A few years ago, when my middle daughter was three, we were discussing her favorite preschool job: leading the lunchtime prayer. I said that maybe she could be a pastor, like our own pastor Todd, when she grew up.

Her eyes lit up and she proclaimed: “Yes! I will be pastor Todd! And I will live in his house! And I will be Olivia’s daddy!”

I got a good chuckle out of that, as did pastor Todd when he heard the story.

But the truth is, as the reality sets in that she can’t actually be pastor Todd, my daughter isn’t likely to see many women as pastors—women who can serve as her role models. While numbers are hard to pin down, probably only 10% of senior pastors are women — which means that even denominations that ordain women don’t see anything close to equal gender representation in leadership.

In more personal and anecdotal terms, even as an egalitarian of several years, this summer is the first time I’ve heard women preach and been in a church with a woman pastor.

I’m thirty-six.

Although I’ve been an egalitarian for years now, my journey has been admittedly slow. My husband has always supported the full participation of women in the church, and I gradually came to agree with him. By the time I agreed, we were already committed to a church that didn’t ordain women, and neither of us were willing to leave a church we otherwise loved.

Over time, however, the restrictions on women, while minimal at our church, chafed more and more. So when we moved to a new state, we hoped for a church in our denomination that ordained women.

We did find one. But it was a tiny plant, and our priest’s theoretical support of ordaining women never came to a practical test. As much as I appreciated his support of women, I wanted to actually see women preaching and serving.

So when we packed our boxes yet again this summer, we were thrilled to discover a church not just theoretically affirming of women in ministry but actually committed to giving women those opportunities. One of our priests is a woman, as is our deacon, and women routinely preach.

During our first service at the church, a woman preached—the first time I had ever heard a woman preach. I wept. Not because the sermon was convicting or earth-shattering—although it was a good sermon—but because everyone treated a woman preaching as perfectly normal.

In the three months since then, I have heard multiple women preach. Every time, I’m struck by how these sermons are both utterly normal and utterly extraordinary: normal because these sermons are sermons, like hundreds of others I have heard. But extraordinary because these women are using their gifts and insights in ways that I have never witnessed in the church.

I see two specific benefits from gender diversity in my current church: representation and connection.

My three year-old clearly had some misunderstanding about what it meant to be a pastor. But in another sense she wasn’t far off: we tend to use what we see as a guide to what is possible. That’s a big part of why representation is so important to me. I want my daughters to see women serving, preaching, and leading in the church. They’re still in elementary school so I have no idea whether God will call them to formal ministry, but I want them to grow up knowing that they have a place at every level of the church.

At this point in my own life, however, seeing women in ministry isn’t going to change my mind. But I’m finding myself deeply appreciating the variety of viewpoints and angles in the sermons. I’ve known for a long time that a diversity of voices benefit everyone—and now I’m experiencing that as I connect in new ways with the sermons.

I’ve fortunately never been in a church where the preachers leaned heavily on male-coded imagery (hunting, football, the military, etc.) in their sermons. But even the most sensitive of male preachers simply doesn’t have the same life experience as a woman, the same experience as me.

So when my female pastor recently preached on Mary and Martha, for the first time I heard this story taught by someone who has actually felt the pressure that Martha did, as a hostess and a woman, to prepare food and extend hospitality. Her sympathetic reading of Martha eased some of the guilt I typically feel when I hear sermons on this passage, and her challenges to let go of anxiety felt more applicable to my life since they came from someone who has felt the same gendered pressures.

Hearing this sermon from a woman—who even in the twenty-first century can feel sympathy for first-century Martha’s role as hostess to over a dozen guests—helped me to better understand Jesus’ words to Martha. This is the benefit of diversity in the pulpit: different life experiences bring fresh perspectives to Scripture and new insights to listeners, inspiring them to connect with Scripture and with God in new ways.

Gender is, of course, one of many ways we can bring that vital diversity into churches. The evangelical church in America needs to work harder to represent God’s entire creation. Because those of us learning in the pews or wondering where we might serve in the church benefit from seeing ourselves and our experiences reflected in those who serve, lead, and preach.

By Jeffrey D. Miller says No. On Miller, see here.

Complementarian/egalitarian discussions and debates can be complex. Some involve arguments from the finer points of Greek and Hebrew. Others may require an understanding of theological themes that span the entire Bible. Still others require solid grounding in the social sciences. Because of such complexities, I find it refreshing when someone asks a question that is easily answered. The question that forms the title to this blog entry is just such a question.

[For this fine book by Ruth Tucker, click here.]

Essentially all readers of Arise have heard the claim that egalitarians are following culture. This claim is typically intended to point out that egalitarians are being seduced by feminism. And the feminism in question is usually a reference to the movement called second-wave feminism, which began in the 1960s and lasted for twenty-plus years—a movement with ramifications which continue to wield strong influence today.

To those who would ask this easy-to-answer question, whether egalitarians are being seduced by feminism, I might choose to respond as follows:

Perhaps you haven’t heard of Martia, a church leader in France, probably in the 5^th century—long before second-wave feminism. Or of Hilda of Whitby, a Christian leader and educator in the British Isles. She wielded considerable influence in the 7^th century—long before second-wave feminism.

Unfortunately you have probably not heard of Lioba, a biblical scholar, church historian, and missionary to Saxony in the 8^th century—long before second-wave feminism.

I wonder, have you heard of Saint Clare of Assisi, who exercised leadership as an abbess and influenced many Christian leaders, including Francis of Assisi and more than one pope, in the 13^thcentury—long before second-wave feminism?

It’s more likely that you’ve heard of Joanna Cotton, who lived out egalitarian principles, including teaching adult men, in the 15^th century—long before second-wave feminism. Or of Margaret Fell, cofounder of Quakerism with George Fox, who wrote the booklet, Womens Speaking Justified, Proved and Allowed of by the Scriptures, in the 1660s—long before second-wave feminism.

Perhaps you’ve even heard of Mary Hanson and Dorothy Fisher, early leaders of Methodism in Britain. In fact, when John Wesley compiled a list of sixty-six of the earliest Methodist leaders, forty-seven of them were women. Wesley compiled this list in the early 1740s—long before second-wave feminism.

Or of Mabel Lossing Jones, an evangelist and missionary. She began her missionary work in India in 1904—seven years before marrying famed evangelist E. Stanley Jones and long before second-wave feminism. Or of Anna Boyd, who preached extensively in the northeastern United States. She was or­dained by the Rhode Island Adventist Conference and became the first president of the Union Female Missionary Association in 1866—long before second-wave feminism.

Surely you’ve heard of Catherine Mumford Booth, co­founder of The Salvation Army with her husband, William. She argued for the equality of women and promoted them to ministerial equality with men. She was active for the bulk of the second half of the 19^th century—long before second-wave feminism.

Again, you’ve surely heard of Jessie Penn-Lewis, a writer, speaker, and revivalist in the British Isles. Penn-Lewis advocated for women’s ministry in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries—long before second-wave feminism.

I hope you also know about Alvera Mickelsen and Catherine Clark Kroeger, born in 1919 and 1925, respectively. These women were founding leaders of CBE International; they were writing about, as well as living out, evangelical egalitarianism before the advent of second-wave feminism.

You’ve noticed, of course, that the above list contains only women. But please know that over the centuries many men have also promoted women as Christian leaders of various kinds.

I began by claiming that this question—whether egalitarians are giving in to culture—is easy to answer. You don’t need all these names to answer it. Instead, you simply need a common-sense awareness that the idea that women are equal to men and are thus fit to exercise leadership in the church began neither in 1960 nor in the United States.

I should note that all of the women mentioned above have been written about in CBE International’s journal, Priscilla Papers. I easily found them, as well as many others, using the online index here: https://www.cbeinternational.org/sites/default/files/webindex2013.pdf. Another excellent resource is Handbook of Women Biblical Interpreters, edited by Marion Ann Taylor and Agnes Choi, which offers summaries of the life and work of 180 women ranging from the 4^thto the 21^st centuries.

In short, the answer is no, biblical egalitarianism is not the result of the second-wave feminism of the 1960s and 1970s. We’ve been around much longer than that.

I am saddened to hear that my friend Michael Cromartie has died of cancer. A noble life.

Michael Cromartie, a Washington networker who helped rebrand America’s image of Christian political engagement, has died of cancer at age 67.

The news of his death was reported Monday on Twitter and confirmed by colleagues at the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), the DC-based conservative think tank where he served for more than 30 years.

Cromartie brought Christian thought leaders and secular journalists under the same roof at the Faith Angle Forum, held every year since 1999. Through his work as EPPC vice president, he evoked theologians and philosophers as he advocated for thoughtful engagement in public policy and civil discourse.

In a political arena often dominated by competition, power grabs, and culture war debates, Cromartie stuck out by offering a friendlier, humbler approach. It’s this attitude that his colleagues remember most and cite as his greatest legacy.

“It can’t be said of many people, but everyone Mike touched was influenced for the better,” said Michael Gerson, a Washington Post columnist and former speechwriter for President George W. Bush. “His passing leaves a huge gap in American public life and in the lives of his friends.

“Mike was a man of great knowledge who made it accessible to others,” Gerson told CT. “He was a man of great faith, who make it real and attractive to others. And he was a man of exceptional decency, who demonstrated how to live with joy and integrity.”

See also here.

Watt Alert.

(CNN)NFL player J.J. Watt has one message for victims of Hurricane Harvey, “we have your back.”

The Houston Texans defensive end said Thursday he has raised more than $13 million for Houston flood relief.

He started raising funds on Sunday with a goal of $200,000 and met that target within just two hours.

“The initial night, we broke the site, we couldn’t figure out how to get it back up and we somehow found the CEO’s phone number and called him at his house and got him out of bed,” Watt told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on “AC360.” “He helped us fix the site and it got rolling.”

The four-time Pro Bowler continues to surpass and raise his targets. After Watt reached $10 million, he told Cooper that he set a new goal of $15 million and then will see how much more he could raise.

Mark Yarhouse and a Nashville Statement Alert.

When I wrote Understanding Gender Dysphoria, which was published in 2015, I noted that transgender presentations were a wave that was going to crest on evangelicals and that the church was not prepared for it. I noted that we needed to think deeply and well about gender identity and to engage with some humility what we know and do not know from the best of science, as well as learn from mistakes made in how evangelicals engaged the topic of sexual identity and especially how evangelicals treated the actual people who were navigating sexual identity and faith. I was suggesting we could learn from that experience and make some adjustments as we encounter the topic of gender identity.

I’m afraid the Nashville Statement, perhaps out of a desire to establish the parameters for orthodoxy on gender identity concerns, gets ahead of evangelicals because it doesn’t reflect the careful, nuanced reflection needed to guide Christians toward critical engagement of gender theory, while also aiding in the development of more flexible postures needed in pastoral care.

The statement evangelicals need today is one that guides the church toward a flexible posture, grounded in Scripture, that allows for a range of gestures based on the needs associated with ministry and cultural engagement.

A Vegetarian Alert:

There’s little debate about the fact that a plant-based diet is the healthiest around, both in terms of physical health and brain health. But a new studysuggests that a vegetarian diet may, counterintuitively, be linked to depression. Though there are some limitations to the new research (namely, that it was in men only), there’s one reason that it may be right on: Vegetarians and vegans may be low on the vitamins, minerals and fatty acids that are essential to neurological function. So the study may at least be a good reminder to add back what you may be lacking, either with food or with supplement.

The authors, from the University of Bristol and the NIH, looked at data from 9,700 men in Britain—all were the husbands of pregnant women taking part in a long-term study on parent and child health. The men indicated whether they were vegetarian and vegan, and filled out questionnaires about the specific makeup of their typical diets.

Men who were vegetarian/vegan, of which there were only 350 total (the team lumped the two groups together, since there weren’t many vegans), were more likely to have depression than non-vegetarians, and more likely to have a higher depression score. Even after adjustment for potential confounding variables (like family history, number of children, job status, and so on), the connection still held. There was also a slight connection between the number of years one had been vegetarian and the severity of one’s depression, but that link wasn’t statistically significant.

Despite the obvious health benefits of vegetarianism, there are some good reasons that vegetarians and vegans might be prone to depression. Their intake of omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin B12 and folate may be lower than meat eaters’, the authors write, and deficiencies of these have all been associated with depression. The same may be true for iron and zinc. Additionally, the authors suggest that vegetarians may have a higher intake of omega-6 fatty acids, which have been shown to increase inflammation and have also been linked to depression. Vegetarians and vegans may also consume more plant estrogens, particularly if they eat a lot of soy products. Finally, the authors suggest that vegetarians and vegans may take in higher levels of pesticides, assuming their intake of plant-based foods is higher than average.

This is a stadium alert:

“We’re out on the field getting the Tigers ready for another successful run at a state title,” chirps the voicemail for the Katy High School athletics department.

Before being asked to leave your “growl” and “pawprint,” you’ll learn what the school’s marching band sounds like, the number of national (three) and state (eight) football championships the Tigers have won and that Gary Joseph serves as both the head of the athletic department and the head football coach—all without anyone answering the phone.

It’s an understatement to say football is important to the Houston suburb, and if the impressive voicemail greeting doesn’t convince you, consider the $72 million the district just spent on a new stadium. Yes, for high schoolers.

Legacy Stadium is the most expensive stadium in Texas (and thus, U.S.) high school history. It’s the latest entrant in what the local media refers to as a stadium “arms race.”

The 12,000-seat stadium, complete with luxury boxes and a giant video replay board (which alone cost $2 million), was built alongside the district’s old stadium (est. 1981) to provide for its eight high schools, each of which have around 3,000 students.

“Everybody in this community agreed that another stadium was needed—there was just a difference of agreement, maybe, on the cost and the size of the stadium,” Katy Independent School District Superintendent Dr. Lance Hindt told press before the stadium’s opening, alluding to the possibility that the end cost was higher than the $58 million bond approved by taxpayers in 2014.

Katy is making headlines now, but bank-breaking stadiums are becoming the norm around Texas, turning the Friday night games many non-Texans imagine as a charming, pastoral tradition into big business. Most stadiums due to open in the next couple of years have $45 to $70 million price tags, and that’s before inevitable construction overages.

University Alert:

Since 2005, the Washington Monthly has released an annual College Guide and rankings, where we rate schools based on what they are doing for the country. It’s our answer to U.S News & World Report, which relies on crude and easily manipulated measures of wealth, exclusivity, and prestige to evaluate schools.

We rate schools based on their contribution to the public good in three broad categories: Social Mobility (recruiting and graduating low-income students), Research (producing cutting-edge scholarship and PhDs), and Service (encouraging students to give something back to their country). We also offer our “Best Bang for the Buck” rankings — our exclusive list of schools that help non-wealthy students attain marketable degrees at affordable prices. For the second year in a row, we rank the best colleges for adult learners, the first-ever ranking of its kind. More rankings information, including methodologies, can be found here.

Yale alert.

The remarkable journey of the Wade quadruplets begins a new chapter as they start their freshman year at Yale University.

TODAY got an exclusive look Wednesday as Zach, Aaron, Nick and Nigel Wade settled into life in the Ivy League after all deciding to attend the same prestigious university.

“Although we are a support group for each other if we need to be, we also came to Yale to kind of find our own personalities, our own group,” Nigel told NBC’s Thomas Roberts.

The quadruplets from Liberty Township, Ohio, appeared on TODAY in April when it was revealed that they all had the impressive distinction of being accepted to Harvard and Yale, not to mention other top schools like Stanford, Johns Hopkins, Vanderbilt, Duke, Cornell and Georgetown.

Born four minutes apart from one another, the brothers decided to stick together when it came to college, announcing in May that they would all be future Bulldogs and make New Haven, Connecticut, their home for the next four years.

There were 32,900 applicants for the Yale Class of 2021, and the Wades were four of 2,272 accepted, according to the Yale website. The 1,550 incoming students make it the largest freshman class in Yale history.

Mattress Mack Alert.

HOUSTON – A Houston furniture store owner is being praised after he decided to open his doors to those displaced by Tropical Storm Harvey.

Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale opened up two of his showrooms to shelter some of the tens of thousands of people whose homes are now under water.

“We’ve got lots of beds, we’ve got lots of food, we’ve got water and you can even bring your animals,” McIngvale said in a Facebook video Sunday. He even gave out his personal cellphone number and told people, “If you need something, call and we’ll try to get you whatever help we can.”

Mattress Mack’s Twitter photos show dozens of people resting on the display furniture with the message, “If you can safely join us, we invite you for shelter and food. God Bless.”

On Sunday, the furniture chain posted on Facebook that they were using their biggest trucks to rescue people stranded by the floods.

By Mitch East, currently the preaching intern at the North Atlanta Church of Christ

Seminary doesn’t teach you everything you need to know about being a minister.

For the past year, I worked as the youth minister for Freedom Fellowship, a church that reaches out to the homeless and poor in Abilene, Texas. At the beginning, the students in the youth group didn’t trust me. I was the new guy on their turf. So two students, who we’ll call David and Alicia, made it their goal to test the boundaries of what was appropriate for a couple to do in class. In other words, they made out – during class.

I learned that confronting the issue head on (“Hey, please don’t make out”) had no effect. Instead, I tried to have conversations with them to distract them from their eternal romantic gaze. Nine times out of ten, it worked.

One time, it didn’t. They made out with fury and dedication. I tried talking to my other students, but they were too distracted by the monstrosity occurring five feet away from them. One kid, who we’ll call Luis, ran out of patience. With a few of his favorite expletives, Luis told them to stop making out. At this, David stopped, stood up, and pulled out a knife.

Five other students (friends of Luis) stood up, ready to respond to this new development with their version of conflict resolution. Without any time to think, I stood up and put my hands in between Luis and David and repeated the only word that came to mind. “RELAX! RELAX! RELAX! RELAX! RELAX!”

I know, strange word choice. But, after ten seconds that felt like forty minutes, David, Luis, and Luis’ five bodyguards slowly sat down.

I remember driving the students home. I thought to myself, “I don’t know what I’m doing.” When I took the job at the church, I had one year left in seminary at Abilene Christian University. I loved my classes and professors, but seminary did not teach me what I needed to know for that night. Which meant that my seminary didn’t teach me everything I needed to know about being a minister.

I’ve come to believe that seminaries should not try to teach us everything we need to know about being a minister.

Why not? First, seminaries never promised to do so. Seminaries promise to teach subjects like theology, ministry, and church history. Second, they don’t have the resources to teach ministers everything. Otherwise, they’re pretending. For example, seminaries don’t train ministers to become marriage therapists. Therapists are required to have hundreds of hours in a clinic doing therapy for their clients. If I take one therapy-related class in my seminary, I am not a licensed therapist. I am a minister who has taken one class about therapy.

Likewise, seminaries should not try to train students to become businesswomen, doctors, or life coaches. Let trained businesswomen, doctors, and life coaches teach their students to become what those disciplines are made for. Although I love the idea of seminaries training students to disarm knife fights, that training isn’t what seminary is for. I simply had to do the best I could and learn on the fly.

This is why young ministers (like me!) should slow down before they blame their professors for “not preparing them enough.” After stumbling into a situation in which you have no idea what you’re doing, the temptation is to blame your teachers. “All my professors taught me was abstract; none of it was practical.” “They never connected the dots from seminary to church work.” “They don’t know what the real world is like.” I have used these stock phrases and they made me feel better about my failures.

But working in a local church taught me the opposite lesson. Seminaries exist to prepare students to become ministers with the imagination it takes to respond to situations they never see coming. Working in a local church made me appreciate my teachers all the more. My professors expected me to connect the dots; they did not connect the dots for me. I’m glad they didn’t. Now I have to imagine how seminary connects to kids who are ready to pull out knives in an argument.

On the next blog post in this series, I’ll share some of the connections I’ve made between seminary and local church work. But for now, I’ll finish the story.

Because that night was my first knife fight in or outside of the church, I had to go to the leaders of the church to ask for help. They talked with David; he didn’t deny bringing the knife. He listened to the elders, who told him Freedom Fellowship resolves fights by communicating, not with weapons. He never brought his knife back to church and we never had another incident like it.

You know, your typical success story in youth ministry.

By Michelle Van Loon at www.MichelleVanLoon.com and www.ThePerennialGen.com

My friend B. had been a pastor for years before he stepped into the leadership of a parachurch ministry. During his work week, he worked and prayed with dozens of pastors and church leaders interested in transforming their congregations and communities. But on Sundays, he and his wife were invisible members of their own home church.

“It’s not because I’m burned out from my work,” he explained. “If anything, the work has energized me. I’ve offered to serve the pastoral staff in whatever way they need, connect them with resources, or just listen and pray for them – my wife and I have always been used to being an active part of the life of any church we’ve attended. At this church, we attend a small group, and my wife prays with some other women a couple of times a month. That’s it. Frankly, I don’t think they don’t know what to do with us.”

I wondered aloud if maybe the staff felt threatened by his expertise, experience and influence, instead of welcoming the gifts the couple wanted to offer to their local body. After all, having a former pastor in the pews might carry an intimidation factor for some; kind of like having Tom Brady quarterbacking your Pop Warner football team.

I had been at the church for 4 or 5 years at this point – long enough to demonstrate he and his wife didn’t have any ulterior motives. “I don’t have any desire for any sort of position in this church, and they respect that. I think it’s simply a matter of them being so wrapped up in their own interpersonal dynamics and church politics that they simply overlook us.”

We had the conversation as B. and family were preparing to make a cross-country move to join the pastoral staff of a megachurch at the express invitation of an old friend. It dawned on me as he reflected on his experience here in the Chicago area that the most important thing he might be bringing with him to his new job was the experience of being overlooked. I pointed out that he and his wife had a bridge into a ready-made community as he became a part of a close-knit staff. Their gifts and experience were being honored by the invitation, and he knew they’d both be valued and freed to do the kinds of ministry God had wired them to do within the church and in the surrounding neighborhoods beyond the four walls of the church.

“There are many people in your new church who are in the very same marginalized position you’ve occupied during your time here in Chicago,” I told him. “Never, ever forget that. Please look for them.”

* * * * * * *

There has been a lot of talk in recent years in our culture about the notion of racial, social or financial privilege. One basic theme of many of the discussions is the blindness we have to our own power and entitlement. Our blinders tend to come off only when they’re yanked off by a crisis or loss of some kind. I think the discussion about the nature and effect of privilege is healthy for us all because it may encourage some to choose to see without being forced into it by a traumatic experience of some kind.

Jesus willingly laid aside his position of privilege in order to invite people who knew they were on the margins into relationship with the Father by the Spirit, inviting all of us to join him at the table he himself has set for us, the ultimate picture of fellowship and community. His kingdom on earth as it is in heaven means we who are at this table together are empowered to practice this counter-cultural way of life here and now.

Most of us are occupied trying to get our needs met for belonging and significance. Those needs are really important! God himself wired us that way. When a church staff, each holding positions of social privilege within that small community, are focused on their own “interpersonal dynamics and church politics”, it communicates that they might be focused on getting their needs for belonging and significance met. The experience B. had in the church gave him a new way to think about how he’d functioned in his previous role as pastor. Though he was a very others-focused, servant-hearted guy, he recognized he’d succumbed to the temptation to form and hoard a clique around himself so he could get those needs of his met.

They never quite seemed to be. Few people exist that are secure enough in their relationship with God and others to recognize what they already possess in terms of positions of power or social privilege.

Perhaps a training-wheels way to practice this reality in our local churches is this very week is for each of us to take a few moments to assess the way in which we typically think about our network of relationships. Maybe instead of thinking about what we’re lacking in our relationships with others, which puts our insecurities, fears and jealousies in the drivers’ seat, it might help to take stock of what we already possess. Even if what we possess seems very invisible and insignificant, and our personal sense of need is pretty big. (And yes, I know even busy church leaders who are at the social center of their congregation’s solar system, struggle with the same sense of “not enough” in their relationships.) As we do, I think we might see those God has placed around us in a whole new light. Blinders off. Privilege used to draw a couple of extra chairs up to the table.