Thoughts on women...

On the recommendation of a number of people I've just finished listening to the podcast "The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill" ( listen here on Spotify ). It's difficult to know where to start really but I can say that I am left with an enormous sense of disquiet, as well as the sense that the podcast should be required listened for all current and aspiring pastors.  What can be learnt from Mars Hill? It would be easy to land the whole blame at the feet of Mark Driscoll and he certainly was a driving factor. However the whole 'bus' (if you listen you'll get the pop reference) could have been stopped in it's tracks early on if good people had stood up and called him to account. Driscoll may have planted the seeds of the culture but the people who surrounded him watered, tended and cultivated it to the extent that he was enabled to buy into his own hype. He was young when it all started and his elders failed him. Don't get me wrong, I believe that Driscoll...

I've said before that complementarianism does not exist. For me, complementarianism rests on a spectrum, as most things do. First a definition. Complementarianism is the view that men and women are equal recipients of grace from God and have different roles and responsibilities. Sat on this spectrum you have a vast array of interpretations of this statement and from what I can make out they are largely centred around 'roles and responsibilities' and the value and interpretation assigned to them. It is this problematic inconsistency which makes complementarianism so difficult to pin down or to align with. At one end you have a version which insists on the submission of women in all aspect of life, society and church. Women serve 'at the pleasure of' the men in their lives. Education is seen as unnecessary because their role will be within the home, raising the children and supporting a husband. A man-made 1950's caricature of the well-kept home, wife and kids is ...