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Can women be leaders? What is their place?

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This is a controversial topic historically, of course.

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Some "churches" have made all the women sit on one side and all the men sit on the other and so on and so forth.

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So, it has definitely been a controversy historically,

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 and I don’t--and none of us would--ever pretend to have all the answers for every circumstance. But there are some principles.

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One principle is that if a woman is full of the Holy Ghost and full of wisdom

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--and I don’t see any reason why she couldn’t be-- then she’s going to have an impact on people’s lives.

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What is a leader, anyway? See again, most of our problems come because of our institutional, hierarchical mindset.

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If we’re functioning like a corporation and have to have a chart--where do women fit in?

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Didn’t Paul speak pretty seriously, though, about not having women as teachers or authorities and so on? Yeah, he did.

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 So, yes, there is a difference in terms of visible leadership roles

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 which requires a woman to have a head, which is man; and man to have a head, which is Christ; and Christ to have a head, which is God.

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 There’s an order that needs to be maintained. There is no question about that.

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 And if that order isn’t incorporated in our way of life and in our thinking, so that it is obvious, then we’ve made a mistake.

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 That order is very much in God’s heart.

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“The Word became flesh and dwelt for awhile among us. The Word was with God. The Word was God.”

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The things taught in the written Word about women not teaching or having authority over men can’t be just scratched off as cultural.

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Jesus is the Word. The Word was with God. The Word was God. Those things are essential.

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If someone would look at our corporate life,

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they would need to see that God is the head of Christ, Christ is the head of the man, and man is the head of the woman.

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That should be a very obvious flow in a corporate gathering or in a family.

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That ought to be easily identifiable to any honest, unbiased outside observer. And if it isn’t, we’re making a mistake.

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I don't think anyone could argue with that point.

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If a woman is full of the Holy Ghost and full of wisdom, you can be very sure she’s going to have influence on people.

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The way she has influence over a man is going to be a little different, perhaps, than the way she would influence other women.

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Titus was to teach the older women, who would, in turn, teach the younger women, who would then teach their children and be busy in their homes.

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Again, there is a flow of things that is very natural in God’s heart.

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 If you violate that flow, you’re going to have chaos and all kinds of problems (and we could talk a lot about that).

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 But, the essence of the matter is that a woman needs to always be in a situation in a public gathering or in a home where it’s clear...

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 that man is head of the woman just as Christ is head of the man.

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That doesn’t mean, as Paul would say in 1 Corinthians, that she couldn’t “pray or prophesy.”

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 It just means that there’s a covering and an order of things, a principle that has to guide her ability to function and speak.

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On a practical basis? Shoot this down if you choose. (And who knows what life is going to bring us in the future? I don’t.)

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 But practically, women in our gatherings who have something very important to say are not shut out from speaking it.

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They say it in a way that is humble and respectful. They don’t dominate the men. They ask if it’s all right that they say what they say.

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If God is going to use them because of their genuine, valid relationship with God,

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and that pierces my heart in what they say, I applaud that, because I love the truth.

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 I don’t have to have some sort of ground to protect. I don’t need to maintain any kind of macho masculinity.

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I do want women to keep in God’s heart and to function as God would want, respecting the order God has established.

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And if they’re respecting that, then I want to hear anything they have to say.

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If someone would respond, “Please, now’s not the time,” then they very quickly, respectfully submit to that suggestion. That’s no problem.

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But I don’t want to quench their gifts. They are tools in our corporate toolbox that we better be using.

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 That doesn’t mean that they are she-elders dominating the men, as can happen in some religious bodies.

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 And it also doesn’t mean that they are slaves that are just pushed off in a corner to keep house and raise children, either.

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They are servants of God, co-heirs with Christ, neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, slave or free.

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 These are women who have had a huge impact on my life and on all of our lives.

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It's good as long as they are keeping with that attitude of not being authoritative over men or being “teachers” of men.

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Then, they are essentially working with us as ribs, as completion,

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knowing things we don’t know, perhaps, and showing us things we may not have seen;

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taking us aside, as Aquila and Priscilla did with Apollos, and saying "Psst…Did you know that…?"

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"Oh, thank you."

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That kind of life, that kind of relationship with women, is very important.

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As long as God’s order is in place and in balance, then we can work with it and refine any of the idiosyncrasies or nuances.

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If I had one thing to add--something that has meant a lot to me--it would be…

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to always submit and respond to the Christ I see in another person, whoever that person might be.

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Whether it’s a man or a woman, or a two-week old Christian, or whoever it is, we can hear something very valuable through each other.

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It’s our job as disciples to say "amen" and "yes" and to put into practice whatever is of Christ.

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I should add one final thought on that subject.

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What if we did have an institutional set-up and an org-chart

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and a Sunday morning service from 9 to 11 with so many songs and a prayer and a sermon?

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 I would be totally against a woman giving a sermon or being in an org-chart position that somehow would confuse the issue of headship.

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If you are family, though, you don’t have to worry about organizational charts. Again, we’ve created our own monsters.

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The question really only comes up because of the way we have approached the thing.

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 Uzzah only died because they were bringing the Ark on the ox cart and they shouldn't have been.

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That’s why he died. It seemed like a very valiant thing to do,

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 trying to keep the Ark from hitting the ground and to keep the glory of God moving in the right direction. It SEEMED like a good thing to do.

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 But because they were doing things improperly, somebody died. And that’s what happens.

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“Who gets to be on the worship team? Who gets to be a deacon, or who gets to be in this election for elders?

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 Who gets to be the chairman of the elders? And who is going to fill in while the pastor is out of town to preach the sermon?”

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I talked to a pastor just recently, too, who brings in the district superintendent or a relative to give the sermons every time he goes out of town.

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 There are a bunch of guys on staff who never touch the microphone. And they’re all hurt, because they feel the senior pastor must not trust them.

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 All this confusion, all these problems! They only exist because we’ve tried to pound the proverbial square peg in the round hole.

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We try to do things in ways that God didn’t intend for them to be done, and “Uzzah” dies as a result, despite all his good intentions.

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 This women in leadership issue isn’t a big deal when it’s organic living as a family.

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It’s one of those things that kind of fades into the background as no longer being a big problem.

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