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<\/a>Having had a spectacular season of ugly cries<\/a> and angry prayers<\/a>, I was ready for some light at the end of the tunnel by spending time with fellow church planting wives;\u00a0the only group of women I imagined would \u201cget\u201d me and this \u201ccray-cray\u201d calling to plant a church.<\/p>\n Which is why I was so excited about a track of sessions at Exponential 13 solely devoted to us.<\/p>\n When the first main session ended, I rushed to an air-conditioned cooled portable classroom where my sisters in arms were already gathering. The anticipation of forty plus women was almost tangible as we waited for the session called, \u201cFinding Your Place\u201d to begin.<\/p>\n After reading this description:<\/p>\n One of the most challenging roles in the church is that of pastor\u2019s wife. Where do we fit? What is our role?\u00a0Is our role solely to have our spouses back and love our families? Or is it more? Find out here.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n I could sense the questions swirling around the room:<\/p>\n \u201cWhat is my role?\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n \u201cWhat does God have for me in this plant?\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cHow do I balance it all: having my husband\u2019s back, planting alongside him, loving my family<\/i>?\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n When the speaker took the to the front, the first point she made in regards to \u201cfinding my place\u201d as a church planter\u2019s spouse was that I was my husband\u2019s \u201chelpmate\u201d.\u00a0 She held up my faithful meal prep and housekeeping as foundational forms of \u201chelp-meeting\u201d before say,\u00a0fervently\u00a0praying, wisely counseling, or even carefully discerning my gifts.<\/p>\n Being a reluctant housewife at best, and downright horrible on most days, this news was disheartening. The following advice though, was disturbing:<\/p>\n \u201cSex is important to our husbands\u201d she continued, \u00a0\u201che needs it, so we need to be available<\/strong><\/em> for intimacy and we need to be awesome at it!<\/strong><\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n Available and awesome?<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n This advice reminds me of an observation in a recent post, \u201cSmokin\u2019 Hot Wives and Water To The Soul\u201d <\/a>by my friend Zach Hoag.\u00a0 Zach\u2019s concerned that the American church culture is so obsessed with sex, that wives have become devalued and demeaned to the point of objectification:<\/p>\n \u201cas soon as a woman is thought of as\u00a0a thing\u00a0\u2014 a thing like a \u201csmokin\u2019 hot Christian wife\u201d \u2014 she becomes less of\u00a0a person.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n What saddens me is, I could have easily substituted the words, \u201cavailable and awesome\u201d for \u201csmokin\u2019 hot Christian wife.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n In spite of how earnest, sweet, and passionate my sister was, those words \u201cavailable and awesome\u201d betrayed a buy in to that oversexed culture that has baptized the objectification of wives by calling it \u201ccomplimenting her\u201d or \u201cenjoying the wife of my youth\u201d.<\/p>\n Only this time, \u00a0we\u2019re encouraging each other<\/em> to submit to a system where \u201chot\u201d is the new holy. This time we\u2019re bypassing the wonderful workings of our minds to praise the wonderful sway of our hips.<\/strong><\/p>\n Such teachings reveal the malnourishment of a diet consisting primarily of Song of Solomon themed sex sermons and books,<\/a> that misidentifies poetry as didactic teaching and says, it\u2019s ok to have the manner in which you offer yourselves to your husbands dictated in quantity and quality because wives are just objects. Props.\u00a0 Tools to be used for the success of the church plant\u2014like ProPresenter<\/a> or Portable Church<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n I believe from the bottom of my heart that this was not the speaker\u2019s intention.\u00a0 From her warm, \u00a0approachable manner throughout the teaching to her impassioned prayer at the end, I\u2019m confident she only wanted to encourage us to be godly women, faithful wives, and suitable helpmates.<\/p>\n But, just like it\u2019s impossible to make a decadent,\u00a0satisfying\u00a0chocolate cake with mud, it\u2019s impossible to use lustful, worldly advice to encourage a woman towards Christ-likeness.<\/p>\n Before you think I\u2019m all types of prudish, let me assure you,\u00a0 I\u2019m not.\u00a0 I love having transparent, lively (spicy, even) Scripture-based conversations about the joys of marital good times\u2014but within context\u2014 and never equating my success as a wife, ministry partner, or in this case \u201chelp-mate\u201d with my sexual performance.<\/p>\n Sex is too deep a mystery, too wonderful of a gift to be harnessed as a device to keep my husband buoyed to do the work of God.<\/p>\n I think a deeply flawed interpretation of help-mate is at play here. Wives, especially wives in ministry need to have an interpretation of ezer kenegdo<\/a>, (the Hebrew for \u201csuitable help-meet\u201d in Genesis 2:18, where this teaching is derived), that both affirms our intrinsic value as invaluable partners and empowers us to stand side by side with our husbands.<\/p>\n This excerpt from \u201cCaptivating\u201d<\/a> by John and Stasi Eldredge, paints a beautiful picture of God\u2019s intention for marriage.\u00a0 The language of adventure, mission, and battle really resonate with me as we\u2019re planting, New City Covenant Church<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u201cCall it the Human Mission-to be all and do all God sent us here to do. And notice-the mission to be fruitful and conquer and hold sway is given both to Adam and to Eve. \u2018And God said to them\u2026\u2019 Eve is standing right there when God gives the world over to us. She has a vital role to play; she is a partner in this great adventure. All that human beings were intended to do here on earth-all the creativity and exploration, all the battle and rescue and nurture-we were intended to do together. In fact, not only is Eve needed, but she is desperately needed.<\/em><\/p>\n When God creates Eve, he calls her an ezer kenegdo. \u2018It is not good for the man to be alone, I shall make him [an ezer kenegdo]\u2019 (Gen. 2:18 Alter). Hebrew scholar Robert Alter, who has spent years translating the book of Genesis, says that this phrase is \u2018notoriously difficult to translate.\u2019 The various attempts we have in English are \u201chelper\u201d or \u201ccompanion\u201d or the notorious \u201chelp meet.\u201d Why are these translations so incredibly wimpy, boring, flat\u2026disappointing? What is a help meet, anyway? What little girl dances through the house singing \u201cOne day I shall be a help meet?\u201d Companion? A dog can be a companion. Helper? Sounds like Hamburger Helper. Alter is getting close when he translates it \u201csustainer beside him\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n The word ezer is used only twenty other places in the entire Old Testament. And in every other instance the person being described is God himself, when you need him to come through for you desperately.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n My husband, T.C. needs me to come through for him\u2014desperately. He needs my Type-A, details and timelines loving personality.\u00a0 He needs my pastoral, nurturing heart.\u00a0 He needs my encouraging words and discerning spirit.\u00a0 He needs my passion for prayer, my love for women, my intuition about kids, and of course, my southern hospitality.<\/em><\/p>\n These are all the qualities I bring to the table that could be quickly overshadowed by the sultry wings of \u201csmokin\u2019 hot\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n And while my exact role in our church is still nebulous to pin-point, I know this: T.C. and I have worked too hard to reclaim our sexuality from past mishaps to allow the church\u2019s faddish obsession with sex to suck us back in\u2014even if it promises a more successful church plant.\u00a0 And while I may not the \u201csmokin\u2019 hot wife\u201d that would inspire tweets and sermons, I am the sustaining wife<\/strong> that inspires my husband as we do great things together in our city.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIf you feel your value lies in being merely decorative, I fear that someday you might find yourself believing that\u2019s all that you really are. Time erodes all such beauty, but what it cannot diminish is the wonderful workings of your mind: Your humor, your kindness, and your moral courage. These are the things I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3037,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[89,90,21,33,91,20,92],"class_list":["post-4803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-church","tag-church-planting","tag-jesus","tag-marriage","tag-sex","tag-third-way-womanhood","tag-women"],"yoast_head":"\n<\/a>
\nI\u2019m linking up with Wifey Wednesday! Check out\u00a0these great posts\u00a0<\/a>on marriage.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"