Women as Deacons in the Church

If you hang in long enough to read this post, I would be interested in your comments, please post them by clicking "comments" link at the bottom of the article.

There are many interpretations depending on your perspective. But what we do know for sure is Christ is the equalizer for the poor, women, orphans, and everyone else. Not just men. If someone truly believes they have a gift and are called to serve who are we humans to judge? Was not Christ on the cross for all of us? Is it too hard to believe that the issue at hand is salvation for all and each of us have a role to play. Using any amount of energy on condemning someones calling, even if it is a "woman", means we are not focused on Gods kingdom, but our own earthly world and biases.




Women role in church:

• Acts 2:18 - God ordained women to preach
• Acts 21: 8-9 - 3 of Philip's daughters preached.
• Acts 18:26 - Priscilla played key role in teaching spiritual formation even to men
• There is some evidence that a few were women deacons

Christ and women:

• Mark 5:25 - Christ touch women when menstruating, taboo back then
• John 4:1-27 - Christ established relationships with women of questionable ethical and moral backgrounds
• Gal 3:28 - In Christ there is neither male or female
• Christ reversed the trend deliberately and had a different attitude towards women than was expected. He spoke in public with the Samaritan woman (John 4 : 27) and allowed a sinful woman to approach Him in the house of Simon (Luke 7 : 37).
  
• He affirmed the equal status of the rights and duties of married couples ( Matthew 19 : 3 – 9).
  

Key verses people bring up are Eph 5:22-22 (wives submit) and 1 Tim 2:11-12 (learn in silence)

Taken at face value you can see why people believe women should not have roles in the church. But, looking at the bible and historically at the culture, education, and to other documents we find that it may be that some women who became Christians were quick to abuse the new freedoms of spiritual liberalization and not only spoke out about religious issues, but their marital issues and lectured husbands in the church. If that is the case, some think Paul was telling them to be silent in the church and talk in private. These scriptures were written to churches about specific issues.

The fact that the bible is believed to be infallible does not mean you take every scripture at face value or pull it out of context. Scripture was written to a certain culture and situations and to this day is valuable to Christians.

All of us see scripture through our own lens. What I mean by this is we experience life different then anyone else and we take these experiences and incorporate them into our faith and how we see scripture. I am sure we can interpret scriptures all day on all sorts of topics. But, I have to restate my first paragraph:

"But what we do know for sure is Christ is the equalizer for the poor, women, orphans, and everyone else. Not just men. If someone truly believes they have a gift and are called to serve who are we humans to judge? Was not Christ on the cross for all of us? Is it too hard to believe that the issue at hand is salvation for all and we all have our role to play. Using any amount of energy on condemning someones calling, even if it is a "women", means we are not focused on Gods kingdom, but our own earthly world and biases."

So will Women go to hell or disappoint God for being a deacon or will he rejoice because of the lives she touched and souls she brings to Christ using her unique and beautiful skills as a women?

Are we playing our part as a Christian or are we playing arm chair quarterback, picking at someone in the game?

In the end we all have a calling and only we know what God has put in our hearts. Let's travel the journey together and support each other on the way. We may disagree on some issues, but they all are overshadowed by the fact that we exist to worship him and in Christ we can do all things.

Here are some interesting info:

Greek Philosophy on the Inferiority of Women:
http://www.womenpriests.org/traditio/infe_gre.asp

History in the Baptist Church:
Even the early Baptist churches had women preach and deacons, not until Calvin and later Southern Baptist that these roles were taken away.
http://www.baptisthistory.org/contissues/deweese3.htm
http://baptisthistory.org/contissues/huffman.htm

Biblical commentary and good links:
http://www.biblicalfoundations.org/?p=38

Commentary on Church issues:
Getting the congregation involved, bridging the generational gap and the role of women.
7 min. 16 seconds into the video it talks about women in the church
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9022771525666008496