A Sermon and A Choir
The Worth of Women in the Church
In recent weeks, I heard a sermon by a Mennonite pastor that keeps returning to my thoughts. The subject of the sermon was Caleb, one of the twelve spies who searched out the land of Canaan, and one of two to assert God’s power to give Canaan to the Israelite nation. The purpose of the sermon was to highlight Caleb’s faith and to exhort the congregation to “pass the baton” of such faith from generation to generation. However, half of the congregation was left out of this exhortation.
At first, I thought the omission was mere carelessness. The preacher said, comparing the congregants’ faith to the faith of Caleb: “Every day as we go about our life, we are giving a report. As we go about our day—going to work, coming home, interacting with our kids, interacting with coworkers—we are giving a report whether we are aware of it or not.”
Okay, I thought, that’s a typical Mennonite guy’s life. What about the women? Sure, there are a few who have outside-the-home jobs while they have young children; not many, though. Perhaps this man just forgot to think about what the life of the average Mennonite woman looks like, and how she can have a report, or influence, of faithfulness; perhaps women were intended to be included in this example.
But no, they were not intended to be included. Because the preacher continued, stirringly: “Can people tell as you go about your day that, ‘Man, that man has the hope of eternal life!’ ‘That man has a future!’ ‘That man is living out a promise that the Lord has given him!’”
The words began to ring in my ears. “That man, that man, that man!” In response, I wanted to say, “Don’t you realize that half of the people you are speaking to are women?!”
Now, one might say that because the preacher was speaking about a male character, therefore he felt that he could only address men. However, further on in the sermon, he had no compunction about exhorting the younger members of the congregation (presumably both male and female) to ask for input from the elderly, in the same way that Caleb’s daughter Achsah[1] asked for more land from her father.
I think the omission of women in the main application of this particular sermon is one small symptom of a greater illness at work in conservative churches.
In the minds of many conservative Mennonite men and women, men take the center stage (literally and figuratively). Men’s contributions to the church and to the kingdom of God are most important. It is through men that the Christian faith will be passed from generation to generation. Case in point: The preacher wrapped up his sermon with a story about the lead pastor of his own church, describing how this man’s father obeyed the Spirit of God and passed on a heritage of zeal for the church to his son, who has now become an influential force in this preacher’s life.
Am I painting with too broad of a brush? Taking one sermon and applying it too widely? Certainly not every individual in Anabaptist churches believes what I claimed above. And certainly not every Anabaptist church operates with the same level of apathy and indifference toward women. But what is acceptable in the culture is hard to resist. It becomes so obvious that we don’t even notice it, and to point it out is to be termed, well, many negative things (spirit of Jezebel, anyone?).
Sitting there listening to that sermon, listening to a man admonish men to be giants in the faith while ignoring the women staring back at him, I felt indescribably invisible. Unwitnessed. Unvaluable. And there was a time I would not have felt those emotions so deeply, because I believed I was meant to be invisible, unwitnessed, and unvalued. Any resistance I would have felt to such a sermon 10 years ago would quickly have turned to shame that I dared to want more for myself (in other words, wanted to be valued the way God values me).
Such obliviousness to the lives and spirituality of women stood in stark contrast to another service I witnessed recently. A local women’s choir, named Women Sing, held their inaugural program at the church I attend. Seeing 60 to 70 women stand at the front of the church and sing (beautifully and powerfully, by the way) was a strangely moving experience. But was it really so strange, that I would be moved by that?
After all, it is the first time I’ve seen women as the focus of a Mennonite church service. It was the first time I’ve seen women’s experiences spoken of and honored in front a large crowd of people. The female director, in introducing one song, spoke about how a woman might absorb stress from her circumstances and environment (a very relatable experience among Mennonite women, who often carry heavy burdens on their shoulders), and need the comfort of a soothing lullaby. And before the beginning of an arrangement of “Jesus Loves Me,” the director invited all the children in the audience to find their mother, sister, aunt, or grandmother in the choir, and stand with that woman while she sang.
I felt like weeping (and probably would have, if my own children hadn’t both been having meltdowns at that precise moment). These women stood in a line around the entire room, cradling children or holding them by the hand, wrapping the entire audience in the strength and resilience of their music—and of their hearts. For Mennonite women, who life’s work and labor usually is their families and their children, to be able to demonstrate, publicly, this is what our lives look like, and it is worthy of recognition—it still sends chills down my spine.
But there’s two sides to that coin of a choir of women holding children. The realm of domesticity and childrearing, in many Anabaptist circles, tends to be the only realm in which women are valued and encouraged to thrive. And let me be clear: A woman’s capacity (when all works according to plan) to conceive, carry a child, give birth, and nurture that child is a miraculous and powerful work. Such work is beautiful.
However, what about the women in that choir who are unable to have children? What about the single women who don’t desire to be married or have children, not now, perhaps not ever? What about women who do desire that, but it hasn’t come to pass? What about the work some women do outside of their homes? Can we not acknowledge and affirm and honor women in all walks of life? Defining a woman’s significance by her biological capacities, or by the relationship she has or doesn’t have with a man, is a tragically narrow view of her humanity—and fails to encompass women’s place in the spiritual vitality of Christ’s church.
Concerning singleness, the apostle Paul affirms both single men and women who labor in Christ’s kingdom; singleness, without its concerns for spouse and family, allows for a undistracted devotion to the Lord.[2] He even goes so far as to say a single woman is “happier if she remains as she is, in my opinion” (1 Cor. 7:40). Throughout Paul’s letters, we see women as instrumental in the early church: The home of the single businesswoman Lydia became the meeting place for the church in Philippi.[3] As a wealthy patroness of Paul and a deacon of the church at Cenchreae, a woman named Phoebe (also likely single) delivered the letter to the Romans.
For all women, single and married, involvement in the spiritual life of the church is taken for granted in the New Testament. They are far from invisible; far from unvalued. Their worth doesn’t derive from their relationship with their husbands or the number of children they have, or whether they work at home or outside the home. The spiritual gifts given by God for the upbuilding of the church are given to both men and women without discrimination: “God has appointed these in the church: first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, next miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, leading, various kinds of tongues” (1 Cor. 12:28).
Elyse Fitzpatrick and Eric Schumacher summarize my point here beautifully:
“Women are to see themselves as worthy, not because they’ve accomplished great things, or because they are married and have well-ordered homes, but rather because they are created in the image of God, redeemed by the Son, and gifted to fulfill his commission” (emphases added).[4]
I have heard many sermons about a woman’s place in the home as a wife and a mother, and yes, those roles are hugely significant[5]; but never once have I heard a sermon about women’s significance and place in the church, beyond those that severely outline, using poor interpretation of Scripture, what women can’t do. Why don’t we talk (without inserting our own caveats) about Deborah, who acted as prophetess, judge, and military leader? Why don’t we talk about how the midwives Shiphrah and Puah protected Jewish babies, even to the point of lying, and were blessed by God? Why don’t we talk about how Huldah confirmed the veracity of Scripture, how Mary Magdalene was the first to proclaim Christ’s resurrection, how Priscilla planted churches and exhorted Apollos alongside her husband Aquila? Why don’t Mennonite women pray and prophesy (yes, out loud) in church gatherings, like the Corinthian women because of whom they cover their heads in public?
The stories we tell matter, because they shape our vision of how the world is, and our imagination for how it could be. Perhaps if men and women in Mennonite churches learned from female Bible characters just as much from male characters, instead of sidelining these stories for women’s Sunday school or women’s retreats,[6] women’s voices would be heard with a little less suspicion and defensiveness, and a little more humility and respect.[7] Perhaps women would become more emboldened to exercise their spiritual gifts in the church without fear of being perceived as somehow unfeminine or usurpers of authority.
Perhaps if it became normal to tell the stories about women, both in the past and in the present, as soldiers and saints of Christ, we would begin to realize Scripture’s vision of men and women “taking the stage” of the world together as co-laborers in the church and co-rulers of creation, imaging God together. And if Mennonite men and women began to recognize the value of women as intrinsic and as extending into the church and the world, perhaps, then, women’s voices would not be as silenced or sidelined, disbelieved or defamed, especially in the most vulnerable and frightening moments of their lives.
Just perhaps.
[1] The preacher did not name her; however, Scripture gives us her name.
[2] 1 Corinthians 7:32-35.
[3] Acts 16:13-15.
[4] Celebrating the Value of Women: Worthy, by Elyse Fitzpatrick and Eric Schumacher, pg. 213.
[5] Those roles tend to be delineated in a restrictive and extra-biblical manner in Anabaptist circles, though.
[6] Jennifer Powell McNutt says of this sidelining: “When the stories of women are excluded from the pulpit, a kind of hermeneutical segregation sets in.” The Mary We Forgot, pg. 211.
[7] There are other reasons women tend to be viewed with suspicion; learning from women in the Bible is, I think, just one partial solution to a multifaceted issue.