Sunday, September 03, 2006

Equality for Women

Next Sunday we begin a four part series on Equality for Women. The Leadership of our Faith Community take the Egalitarian view. Rich, Winn and I are going to each take a Sunday to teach and tell our stories on how we came to hold this view. The Fourth Sunday we are going to do a panel discussion and open dialogue with the community.

We have modeled our view for years. It seems most people that belong to our community accept this view also. However, we thought it was time to talk openely and do some teaching on the subject. There is a very big, inflential church in our city that holds a complementarian view. The complementarian view in our humble opinion is oppressive to women. It seems the more influence this church gets the more we are hearing questions as to "why" do they teach oppression of women? We want to be clear on where we land on this issue. We also want to be honest and look at the Scripture and wrestle with some of the hard texts. For those interested there are many good books on this topic where the issue has been addressed by scholars. Here is one such work by N.T. Wright on Women in Ministry.

I am looking forward to this series. We want to be known for the place where women can be free to fulfill their God-given gifts, talents and callings.

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