what I answered in response then, but it is a question that has stayed with me, and I wanted to share a few thoughts.

First, I think we need to be careful of blanket statements. Maybe there truly were no older women serving at her particular church, depending on what she meant by “older,” but that’s not to say no older woman serves anywhere. I’ve known some wonderful older women serving in various capacities, even through daunting physical problems.

Secondly, not all ministry tales place within organized church programs. More on that in a moment. Christians are to live a life of ministry, but that may look different at different phases and among different personalities. There are many ways to mentor.

It is true that sometimes older people can have the mindset that, “I’ve served my time, let the younger people do it.” “Serving my time” sounds like a prison sentence, which is not the joyful service a Christian should exemplify. As “older” ladies (however you qualify that), we do need to remember that we are called to minister to others, to exercise the gifts God gave us, to live out the Biblical “one anothers,” and we’re specifically called to teach younger women certain things. God has a function for everyone in the body of Christ. There is no retirement from serving the Lord, though that service may change as life changes.

But it is true that some of those life changes may indeed affect how we serve. It may not involve standing in front of a class, leading a seminar, or any number of “public” ministries. Here are a few reasons why older women may not serve as they did in younger years:

Physical issues.

There is a wide range of what’s “normal” at various stages of aging. Many of us probably know globe-trotting octogenarians who seem as sharp mentally and almost as able physically as people half their age. But we also know people who are nearly disabled by age-related problems in their sixties.

But even beyond known physical problems, like diabetes, high blood pressure, arthritis, etc., there may be physical problems an older woman may not want to talk about, like bladder issues or a gradual loss of control of some bodily functions. Forgive me if this is too much information for some of you, but it’s a reality for many women. One dear lady in one of our former churches came to Sunday School and church, but if we tried to persuade her to come to any other kind of ladies’ meeting, she would say, “Oh, I would love to, but I have such problems with gas, I don’t dare.” We went away chuckling to ourselves, but years later when experiencing some of the same problems, it wasn’t so funny. It’s hard to stand in front of a group when you’re afraid you might have to make a mad dash to the restroom, Kegel exercises notwithstanding. I’ve wanted to tell pastors when they make comments about people sitting near the back of the church that some of us have good reasons for being there!

Menopause.

This might be considered a subset of physical issues, but it carries emotional overtones as well. Some women seem to have smooth sailing through menopausal waters while others experience severe storms, either physically or emotionally or both. For some, the years leading up to menopause can be worse than menopause itself. I could give you details…but I’ll spare you.

Diminished capacity.

As people age they generally lose a certain amount of “oomph,” physically and even emotionally. There is pressure in ministry, and some might get to a point where they can’t handle it as well as they once did. Stress can affect the physical and emotional problem mentioned earlier. A woman may feel she is too wobbly and unsteady to take care of babies in a nursery. I’ve also known women who drive less as they get older, first at night and then generally.

Family obligations.

Middle-aged women are often in that “sandwich generation” where they have a parent in declining years who needs increasing care while their children are going through their teens or college years or navigating life on their own or getting married and having babies. I know one older couple who retired partly because all of their adult married children as well as their aging parents lived in other cities, and they wanted to be able to go help their kids when new babies came and they needed to be available to go at a moment’s notice to help their parents.

One wife I knew had a husband who traveled frequently for meetings, and after the kids moved out, he wanted her to travel with him.

Serving in other ways.

One lady used to apologize to me frequently because she couldn’t come to monthly ladies’ meetings. She had an adult son who was disabled physically and mentally, a widowed mother who depended on her for almost everything that needed to be done around the house, and she seemed to be the “go-to” person for anyone in her extended family needing a baby-sitter. Her whole life was a ministry despite the fact that she couldn’t come to “official” ladies’ meetings.

Another older lady whom I’ve looked up to as an example retired from teaching in a Christian school and led a ladies’ Bible study. She did a wonderful job, but she stepped back after a year or two (I didn’t ask her reasons). But I noticed and admired many “behind the scenes” ways in which she served. She noticed a new lady sitting by herself in one church service, greeted her, and invited her to sit with her and her husband. This sparked a friendship which eventually led to both the woman and her husband becoming vital members of the church. She had ladies over to her house for lunch and fellowship, one or two at a time. She and another lady from church visited my mother-in-law and another woman in an assisted living facility almost every Friday for years. For whatever reason she did not participate in public or organized ministry programs other than teaching a children’s Sunday School class, but she had a vibrant ministry.

New opportunities.

As women face the “empty nest,” sometimes they have a new freedom (depending on their family situations, as mentioned above) since they no longer have the everyday care of their children. For some that means taking classes or traveling or doing things they haven’t been able to do for years.

The woman I mentioned in the first paragraph went on to say that she had seen some of the same women who had “dropped out” of serving go on to take craft classes and such, and it seemed to her that if they could take classes they could serve at church. If those women are in “retirement” mentality, letting the younger women serve because the older women have already, she’s right. But it may be they don’t feel they can handle some of the stress and pressure of organized ministry, yet they can be a testimony in a more relaxed setting like a craft class.

“Burnout.”

That’s not really a term that I like, but people do feel “burned out” in the Lord’s service sometimes. And this is another area where we can’t make blanket statements, but for me, anyway, and at least for some other people, we’re more apt to feel that way when: 1) We’ve taken on way more than we should, or 2) We don’t have adequate help, or 3) We’re serving in our own strength rather than the Lord’s. I would encourage pastors and ministry leaders to watch out for the first two. Sometimes we seem to heap more responsibilities on someone who is already serving because we see that they’re doing a good job until they have more than they can handle, and sometimes people do things on their own feeling heavily burdened but not seeking help because they don’t know who to ask or feel everyone else is either too busy or doesn’t have time or isn’t interested. I love our current church’s method of having ministry teams for most areas of service in the church rather than just one person in charge of different areas. The third area, serving in our own strength, is so easy to do: sometimes we start off leaning on the Lord but then get frantic and run out on our own. We need to acknowledge our weakness and appropriate His grace and strength daily, sometimes even moment by moment.

They may not feel wanted.

Some years ago a younger woman confided to me that she and others her age didn’t come to our monthly ladies’ meetings because it was all “older” women (though most of us there didn’t think we were that much older). That was the only church I have been a part of where that happened – in most, the ladies’ group was a joyful mix of ages and life situations and one of the best formats, in my opinion, for us to learn from each other. And, happily, even in that church things began to change: one or two new younger married women started coming (unaware of the prevailing sentiment, I guess), and eventually a handful of younger women started coming. I pray the trend continues. But I have to admit that hurt, and it has created in me a hesitancy sometimes to even interact with younger women because I feel they don’t want me to. Thankfully that’s not the case, and I feel I have some wonderful friendships with younger women, but I have to battle against a fear of rejection.

It may be time to minister to them.

My in-laws were very generous in helping their extended family when they could, but as they got older, my father-in-law retired and was on permanent disability due to injuries sustained at work, and their income diminished. As we noticed some family members still coming to them for help, my husband and I remarked that the family needed to come to realize that things were changing, that we needed to have the mindset of seeing how we could help them rather than expecting they were always going to be able to help us.

That’s true in the church family as well. Long before a “senior saint” goes to live in a nursing home or with family members, they might benefit from church ministrations. One year our church ladies’ group collected items for gift bags for some of the “shut-ins” and older women in church, then we divided up the gift bags and visited the ladies and delivered the bags. The visits meant more to them than the gifts, though they appreciated the gifts very much, and we were blessed in trying to bless them.

We had an older middle-aged lady in our neighborhood whose church came over and painted the outside of her home. It was something she couldn’t do herself and couldn’t afford to pay someone to do, and this was a tremendous help to her.

Even just visiting older neighbors and church members with some regularity might open up areas of ministry: they might need little things done like light bulbs changed that they can’t reach or overgrown bushes in the yard that need a trim. They might be hesitant to ask, they often don’t want to “be a bother,” but if you just happen to be there and notice, an offer to take care of such a problem would mean a lot.

If you’re a younger woman who would love to benefit from an older woman’s wisdom, first of all spend time with older ladies. Go where they are. Ask them questions. Invite them over, talk to them at church, etc. You can ask them if they’re willing to serve in some formal way – some are able and willing. But if they decline, and especially if they’re flustered, don’t press the matter. Pray about it and ask the Lord to change their mind if it is His will or to lay someone else on your heart to ask.

And as “older” ladies, we do have to be careful that we don’t let years of experience turn us into opinionated old biddies who are critical of new ideas and who consistently say, “Well, the way we always did it was…” Holding on to sound doctrine is something we’re called to do, but we can learn to adapt to new methods and styles.

We may or may not be able to do the same kinds of ministries we’ve always done, but we can seek God as to what exactly He would like for us to do. As long as the Lord has left us here on earth, He has something for us to do, some way for us to bless others. Sometimes we can be dismayed by our limitations, but as Elisabeth Elliot once said, limitations just define our ministry: “For it is with the equipment that I have been given that I am to glorify God. It is this job, not that one, that He gave me.”

Two glad services are ours,
Both the Master loves to bless.
First we serve with all our powers –
Then with all our feebleness.

Nothing else the soul uplifts
Save to serve Him night and day,
Serve Him when He gives His gifts –
Serve Him when He takes away.

C. A. Fox

This post will be linked to  Women Living Well.

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Book Review: Women’s Ministry in the Local Church

I finished Women’s Ministry in the Local Church by Ligon Duncan and Susan Hunt a few weeks ago, but it is hard to know how to condense everything I’d like to say about it. I typed out many of the quotes I marked so I could have them handy to refer to without flipping back and forth through the book, and just those quotes took up almost three pages, which is much too long for a blog post! So I think I’ll just give you a brief overview of the book and then mention a few things I really liked about it and a couple I didn’t like so much.

The authors first set out the need for such a book to help women to teach other women as Titus 2 instructs, to present the Biblical role of womanhood as opposed to the feminist view promoted by the world, and to promote the necessity and nobility of women’s roles. The authors had found resources teaching many aspects of a woman’s relationship to Christ and women’s groups a para-church organizations, but not one integrating the women’s ministry to the church ministry as a whole. Furthermore, in some churches which do have some type of women’s ministry, that ministry is “event-, task-, or personality-driven. An inherent danger is that any ministry that is not Biblically informed will eventually become competitive and divisive” (p. 31). Ligon Duncan has an excellent section on “Why a Church Needs a Women’s Ministry” in pages 37-42.

After discussing the need and motives of women’s ministry, the authors lay out the foundations and tasks of a healthy women’s ministry and the relationship of the women’s ministry to the rest of the church.

The authors promote a complementarian position, the view “that God created men and women equal in being but assigned different — but equally valuable — functions in His kingdom, and that this gender distinctiveness complements, or harmonizes, to fulfill His purpose” (p. 32), and part of that distinction is “male spiritual leadership in the home and believing community, the Church” (pp. 32-33). A couple of quotes I especially appreciated along these lines were:

Submission has nothing to do with status. Submission is about function. Equality of being and differentiation of function characterize the Trinity. The Persons of the Godhead are ‘the same in substance, equal in power and glory,” but each has a different function in the accomplishment of our salvation (p. 73).

Submission does not restrain women. Submission frees us to accomplish our kingdom purpose (p. 78).

Domestic duties are not a hindrance to sanctification; they are essentials of the common life. The family is a context in which to develop godly character that will qualify women for service beyond hearth and home. When love for Christ is the matrix of domesticity, those duties become an aroma of Christ, the fragrance of life (2 Corinthians 2:15-16) (p. 106).

Since I’ve started sharing quotes, let me see if I can pick out a few of the most pertinent from the three pages I gleaned:

When young women learn more about womanhood from TV, movies, magazines, and the Internet than they do from mature older women, they will often make unbiblical decisions. (p. 53)

Christ, not womanhood or the women’s ministry, must be the reference point. Unless a woman’s ministry is an overflow of the gospel, women will become hinderers and nor helpers in God’s Church. Those who plan for and implement a women’s ministry must be intentional in maintaining a gospel orientation in their hearts and lives (p. 58).

Paul put heavy emphasis on sound doctrine. Sound doctrine is the antidote for error. Sound, which is the key word in these letters, is translated from a Greek word that means whole or healthy. “Christian doctrine is healthy in the same way as the human body is healthy. For Christian doctrine resembles the human body. It is a coordinated system consisting of different parts which relate to one another and together constitute a harmonious whole. If therefore our theology is maimed (with bits missing) or diseased (with bits distorted) it is not ‘sound’ or ‘healthy’” (pp. 59-60).

Titus 2:3-5 instructs the pastor to equip older women to train younger women. If this mandate is disconnected from a biblical perspective of discipleship, it can easily become purely a relational model that magnifies relationship rather than God’s glory, or an academic model that elevates knowledge over the application of the gospel into life (p.60-61).

Without in any way discounting the regular pulpit ministry of the church, we should recognize that there are certain matters more aptly addressed and applied in the context of a specific discipleship of women, whether in large groups, in small groups, or in situations of confidentiality, as women minister to women (p. 84).

The goal is not to get every woman to participate in the women’s ministry, but for the women’s ministry to serve and encourage every woman in the church (p. 111.)

Commenting on Psalm 144:12b: “that our daughters may be as corner stones, polished after the similitude of a palace”: These corner pillars were both beautiful and functional. They gave grace and dignity to the structure even as they supported it. If these pillars weakened, the structure was in danger. David considered these corner pillars to be gifts from God…Unless corner pillars stand on a firm foundation, they will topple. p. 138.

At the end of each chapter is a short testimony from pastors or women about some aspect discussed in the previous chapter. One of the most interesting and enlightening to me were a couple from women in reference to being in a church that did not see the importance of a women’s ministry, or, in some cases, did not even seem to love women:

How are women to love the church when they feel unloved by the church? I have found the answer in Scripture’s admonition to women who are married to unbelieving or disobedient husbands. The failure or weakness of male leadership does not absolve us of our responsibility. We are to run to the Author and Perfecter of our faith with our hurts, wounds, and disappointments. We are to see this season as part of our individual and corporate sanctification offered by our sovereign God who loves us steadfastly. (p. 52-53).

When women are scorned and disrespected by the philosophies of ministry that denigrate the design, calling, and roles of women, we are tempted to react with militant defensiveness. Scripture calls us to remember that Jesus, the King of the Church, delights in us. We are not called to defend ourselves but to defend Christ’s Kingdom through prayer and service. (p. 53).

The “militant defensiveness” stood out to me because I know of a handful of women who have that exact tone in pointing out perceived errors in the church and their voices and tone have become so shrill and bitter that they are doing much more harm than good. If the church is a family, a body, then dealing with problems is not best handled by “militant defensiveness.” That doesn’t mean those problems don’t need to be addressed, but there are better, more restorative and Christ-honoring ways to do it.

There are appendices in the back discussing some practical aspects of women’s discipleship ministries and Bible studies.

There were just a few things I either did not agree with or care for.

• On page 75 a quote from a Dr. George Knight that “”Eve…brought herself into transgression by abandoning her role and taking on that of the man.” I don’t think that was her sin or even what led to her sin necessarily: her sin was simply disobeying God’s clear command; her motives: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life.

• This one is perhaps a minor point, but on pages 102-103 there is a section about widows which interprets I Timothy 5:3-10 as referring to two different groups of widows, those who receive church help and those who are a group qualified to minister to others. I had never heard that before, but I don’t see a distinction between two groups there: I believe it is all one group of widows and the lists actions there show what they have done, what they are being honored for, not what they are signing up to do (not that older women should not keep ministering in some way as long as they are able, but that’s another post I am thinking about).

• On page 140 the authors say, “Bible studies should equip women to pass on the legacy of biblical womanhood to the next generation and should offer opportunities for them to have hands-on experiences in discipling one another.” I agree, but I don’t think that means Bible studies among women can only cover these topics or the passages that relate directly to women. I think studying books or other topics can be covered and is part of the foundation on which women’s ministry rests, and principles of womanhood can be brought out. Later they warn against a “prideful pursuit of knowledge…that stops short of true discipleship that moves from knowledge to wisdom — to the application of truth into life. They have perfected some Bible study skills, but they do not know how to love as godly, chaste single women, or love their husbands, or care for the sick and oppressed, or support the male leadership of the church…” and more (pp. 140-141). I do think that’s a valid concern.

• Related to the above point, there is a section where a pastor compliments the women’s Bible study ministry in his church for coordinating with the pulpit ministry. For instance, when he preached a series on “David: A Man After God’s Own Heart,” the ladies’ Bible study ministry did a study on “A Woman After God’s Own Heart.” I think that’s really neat when that kind of coordination occurs, but again, I don’t think the ladies’ Bible study should be restricted to that kind of coordination any more than the Sunday School classes or children’s ministry or men’s meetings should. Sometimes it’s helpful when every aspect of the church is focused on a particular truth, topic, or section of the Bible, but in most cases it is helpful when the different groups study different parts of Scripture: it’s part of studying the whole counsel of God and balancing the different parts of Scripture. I’ve found that helpful even in my own Bible study or reading: if I am in a particular “heavy” section, like Job or the prophets, it helps to read a Psalm or something from the epistles as well.

• I was surprised to find little mention of hospitality in the book. It’s implied but not really discussed much. As I mentioned in Mentoring Women, I think it hospitality is a primary way women can disciple and minister to each other; I don’t know that Paul primarily had classroom instruction and retreats in mind when he penned those verses, though I think it’s fine to use those.

• Susan’s writing can be a bit clinical sometimes. I felt this way in her chapters of Becoming God’s True Woman as well (which I thought I had reviewed, but looking back, I just referred to it a number of times.)

• This last point is one I want to be the most careful with because I don’t want to cause offense. Let me say first that, though I am in my particular denomination because I feel it best represents my understanding of what Scripture teaches, I know no denomination is flawless, and I can get along fine with people from other denominations if we agree on the major points: the Deity of Christ, the inspiration of Scripture, salvation by grace through faith and not by works we do, etc. Many blogs and books I read are by people from other denominations than my own. I can understand that good people can differ on some areas of teaching and application and still do everything they do as unto the Lord and be in right standing with Him.

One of those differences in some denominations is looking at God’s dealings with people through either a covenantal or a dispensational lens. This post is too long already to explain those two views and you can easily find them elsewhere, so I won’t go into all the differences. I can actually see elements of both: there are covenants God made with people throughout history that affected people for years to come, and the New Testament does refer to God’s relating to us through a “new covenant.” But, though God is always the same and people have always been saved by faith, there are different times in the Bible God had different specific requirements for His people. For instance, in our day we don’t have the same command as Adam and Eve not to eat of a certain tree, or the same requirements Old Testament Israel did with the ceremonial law. So while I would probably lean toward a more dispensational view, I certainly don’t discount the covenants and can see Biblical history through that lens as well. I can read books and blogs with those differences without a problem at all.

But this book is very, very, very heavily covenantal. Susan uses the phrases “covenantal community” and “covenantal consciousness” multitudes of times throughout the book to refer to the relationship believers in a church should have with each other. Those phrases are probably infused with meaning to her, but to me they just leave me a little cold. Just taken at face value, a covenant is a binding agreement between people. So relating to each other based on an agreement just doesn’t carry the same meaning to me as the Scriptural metaphors of the church being a family and a body, with different parts and functions all working together in a harmonious whole. Those metaphors are mentioned but not emphasized in the book. Susan  urges women’s ministry leaders to use those phrases to remind and emphasize to women their covenant relationship with each other, but the overuse of them in this book seemed to me to be an irritant and a shoving of the concept down the throat. I wouldn’t have had as much of a problem with it if she simply stated her view of the church as a covenantal community at the beginning and then went on without using those phrases so very often.

The time and space to explain all of that might seem to give it more weight than intended: it’s not really a major objection and not even an objection, really: I just think the emphasis of the type of community and relationship we’re to have with each other as believers would be better served with the more Scriptural phrases of the church being a body than the denominational phrases of “covenant community” and “covenant consciousness.” I think Susan probably means the same thing by those phrases, but to someone outside a covenantal type of denomination, it just doesn’t come across the same. Her writing is so heavily denominational, it might be off-putting to those from different denominations, but there is much good to glean if you don’t let that phraseology bother you.

It might look like I objected to more than I agreed with, but that is not really the case: it just took a bit more to explain the disagreements, and I didn’t bring out every single point I did agree with. Overall I found the book to be a rich resource and agreed with the great majority of the teaching and application. I would recommend it to anyone contemplating women’s ministry in the church.

(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

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Laudable Linkage and Cool Videos

I didn’t have quite as much time for web surfing this week, but here are a few noteworthy things I did see:

The Unsaved Christian. Someone on Facebook linked to this. At first I balked at the title because someone is not a Christian if unsaved, so this seemed like a misnomer, but the article explains what she means and gently but clearly sounds a needed warning.

Winning Your Friends to Christ, HT to Susan.

Grace Spots.

Responding to the Scandal. If you saw the recent 20/20 report on abuse within IFB churches, this is the best response I have seen, HT to my son, Jeremy. I’ve been thinking about writing a post about this issue, but this hasn’t been a week I could have extended thoughtful time at the computer. But Dr. Bauder says just about everything I would say and more, and much better.

Homemade Note Pads are presented as a Teacher Appreciation Gift, but they’d be good for anyone.

Styrofoam Wall Art. I forget where I saw the link to this. I’ve seen similar ideas using canvas, but this would be cheaper.

Timelapse Video of San Francisco-to-Paris flight Captures Aurora Borealis. Neat article and video.

This is pretty funny. I can see how they do some of it, but they do the change-out pretty fast!

Have a great Saturday! We had storms through the night and lost power this morning, but I am so glad it is back on now!

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Friday’s Fave Five

Welcome to Friday’s Fave Five, hosted by Susanne at Living to Tell the Story, in which we can share five of our favorite things from the last week. This has been a wonderful exercise in looking for and appreciating the good things God blesses us with. Click on the button to learn more, then go to Susanne’s to read others’ faves and link up your own.

Here are some highlights of the last week:

1. A Ladies’ Birthday Party! We had an activity at church last Saturday celebrating all the ladies’ birthdays at once. We signed up under the month our birthday was in, and everyone in that month got together to decide on table settings and decorations to somehow reflect that month, and the tables would be judged in a contest. (Months with not as many people were combined together). People in the different months were designated to bring different foods (finger sandwiches, pasta salads, and fruit trays).

I didn’t think to bring a camera, but took a few shots with my cell phone. Our August table had a picnic theme:

One lady made these super-cute place cards:

I didn’t get a picture of every month — some were still working on their tables when I took pictures. But here is February:

And April:

And November:

So elegant! But I have to say, I was very glad at clean-up time that our table had used paper plates.

And the winning table was May — I’m sorry this one is so blurry!

Someone made this tree and had birds and fruit in it and verses about fruitfulness.

A very talented lady made cakes that looked like gifts:

We played a few games, sang happy birthday to each other, and then two ladies gave their testimonies of their spiritual birthdays when they came to know the Lord. They were from different backgrounds — one was a “good church kid” who was doing right for the wrong reasons (approval, etc.) but didn’t trust in Christ alone for salvation til her college years. The other was from an atheistic family in another country whose brother was saved, but the family wasn’t interested. But on an internship to the States she met other Christians and was given a Bible ad eventually came to believe. It was such a blessing to hear these two accounts! The whole event was very enjoyable.

2. ISI – which in my son’s youth group stands for Iron Sharpening Iron, what they call their occasional fellowships after Sunday evening services. And every now and then they invite parents. I hate to admit that at first I didn’t want to go — I wanted to go home and kick off my shoes and grab a book and get comfy. But I am glad I did go — it was a very enjoyable time of singing, testimonies, and information about a summer mission trip.

3. Safety during the flash flooding we had earlier this week. Thank you, Lord!

4. Signs of spring. A tree outside my mother-in-law’s window is starting to bud, and a yard in the neighborhood has a row of daffodils across the front starting to blossom. The grass is getting greener. These little flowers are the first things I saw blooming at our house:

I don’t know if they’re violets or just weeds — but they brightened up the back yard!

5. This quote from a friend’s Facebook status:

“Everything can change in the blink of an eye. But don’t worry; God never blinks.”

Have a great weekend! I’m getting ready for hubby’s birthday on Sunday!

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