Men in leadership in the church – listen up! (unless of course you think that listening to a woman might be part of the problem…)
Do you find the anonymity and fatigue of the road too tempting? Do you feel like your wife has let herself go and succumbed to laziness? Do you think that having a female assistant (God forbid, co-leader?) is a temptation too far? Do you ever think about sticking closer to Jesus to avoid sin?
Then get yourself over to Mark Driscoll’s blog for his handy hints on men and women working together in church, in the wake of the Ted Haggard allegations…
[The BBC has the back story about Ted Haggard here.]
No but seriously…
You couldn’t make this up, and Ben’s comment about laughing/ crying goes for me too… How 19th century and sexist does this all sound? I’m utterly convinced that unless and until men and women can model working together in church as partners, equal in God’s service and with gifts to offer together – whilst NOT having it off together all the time - no-one is going to take us seriously.
I work closely with male freelancers, designers, artists, chief execs and programmers every day. I’m the female third of an emerging church leadership team. I’m friends with men, see them in the street, get served by them in bars and shops. My husband even lets me out the house unaccompanied... So why is church seen as being so different, such a hot bed of inappropriate sexual desire and activity?
Anyhow, I think that Mark Driscoll’s given me, Ben and Cris a lot to think about in advance of our Sanctus1 team meeting this week… like – do we now need a third party chaperone? ;-)
technorati tag: mark driscoll, sexism, church
10 comments:
Scary stuff. Don't have email or phone contact? What the f.. is the point of a pastor who locks themselves away and is unable to be contacted by anyone?
Or are we redefining pastor now to 'person who makes a speech on sunday mornings'. Definately sounds like it.
And what's with the whole predatory women subtext? I don't get that at all.. does he really believe that the churches are full of women just looking for a chance to pounce on their unsuspecting (and entirely innocent of course, being male..) pastor?
Those bloody women. You can't trust them anywhere...
seriously, if we're not letting ourselves go we're too damn sexy and luring our holy and most pious and pure men away from their marriage to Jesus Christ. SHAAAAAME on us!
Hi,
I can't help but think you folks are being a little hard on Mark here.
To start with, his perspective comes from a perspective which denies women from eldership/senior leadership. Therefore, his comments, from a male-only perspective, reflect that. Sure, we can argue with that assumption, but when it comes to statements from Mark about how to avoid sin, I don't think its fair to moan that he doesn't address converse issues such as men causing women to sin. The context of his posting sets the context for debate -- which is a male leader falling from grace, so to speak.
I also can't see how a leader of a church of 5000 people could live through one week if he gave out his mobile and email to everyone. Especially since his podcasts are downloaded by a million people a week or something daft like that. You could easily spend your entire week fielding trivial calls and emails, and doing nowt else. Its clear to me that as a church community grows, the role of its leaders changes and adapts.
I don't think Discoll equates being a pastor with merely being a preacher. Rather, his role within Mars Hill is that of both "pulpit ministry", ie. "the speech" as you put it, and architect, the guy who works *on* the church rather than in it. Whilst that would be daft in small community of 50 or 100 people, it makes sense to me for a community of 5000 people which is growing constantly.
Finally, I believe "predatory" comments come from his own experience with being "pounced on" in church. Personally I can vouch for the fact that Christians brothers and sisters flirting inappropriately during meetings is not uncommon.
In summary, I thought Discroll's comments, whilst sounding a little sexist in my own context, contained a lot of wisdom, which we would do all well to pay heed to. Whilst I fully agree that if the church cannot be comfortable working and living together as holy men and women, we might as well give up right now, I think that freedom needs to be tempered with wisdom. We all have our weaknesses, and need to avoid temptation. I thought Driscoll's blog posting essentially was saying just that.
I have to admit that Albo's comments are helpful in that we need to turn this into a constructive conversation rather than just sticking pins in a voodoo doll called Mark Driscoll. I find it really interesting that on a public Christian website we feel its OK to disembowl someone who is essentially a brother in Christ, no matter how much we disagree/agree with his theology. Maybe I'm just joining a conversation that has been going on a long time, but surely what needs to happen is a genuine conversation about theologies of women in leadership and how we can all help one another (men and women) do as Laura says and have "men and women modelling working together in church as partners, equal in God’s service and with gifts to offer together – whilst NOT having it off together all the time" Man, as someone who is about to plant a church and has just got married, I'm only too aware of the need to model a holy life style and honour my wife in every way. I think thats something Driscoll is concerned about, too. I'm also very keen to understand more fully how to honour her gifts and clear leadership ability as part of the church plant, recognising that she is just as much the leader of what we will be doing together. Creating a conversation out of this is surely more helpful than just lamenting/dissing the guy. There's a bit of me that also wants (carefully and with grace, recognising that I have often done this myself, even fairly recently, but want the get better at not doing it) to question whether its appropriate for church leaders/any Christians to engage in this kind of public character assassination of other church leaders, even if your response is something like "well Mark Driscoll started it." Even if we disagree with the guy, we have to love him, or we ain't no better.
having said that, I do also want to say that poking a bit of fun at leaders is sometimes so necessary because we dont want to let them become more than who they are, just humans, even if they are superstar leaders of 4000 strong churches...I loved Laura's post about the failed link to Driscolls site :-)
and finally, I think that Driscoll is also trying to respond to a situation where a church leader has been proved to be a hypocrit and is talking about how we can prevent this happening. I think, ideally, we would all prefer it if the whole Haggard situation hadn't happened. Again, whether you agree with his theology or not, his dismissal reflects badly on all Christians everywhere, because we really are all part of the same body to anyone who isn't part of our way of life. Driscolls trying to find ways of preventing this kind of thing happening, and totally I'm with him on that one. Most of what he is saying about holiness is not dissimilar to what Billy Graham used to say...and I suspect that my wife would be more happy that I take care with my thought life and actions than that I came home and had to tell her that I had had an affair
Folks, please check out Mark's latest post on his blog:
http://www.theresurgence.com/md_blog_2006-11-16_thank_you_critics
He clarifies and contexualises his original comments on the Haggart fiasco. I think what he says addresses a lot of criticism on this blog?
Not really, he just restated his position & failed to answer anything.
Personally I don't care whether he's a christian or worships treestumps. Anyone who publically and openly professes the attitudes he does deserves everything he gets.
It's a complete non-argument to try to tell people you can't criticize them because they're christians.
And anyone who tries to tell me that I can't criticise someone because they're some kind of leader.. well words fail.
As a strong woman with leadership gifting and managerial responsibilities in the workplace, I would like to say that I do not have an issue with the comments made by Mark Drisco on his blog. I am sick to death with being politically correct and respect the way Mark tells it like it is and expresses his opinion fully.
Okay, so which point exactly is getting everyone so riled up> I will address a few. First of all Pastors wives "letting themselves go". Fine it is a little in your face but I say "GREAT, THANK YOU MARK FOR FINALLY SAYING WHAT MANY OF US HAVE BEEN THINKING FOR YEARS!" I wouldn't stop there. I have always noticed the amount of overweight and even obese women in the church who seem to consider all their "spiritual" principales a replacement for celebrating their feminine beauty. Don't even get me on to the fashion sense of some of these women. Some "spiritual" yet drab ladies even like to criticise those of us who spend a little time each day in making sure we look attractive. It seems to me that many women become Christians, get married (or not) and feel that they are "super spiritual" now and that this is all that matters! What complete rubbish! Come on- we are human - it doesn't matter what religion or belief we hold, we are affected by the sexual attractiveness of our partner. I encourage my husband to let me know when I am putting on a little too much weight and although I know he would love me no matter what, I like to make sure I am supremely sexually attractive to him. If I were to put on 5oo lbs and he had to roll me out the door for work, I would still never accept this as an excuse for unfaithfulness, but I hope I never do that to him for he wouldn't be nearly as happy as he is at the moment when I have serious sex appeal.
I am so sick of Christians being so religious and uptight about this stuff. I am not sure I agree with Mark Drisco on 100% of everything he believes but I have serious respect for someone who has what it takes to express his thoughts, however politically incorrect they are. How many Christian husbands would love it if their wife would try a little harder to remember that they are an attractive woman and act, dress, feel the part. We don't have to be supermodels but we can work the package God gave us, have a little confidence and remember that flirting and turning on our own husbands isn't a sin!!!
I would like to also mention another true, and obvious fact if you have eyes to see and ears to hear:
Men who end up speaking to churches in the thousands are generally gregarious and interesting people. If it were not so we would wouldn't make it through lengthly. Leaders with charisma like this are very attractive to women, if we are honest. I know I personally wouldn't want to spend the kind of hours a Personal Assistant spends with a Pastor with these qualities and supreme people skills. I am only human and though I love my husband truly and am very attracted to him, I could see myself developing a "crush" for a strong "Type A" personality man if I were spending hours every day with him and getting close (even in a working relationship). This is just reality and I don't care how politically incorrect it is for Mark Drisco to speak this out because it's simple truth. For Mark to stick with (heterosexual) male assistants is smart and forward thinking of him. For us heterosexual women (and those men with homosexual desires), it is probably best that we don't spend hours alone with an attractive "Type A" personality man in a church office or any other work environment. This is simply common sense. We are male, we are female and we have some crazy sexual energy rushing through our blood! It would be simply denying facts to pretend that this doesn't effect us in every area of our lives. Obviously we have to work and live amoung attractive members of the opposite sex and I am not saying we should avoid this (so don't go there)but I am just saying it's just a good idea folks to not stick your head in the Lion's mouth. Whether you are a feminist or not, surely you can see this?
I found those two comments of Mark's the most interesting because I knew they would cause a stir (so did he for that matter). That is all for the present.
Adios
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