How They Changed Their Mind about Women 2

Alan Johnson, well-known and much-loved professor at Wheaton, has edited a collection of stories of well-known evangelicals who have in their own ways changed when it comes to women in ministry. His book has a great title: How I Changed My Mind about Women in Leadership: Compelling Stories from Prominent Evangelicals. In his own introduction, Johnson maps some common themes that he has found in the stories evangelical leaders tell in how they changed their mind.

Are these themes the ones you have experienced or hear about? What else would you add? If you could do one thing to help hierarchicalists or complementarians find a larger role for women in ministries, what would it be?

First, themes about what precipitated change, and I don’t see an order here — rather, what I see in these stories a confluence of dialectical factors:

1. The influence of a strong, gifted woman in one’s life.
2. The impression of the stories of those who changed their minds on this very issue.
3. A more careful reexamining of the whole of Scripture in light of its historical, cultural and broader theological context.
4. The experience of working side-by-side with gifted, dedicated, and called women leaders, teachers, and preachers.
5. The realization that there is a view where head, heart, and Scripture can come together and honestly confront the difficulties of applying a restrictive position consistently.

Women tell their stories and their stories show some common themes too:

1. They were shadows of males.
2. They were “submissive” in order to attract a husband.
3. They functioned as a supplement to make males complete.
4. They became depressed and struggled over rejection of their callings and gifts of the Spirit.
5. They received encouragement from respected evangelical males who wanted their gifts and callings to find full expression and for them to be completely themselves.