Are Women ‘More than Enchanting’?

{Once again, I’m delighted to be participating in the Patheos Book Club, Take & Read!}

This fortnight’s pick is Jo Saxton’s More than Enchanting: Breaking Through Barriers to Influence Your World from InterVarsity Press.

I’ve never really hoped to be a ‘leader,’ but last week when I listened to myself on Family Life Radio, I thought,

“Someone get that lady a PULPIT! She has a lot to say.”

(I used to enjoy hopping up into the pulpit to mimic my dad’s preaching and mannerisms, or jumping into the empty baptismal tank to give fake, dramatic testimonies a la ‘Unshackled,’ but I digress.)

Jo’s book made me hopeful because she doesn’t enter into the arguments on whether women should have positions of leadership and influence in Christian churches.

She assumes that they already do.

From the cradle to the cross, it’s women that are by Jesus’ side; while it’s tempting to call St. Paul a misogynist, Jo points out that he refers to women as ‘apostle’ Junia and ‘deacon’ Phoebe. In plain language, Jo handles the interpretive issues surrounding women’s leadership with grace and strength.

Jo also see in the examples of Nympha, Chloe, Priscilla, and other early church women a call to an empowered, missional perspective on domesticity that I find refreshing:

“There are many women who know that their home, not the church building, is a key place for ministry…It happens around the kitchen table, through meals and conversation. Their home is balm for the worn and weary, for those who’ve not experienced God’s love in a community. They seek to be the hands and feet and heart of Jesus in everyday living, influencing the world around them. The oikos [household] was a powerful strategy for kingdom expansion in the New Testament, and as a model continues to be so today.”

Thanks for the encouragement, Jo!

{You can read a Q&A with Jo Saxton here.}