Complementarianism has walked itself into a corner and is spinning in circles. Yes, to be sure, there are complementarians and there are complementarians. But the game is played when Piper blows his whistle and his Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood is shaping the conversation at the very core. If more complementarians would stand up and critique Piper and his type for their interpretations, we’d all be better.

By the way and for the record again, I do not consider myself an egalitarian; I’m a mutualist — very much along the line of what complementarian originally meant. When it meant difference for the good of the other and not hierarchy. My views have been sketched in The Blue Parakeet.

Well, to show that some have the guts to stand up with Joshua and be counted, here’s Aimee Byrd at Mortification of Spin:

[quoting Piper:] At the heart of mature manhood is a sense of benevolent responsibility to lead, provide for, and protect women in ways appropriate to a man’s differing relationships. The postman won’t relate to the lady at the door the way a husband will, but he will be a man. At the heart of mature womanhood is a freeing disposition to affirm, receive, and nurture strength and leadership from worthy men in ways appropriate to a woman’s differing relationships.

[Aimee’s response:] I find these definitions troublesome. Some of the words used here to describe mature manhood sound an awful lot like the Hebrew word ezer, or as we know ithelper, that describes Eve in Gen. 2:18, and in verses like Ps. 20:1-2, 33:20 and 121:2, describes God’s provision and protection for Israel.

As far as the postman goes, I am at a total loss. Are we referring to the obvious, ontological fact that he is a man, or to something in his behavior that makes him a manly postman at the door? And if I am a woman opening the door, am I to be affirming this manliness in some sort of way?

And I suppose this definition of mature womanhood exposes me as terribly childish. I do not think it is my purpose as a woman to be constantly seeking affirming, receiving, and nurturing strength and leadership from worthy men. I am married to one man. I affirm that Scripture teaches that my husband has the responsibility of headship in our home. Even then, I take the ezer with the kenegdo. I should be a suitable strength matched for him, discerning if his leadership is of the Lord. I also affirm that only certain men are called to ordination in the church as pastors and elders. Those are special leadership positions that I affirm as a result of the goodness and authority of God, who is the authority of us all. Isn’t this what a complementarian believes?

And here’s Carl Trueman’s follow-up:

The passage is arguably even more problematic than Aimee allows.   It seems to me to make women in themselves into nothing more than defective beings and to rest upon a definition of complementarity which is really one of radical, across-the-board subordination.   It also leaves me wondering what I can say to single women in my church.   Find a man, any man, to submit to in some context or other?…

I rarely read complementarian literature these days. I felt it lost its way when it became an all-embracing view of the world and not simply a matter for church and household.   I am a firm believer in a male-only ordained ministry in the church but I find increasingly bizarre the broader cultural crusade which complementarianism has become.  It seems now to be more a kind of reaction against feminism than a balanced exposition of the Bible’s teaching on the relationships of men and women.   Thus, for example, marriage is all about submission of wife to husband (Eph. 5) and rarely about the delight of friendship and the  kind of playful but subtly expressed eroticism we find in the Song of Songs.  Too often cultural complementarianism ironically offers a rather disenchanted and mundane account of the mystery and beauty of male-female relations.  And too often it slides into sheer silliness.

Jackson Wu (PhD, SEBTS) teaches theology and missiology in a seminary for Chinese church leaders. Previously, he also worked as a church planter. He has just released his second book One Gospel for All Nations: A Practical Approach to Biblical Contextualization. In addition to his blog, jacksonwu.org, follow him on Twitter @jacksonwu4china.

The male students in my class agreed, “The Bible says that men are more important than women.” In Chinese culture, one never wants to provoke a teacher, but that is exactly what they did that day.

Of all people, my Chinese students should grasp the interdependence of femaleness (yin) and maleness (yang). The yin-yang symbol signifies the balance of contrasts, female-male, dark-light, and perhaps we might add Bible-culture.

When discussing contextualization, evangelicals make a similar mistake as my students. How? By too sharply separating Bible and culture. We ask, “What has priority? The Bible or culture?” In Saving God’s Face, I explain . . .

The argument hinges on an order fallacy. To ask whether the Bible or culture has “priority” is unclear. The idea of “priority” can refer either to temporal sequence (i.e. what comes first) or to authoritative rank (i.e. what has authority). According to the fallacy, it is supposed that whatever comes first temporally has greater authority. To the contrary, sequence is not always supreme. For example, in the apologetics . . . one can easily see how reason initially has epistemological authority (over revelation) in its defense of sola scriptura. (SGF, 60)

In other words, the Bible may have ultimate authority (not culture); yet, God reveals himself through human cultures (which already existed). God used cultures to contextualize his self-revelation. The fact that culture is sequentially prior to revelation does not undermine biblical authority.

Afraid of contextualization?

Evangelical “purists” get nervous when they hear talk like this. They are afraid of “eisegesis,” reading culture into the Bible. People get so afraid of cultural syncretism (wherein culture usurps the Bible) that they overlook a more subtle problem––theological syncretism. By this, I refer to the tendency to read the Bible through the lens of our denomination, organization, ministry strategy, etc. and therefore miss so much more of what God reveals in Scripture.

I’ve heard people ask, “Why can’t we just read the Bible and apply it directly to our lives? Why do we have to contextualize? We have the Holy Spirit.” I wish it were that simple.

The way we see the world and thus read Scripture is influenced to some degree by countless cultures and subcultures. We can also add an additional layer—history. We don’t interpret the Bible in a vacuum. Two thousand years of church history shape our assumptions about the Bible and even the questions we ask of certain passages.

We can’t simply claim that the Spirit guards us from cultural influences by illuminating the meaning of a passage to us. First of all, we have to remember that the Holy Spirit guided the biblical writers, who wrote using words, metaphors, and symbols rooted in specific cultures (cf. 2 Pet 1:20, 21).

Second, whose illumination do we trust? One person might say the Spirit gave him illumination that only affirms believer baptism; another might argue that the Spirit revealed that infants could be baptized. The Spirit only teaches finite, culturally bound people with limited perspectives. We mustn’t try to apply the doctrine of illumination abstracted from the facts of history.

Interpreting Biblical Text in Cultural Context

In my new book, One Gospel for All Nations, I not only illustrate the relationship between Bible and culture; I also show why it matters practically for contextualization.

Contextualization fundamentally begins with biblical interpretation. Only then does it concern application and communication. Culture always acts as a filter to what we read. This happens even when we read other ancient works in order to grasp the cultures that influenced the biblical writers.

Sound biblical exegesis is fundamental to the contextualization process. We want to understand the Bible’s meaning in its historical and canonical context. We desperately need the humility to acknowledge that we all come to the Bible with a limited viewpoint. We use a cultural lens that invariably causes us to notice some things but overlook other important ideas. Contextualization occurs whenever we interpret the text from within a cultural context, which is always.

Therefore, we need to ask the practical question, “How do we intentionally account for this dynamic when interpreting the Bible?” This is a key question for everyone, including so-called “professional” Christians like theologians, pastors, and missionaries.

We shouldn’t “throw away” our cultural lens. I don’t suggest replacing a “western” lens for an “eastern” lens. Instead, we need to enlarge our cultural lens so that we might bring a broader human perspective to Scripture. Although I have fundamental differences with many of K. K. Yeo’s conclusions, he is right when he says,

“[A] cross-cultural reading is more objective than a monocultural reading of the biblical text.”

How the Bible ALWAYS Frames the Gospel

We need a practical model for doing contextualization that is both biblically faithful and culturally meaningful. I make such a proposal in One Gospel for all Nations. I begin with an observation that is only seen when we root contextualization in biblical theology (not systematic theology).

Biblical writers always use at least one of three interconnected themes when presenting the gospel. They are creation, covenant, and kingdom. These themes derive from the grand narrative of Scripture. Without exception, these three themes decisively frame the biblical authors’ gospel presentation. (I demonstrate this key point more fully in One Gospel.) Within this firm framework, one has flexibility to discuss various other important sub-themes.

A biblically sound model of contextualization is both firm and flexible. The Bible provides a firm framework. If this framework does not shape our contemporary gospel presentations, we are not preaching the gospel as the biblical writers understood it, (even if we do teach many correct and important doctrinal truths). In addition, we have flexibility to highlight on other biblical themes in accordance with the needs of the surrounding cultural context.

I’d like to hear from you.

• How does your cultural and subcultural background shape the way you see and present the gospel?
• What doctrines and themes tend to get more attention than others?

The author of this blog post is a missionary in North Africa with Pioneer Bible Translators. She, along with her husband and two little girls, lives on the outskirts of a refugee camp working to facilitate disciple-making, Bible translation and mother tongue literacy among two least-reached Muslim groups. Her favorite things about North Africa include drinking scalding hot mint tea, wearing colorful tobes, watching her daughters play on ant hills, and hearing people’s stories. Her least favorite things include rats in the kitchen and dry season dust storms. 

I first remember hearing the word sabur while sitting on a sagging rope bed in the suffocating shade of a tattered UN tent next to a woman who had just had her fourth stillbirth. She was just a friend of a friend at the time, a familiar face from the small community of Christians that meet under a tree here in the refugee camp, not someone I knew well. But when my close friend asked me to come to visit Om-Iman, the pretty young woman with the four dead babies, I was quick to say yes.

On this particular day I didn’t know exactly what to do or say. I had never sat with someone from my own culture who had just lost a baby before and sifting through my Arabic, which was neither of our mother-tongues, I felt clumsy and inept at communicating my deep sorrow for her loss. For a while Om-Iman spoke openly about how big the baby girl had been, how much blood she had lost, how long she must stay inside until her time of mourning has passed. As she spoke her voice was steady but tears trickled down the side of her obsidian cheeks while milk blossomed painfully against the cloth covering her breasts. I watched her, a woman whose life was marked with loss – born into a small tribe in a corner of the world where the government is actively trying to wipe her people off the face of the earth, not for the religion they share, but for the color of their skin. When the bombs became too much, she walked with her family for weeks through a wasteland to reach this sprawling refugee camp where there is at least usually food to eat. But like everyone around her, she feels every mile that separates her from home, and the thinly veiled tension with the host community. She has been here for four years.

So when she said the word sabur, I was taken aback. “But in this life we must have sabur, patience,” she said. “God sees everything, does he not? He has asked us to be patient. So we are patient.”

In my six years in North Africa I have learned a lot about patience. Patience with government officials who drag their feet issuing whatever stamp of the month we so desperately need. Patience with another rat in the kitchen. Patience with the care package from my mom that gets lost somewhere between the post office a country away and the bush plane that is supposed to deliver it to our dirt airstrip. And sometimes, when I am feeling especially spiritually mature, even patient with the wars, political instability and general blasted hardness of a context that forces us to keep reimagining what this ministry will look like.

But patient with four dead babies?

Patient when you can still hear the bombs falling across the border back home, and wonder who they hurt this time?

Patient as you wait out your life in a refugee camp and wonder if anything will ever change for the better?

I am learning so much from my North African brothers and sister and about patience. Sabur. The word holds so much more significance that simply waiting in a long line or trying really hard not to yell at your kids. There is something much closer to a word we might only here in an old translation of the Bible at church. Longsuffering. Enduring hardship for a long time. Sabur.

One might say that fatalism clouds much of what I see in women like Om-Iman. No doubt it is a mindset reality in huge swathes of Africa. But among these baby Christians here in the refugee camp where I have made my home, apathy is not what I see when they speak of patience. The tears and heart-wrenching cries at funerals, the singing and feasting at a new birth all seem like something much more alive to me. The patience I see strikes me as so close to something our Lord Jesus lived out. The willingness to encounter suffering not with anger or resentment, but with genuine grief and absolute trust in the goodness of God, even if it is hard to see at the moment.

Though there are certain things I chose to let go of in moving to North Africa, at the end of the day I still put a lot of trust in things other than God. The dark blue passport that gets me across most borders, the list of bush pilots phone numbers and the satellite phone to call them if the cell network goes down, a shelf full of antibiotics and home testing malaria kits. I still have my safety nets.

But women like Om-Iman don’t. They have their faith in God and the belief that he sees everything. And the fact that he sees is somehow in their favor. To be honest, there are days that the thought of God seeing everything doesn’t bring me great comfort. But for Om-Iman, it does. She will be patient, and in the end, God will make it all right. Because he is just and he is good. And this world clearly is not.

God is endlessly delighted in making the least into the greatest. And this barren refugee woman living out the beatitudes in the middle of war-town North Africa is my teacher in so many ways. I am drawn to her, not just out of my desire to be a bearer of hope for her and her community, but because I want to learn from her. People like Om-Iman are close to God’s heart in a way that I will probably never be. Many of us have been spared the circumstances in life that best teach patience. With grateful hearts, may we seek out those who understand it best, sit for a moment at their feet and learn just a bit of patience, true sabur.

A New Metric, by Jonathan Storment

For the past 12 years, I have worked only at large churches.  This is neither a bragging statement nor a dismissive one.  Frankly, they are the only churches that would hire me.  And they are great churches.  They care about the right things, and they want to serve God and make the world a better place.

For the longest time, I have heard that we must stop measuring the ABC’s of church (Attendance, Buildings, and Contribution), but I have never really heard many alternatives to what we should be measuring instead.  Every now and then, people like a Leonard Sweet will suggest that we need to measure the amount of cigarette butts in the parking lots, (an idea I like) but for the most part we deconstruct what we measure without any healthy alternative.  But any human community wants to have some way of measuring health, and the ABC’s aren’t bad measurements, they are just woefully incomplete ones.

And that is why I like Scot’s book A Fellowship of Differents so much.  He starts off by giving us a new way of thinking about measuring a church.

The Success of a church is first determined by how many invisible people become visible to those not like them.

Great, another abstract lofty idea from some ivory tower telling me not to count people in the seats, right? Nope.  Here’s how Scot sets this idea up:

To get some concrete ideas in our heads right away, we need to see that these early Christians did not meet in churches and sit apart from one another in pews and then when the music ended get in their cars and go home… those early churches were small and were much closer to our home Bible studies than most of our worship services…a recent very careful study by a British scholar concluded that if the apostle Paul’s house churches were composed of about 30 people, a maximal estimate, this would have been their approximate make-up:

• A craftworker in whose home they meet, along with his wife, children, a couple of male slaves, a female domestic slave, and a dependent relative.
• Some tenants, with families and slaves and dependents, also living in the same home in rented rooms.
• Some family members of a householder who himself does not participate in the house church.
• A couple of slaves whose owners do not attend.
• Some freed slaves who do not participate in the church.
• A couple homeless people
• A few migrant workers renting small rooms in the home.

Add to this mix some Jewish folks and a perhaps an enslaved prostitute and we see how many “different tastes” were in a typical house church in Rome:  men and women, citizens and freed slaves and slaves (who had no legal rights), Jews and Gentiles, people from all moral walks of life, and perhaps most notably, people from elite classes all the way down the social scale to homeless people. Do you think these folks agreed on everything?…Was it hard? Yes. That’s the whole point of what it means to be a church.

I agree wholeheartedly, to be a good church is to come to a community with different people, who don’t agree on everything, but who fellowship around Jesus anyway.  And the only thing harder than doing this, is what happens, over time, when we don’t.

Maybe you saw this article last year about how people who disagreed with each other about the tragedy at Ferguson just avoided each other on Twitter.  If you didn’t see the story, chances are you already saw it happening in real life, maybe even in how people attended church.

We have carved up the world in such specific ghettos, we have categorized and sub-categorized ourselves so much that we have lost the ability to have meaningful, kind, arguments with one another about what is good, right and true.  And what is worse, we have lost the ability to worship Jesus together.  Unlike the Churches and Christians who have gone before us, we no longer have to be around people who aren’t like us.  Here is Scot again:

Churches for men and not really for women, churches for wealthy and churches for middle class and churches for the poor, churches for whites and Mexican Americans and African Americans and Asian Americans and Indian Americans.  Churches for liberals and churches for fundamentalists, churches for those who follow Calvin, who follow Wesley, who follow Luther, who follow Aquinas, who follow Menno, or who follow Hybels, Warren, Stanely, Hamilton, Chandler, or Driscoll.  Sunday morning then becomes an exercise in cultural and spiritual segregation and this has a colossally important impact on …the Christian life itself!

If we are going to be like Jesus, the Jesus who spent His ministry around people who drove him crazy, people who didn’t agree with each other on anything but followed Him together anyway, we are going to have to re-learn the ancient Christian art of being a fellowship of differents.

And this probably won’t be a thing that happens primarily in our churches’ programming (but pastors should try to make their programming diverse), it won’t be something that can just be solved by singing a song in Spanish occasionally (but that’s a great idea too!).  It will happen on the local, nuclear building blocks of a church level – in our small groups and Bible classes and discipleship times.  It happens when the leader who is calling a new group together looks over their list of people and asks who is invisible in this church?  Are the people I am inviting to this, ones who all look alike?

It happens when one of those homogenous groups or classes decides to do a service project with another; when a group of senior saints decides to stock the pantry with the student ministry, or when the Hispanic ministry and the men’s ministry decide to do a Habitat house together.

Our world is broken and divided, but the church, the soul of the world, can help.

We just need to start measuring ourselves differently.

Wade Burleson — I’ve seen very few willing to state the matter so boldly and to point the finger not only at false thinking but also at the condition of marriages in the SBC:

How can the divorce rate in every state in the union be declining while at the same time the Southern Baptist divorce rate is accelerating? Because divorce rates are in the culture at large are declining, if Southern Baptists were “accommodating culture,” then our divorce rate would be also declining.

Pay close attention to this categorical statement in the resolution:

“The acceleration in rates of divorce in Southern Baptist churches has not come through a shift in theological conviction…

I disagree. I propose one of the major reasons for the increasing divorce rate in the Southern Baptist Convention isprecisely because of a shift in theological conviction during the 1990’s and early 2000’s.

Many of those who were in positions of leadership during those years promoted a doctrinal error called The Eternal Subordination of the Son.  Few Southern Baptist lay men and women even know what that doctrine is, but when you go to a church led by a Southern Baptist pastor who believes it, the emphasis of the teaching will be on “the authority of the husband” and “the subordination of the woman to her husband.” This pastoral demand that a Christian wife alone (not the husband) is called to be subordinate and submissive is based on the false belief that Jesus the Son is eternally subordinate and submissive to the Father.

The Word of God teaches a mutual submission of husband and wife to Jesus Christ–the creator God who became Man (Emmanuel)–and a mutual submission to each other (see Philippians 2:3,5-7; and Ephesians 5:2 and 5:21).

When the emphasis in any Christian environment–be it a church, home, or ministry–is on one’s alleged superior authority and demand for another’s unconditional submission, a separation in relationship is imminent.

A desire to exert power, control others, and demand submission is unnatural to God’s design for His creation. …

Here’s the catch. Southern Baptist leaders have made the tragic error of believing that a husband should rule and a wife should be submissive because the Bible demands it. Truth be known, the Bible calls any desire to control and dominate–be it the husband or the wife– “the curse.” The divorce rate increases when Southern Baptists call “the norm” what the Bible calls “the curse.” When the first man (Adam) sought to rule over the first woman (Eve), Adam was manifesting a curse, not meeting a commandment (Genesis 3:16).

Jesus came to reverse the curse. Redemption causes curse-filled people to become grace-filled people. Those who seek to rule over others by exerting authority, when they come to see what Jesus says about life, will turn loose of trying to control other people and will only seek to love and serve, NEVER exerting any alleged authority. Again, Jesus said that “the Gentiles lord over others” and “exert authority,” but “it shall not be this way among you”(Matthew 20:24-26).

By David Roseberry, at Christ Church Plano.

Christ Church (here) just celebrated its 30th anniversary. Since I am the founding pastor and Rector, I have been doing a lot of thinking and reflecting for the past few weeks. I am so very, very thankful for the opportunities I have had there. It has been a tremendous experience and, by God’s grace, I trust it will continue.

As I have reflected over these past few weeks, I made up a list of learnings and lessons from the past three decades. Most of these will not be new to most readers. And some of these I still struggle to learn as a leader of this parish. But for what they are worth, here are 30 lessons from the past 30 years. (Most of these have been learned the hard way or read or discovered through day to day ministry. I have embraced some of these ideas from other people and have long since forgotten their source. I apologize.)

Here they are:

1. There is no secret sauce or magic pill that will make a church grow or prosper. Generally speaking, growth is a by-product of other non-measurable things. This makes it hard to ‘make’ numerical growth happen.
2. Congregations have their own culture; a parish-wide attitude and way of doing things. People may come for the program, location, music, or the preaching…but they will stay or leave because of the culture.
3. To that end, programming and small groups are seldom the front door for visitors and new members. It’s the Sunday experience of worship! Worship is what your people will invite their friends to.
4. Momentum. With it, you can do much. Without it, you cannot do much. Pray to have it…and then keep it.
5. Good music will cover a multitude of bad preaching. But good preaching will almost never cover bad music. In other words, to turn a phrase of Jesus’, if your music is weak, how great is that weakness.
6. Pastoral connection, the art of being with people in their homes or over coffee, providing prayer and spiritual support…this practiced art will cover a multitude of inadequate preaching and sour notes. Whenever I have doubts, I get out and see people.
7. Preaching guides the church. The pulpit is the prow of the ship.
8. Jesus played with children and taught adults. We tend to do just the opposite: we play with adults and teach children. Adult ministry is key to a healthy congregation.
9. However, in our child-oriented culture, the children will usually determine where the parents go to church. Don’t let children’s ministry suffer!
10. You will never need the space that you do not provide for. In other words, if your church has a crowded problem and you do nothing about it, the problem will go away. Sadly.
11. The Rector’s job is easily summed up in one phrase: Provide and Protect. Provide for the parish (clear vision, pastoral leadership, supported staff, ample resources, adequate space, etc.). Protect the parish (against scandal, erroneous teaching, divisions, malfeasance, etc.)
12. Raising resources and teaching biblical stewardship cannot be delegated. The leader needs to learn how to ask. Most people need to be asked routinely and don’t mind to be asked respectfully to fulfill the needs of their church.
13. The long-term pastorate is a double-edged sword. It is easier to make changes because you have the trust of the people. It is harder to see the changes that need to be made.
14. Younger leaders have incredible energy and vision and need to be placed in positions of leadership and influence. Practice a kind of ‘reverse-mentoring’; let the younger teach the older.
15. You get more of whatever you pay attention to. If you need more prayer in church, pay attention to it. Preach, teach, lead, witness, write, and focus on it. It will increase. Same with money, volunteerism, evangelism, and outreach, etc.
16. Denominations mean little these days. But Anglicanism is not a denomination. It is a heritage and it is trending now. Embrace the heritage, invigorate it with passion, and turn it loose.
17. There are at least six areas of ministry that need constant attention in every church. (Worship, Evangelism, Discipleship, Communication, Administration, and Pastoral Care). The good news is that there are not many more…but there aren’t any less.
18. Staff costs should not be considered overhead. Don’t let the vestry categorize it that way in the budget. Staff are the ministry-delivery system. And nursery and children/youth costs are never expenses; they are investments.
19. Sometimes my prayer habits are lacking…but my prayer life is strong because of my intercessors. I am thankful for the men and women who pray for me.
20. Clergy should take their scheduled day off and their vacation time away. It sets an example for the parish and provides opportunity for other staff and volunteers to develop their leadership.
21. A church grows large because it is growing smaller. The large moments of celebration are supported by many more smaller moments of prayer, fellowship, support, and pastoral ministry.
22. The bible is the greatest book that is seldom read. Be an expert in it. Teach and preach it exclusively. Show people the riches and rewards of diligent study and careful reading. Most people really do want to know what the bible says…even if they are going to disagree with it.
23. A vision is like a North Star. It guides and directs the whole community…and it must be looked to often.
24. People love to be led and not steered. But they need to know where they are going. This is what is meant by the saying, “When there is no vision, the people perish.” (Proverbs 29:18)
25. Never surprise a Vestry or ask them to make a quick decision.
26. People love change…it is just that they do not like to be changed. Include them in your thinking and vision.
27. Lone Rangerism will kill your effectiveness and rob your joy. Find a senior leader you can look to, seek out, and confess sins to.
28. Remember W. H. Griffith Thomas’ great adage about preaching: “Think yourself empty; read yourself full; write yourself clear; pray yourself keen; then into the pulpit, and let yourself go!”
29. Always write thank-you notes to people who are doing the right thing. They will do more of it!
30. Making a list of things you think you understand or have learned is seldom a good idea. It is often not complete, satisfactory, or wise.