Manhood and Womanhood in Parachurch Ministry
00:00:00.000 | Good Monday, and thank you for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.
00:00:08.320 | Well, male and female roles in the local church are clearly defined in the Bible.
00:00:13.360 | We believe those roles are clearly defined in the Bible.
00:00:16.820 | But do these roles hold outside of the church and particularly in a parachurch ministry
00:00:23.320 | structure?
00:00:24.320 | Increasingly, parachurch organizations are saying no.
00:00:28.520 | But that's the open question for you today, Pastor John, who joins us remotely today over
00:00:33.120 | Zoom.
00:00:34.160 | The question is from a man inside a parachurch right now.
00:00:37.480 | Pastor John, hello.
00:00:38.480 | I work for a global parachurch organization, which is well known.
00:00:42.160 | Recently, our leadership decided that all positions of leadership within the organization
00:00:46.360 | will be open to women.
00:00:49.160 | This includes campus leadership, regional leadership, and national leadership.
00:00:55.260 | Women will be permitted to teach men from the scripture, to be in positions of spiritual
00:00:59.160 | authority over men, to shape and correct doctrine within the organization, and to mentor men
00:01:05.040 | in their ministry roles.
00:01:07.640 | Previously, these positions of spiritual authority over men were reserved for men alone.
00:01:13.040 | The reason given for this change is that a parachurch organization is not the church.
00:01:17.520 | Therefore, the commands addressed to churches about the role of men and women in relationship
00:01:22.880 | to one another do not apply in this case.
00:01:26.300 | How do you see it?
00:01:27.300 | Well, that's sad to hear, to me, but it's not surprising, and it's not new.
00:01:35.760 | The position that the teachings of the Bible concerning sexuality have no bearing on human
00:01:45.400 | relationships outside the church or the home is naive.
00:01:50.280 | Actually, to call it naive is perhaps too gentle, because it could also be called culturally
00:02:00.000 | compromised.
00:02:02.320 | In other words, the pressures of our culture to view maleness and femaleness as having
00:02:10.360 | no built-in, natural, God-ordained differences that would shape our different relationships
00:02:19.000 | and responsibilities, those pressures, those cultural, societal pressures are so great
00:02:27.840 | that many Christians today surrender to them, rather than looking like fools in the eyes
00:02:36.000 | of the world.
00:02:37.600 | The world today is in a freefall of denial that nature teaches us anything about what
00:02:47.160 | maleness and femaleness are for, and that denial used to be, back when I was in the
00:02:54.480 | early days of fighting these battles, that denial used to be that male and female personhood
00:03:02.460 | teaches us nothing about what God intended our roles to be.
00:03:09.280 | But now the denial is that our bodies, not just our persons, teach us nothing about what
00:03:20.000 | life should be as male or female.
00:03:22.760 | You can cut off breasts, you can cut off the penis, you can cut out the uterus, you can
00:03:30.480 | replace estrogen with testosterone, you can grow facial hair on a female cheek.
00:03:37.800 | So at the root of the rejection that nature teaches us that men and women should relate
00:03:46.600 | in certain ways is the absolute refusal in our culture, by and large, to allow our individual
00:03:55.760 | freedom, the refusal to allow our individual freedom to be limited in any way by an authority
00:04:02.920 | outside our desires, whether tradition or God or Bible or nature or instinct or society,
00:04:10.520 | we will not let anything infringe upon our autonomy and the sovereignty of our desires.
00:04:21.400 | So if God designs women to be women and men to be men, both in their bodies and in every
00:04:29.440 | cell of their body, and if his designs are written on their hearts, these God-given designs
00:04:39.640 | must be absolutely rejected because they infringe so obviously upon the autonomy of my sovereign
00:04:48.960 | self.
00:04:50.520 | So at the root of the rejection that nature teaches us that men and women should relate
00:04:56.480 | in certain ways and not other ways is the old reality of Romans 8, 7, "The mind of
00:05:04.960 | the flesh," that is, the natural fallen human mind, "is hostile to God, for it does
00:05:11.800 | not submit to God's law," whether that law is in the Bible or written on the heart.
00:05:17.880 | Indeed, it cannot submit.
00:05:21.040 | Those who are in the flesh, that is, who are merely human apart from regeneration and the
00:05:25.960 | work of the Holy Spirit, cannot please God.
00:05:29.720 | Or 1 Corinthians 2, 14, "The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of
00:05:34.520 | God."
00:05:35.520 | They are folly.
00:05:36.520 | They are foolishness to him, which is why a person who holds my understanding today
00:05:43.180 | would be regarded as foolish.
00:05:46.000 | So the culture as a whole is in a free fall of denial.
00:05:51.540 | Everybody in this free fall is on a parachute.
00:05:55.480 | It's all going to end tragically, the evidences of which are all around us.
00:06:01.680 | They make you want to weep when you see what's happening to young people, what's happening
00:06:06.320 | to relationships, the kind of remorse and regret and carnage that is being unleashed
00:06:12.220 | on our culture as a penalty for the free fall denial of God and his ways.
00:06:20.420 | And the gravitational pull of this free fall is in almost every movie, every online drama,
00:06:27.840 | every advertisement, every newscast, so that a person who stands up and draws attention
00:06:33.660 | to God's Word or the teaching of nature and questions the wisdom of undifferentiated sex
00:06:41.660 | roles will not only be thought a fool, but also unjust and very likely soft on abuse.
00:06:54.740 | Even though all the while the sex leveling egalitarian impulses wreak havoc at every
00:07:02.920 | level of our culture, mocking and distorting the very kind of strength and responsibility
00:07:10.220 | and leadership that we so need from men.
00:07:15.540 | All of that to say, the argument that the biblical teachings on manhood and womanhood
00:07:21.740 | don't have any bearing on roles outside the home and church is both naive and culturally
00:07:28.540 | compromised.
00:07:29.540 | Two reasons for thinking this way.
00:07:32.660 | One is that when the Apostle Paul gave his instructions that only spiritually qualified
00:07:41.180 | men should teach and exercise authority in the church, his argument was not based on
00:07:49.300 | culture nor on family or church or structures, ecclesiastical structures or any others.
00:07:58.000 | It was based on two things, the order of man and woman in creation and the dynamics between
00:08:05.980 | man and woman in the fall.
00:08:08.420 | He said, "I do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man.
00:08:13.780 | Rather she is to remain quiet."
00:08:16.780 | And here comes the argument, "For Adam was formed first, then Eve."
00:08:22.940 | That's argument number one.
00:08:25.420 | And two, Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.
00:08:32.280 | So Paul saw in the Genesis account of God's Word that built into creation from the beginning
00:08:42.420 | before the fall was a peculiar responsibility of men to bear the burden of leadership and
00:08:48.540 | care.
00:08:50.100 | And he saw in the way Adam was present and silent as Satan drew Eve into deceit that
00:08:58.940 | the abandonment of this leadership, in that case in Adam's passivity and silence, the
00:09:05.540 | abandonment of his leadership bears very bad fruit.
00:09:12.220 | So the fact that Paul gave instructions for how this original design relates to the church
00:09:21.380 | in no way implies that it is limited to the church or the home.
00:09:28.320 | That was one application of many.
00:09:31.860 | And you can see this again in 1 Corinthians 11, where Paul is helping the church preserve
00:09:38.500 | the dynamics of manhood and womanhood.
00:09:41.060 | He says at one point, this is verse 14, "Does not nature teach you that if a man wears long
00:09:49.980 | hair it is a disgrace for him?"
00:09:53.780 | Now what I take that to mean is this.
00:09:56.740 | Has not God put in man by nature the impulse that to take on culturally feminine symbols
00:10:08.060 | is disgraceful?
00:10:10.500 | And we should agree with him.
00:10:13.420 | Nature teaches it is disgraceful.
00:10:16.860 | The Bible teaches and nature teaches.
00:10:19.820 | We might say today, "Does not nature teach you that for a man to wear a dress and stockings
00:10:26.740 | and high heels and lipstick is a disgrace?"
00:10:30.860 | Yes, it is.
00:10:32.620 | And nature teaches that.
00:10:35.220 | It is written on the heart.
00:10:38.660 | Humans are suppressing this truth of nature, but it is there.
00:10:43.900 | It is inescapable.
00:10:46.900 | And with regard to men and women in parachurch organizations, I think Paul would say, "I
00:10:54.980 | have taught, Moses has taught, nature teaches that it goes against man's and woman's truest
00:11:05.740 | God-given nature to place a woman in a role of regular, direct, personal leadership over
00:11:13.860 | men."
00:11:14.860 | Now, if you wonder, "Well, what do you mean, Piper, by regular, direct, personal?"
00:11:24.380 | Then since this is a short podcast, I have to refer you to my little booklet, "What's
00:11:31.780 | the Difference?"
00:11:32.780 | You don't have to buy it.
00:11:33.780 | Just go to Desiring God, type in "What's the Difference?"
00:11:37.580 | book, and download it for free.
00:11:39.820 | And on page 58 and following, I define regular, direct, personal so that it will, I hope,
00:11:48.460 | make sense.
00:11:50.680 | These are days of great shifting in people's convictions and alignments on this issue of
00:12:00.740 | how men and women should relate to each other.
00:12:04.340 | So I pray for our brother who sent us this question, and I pray for myself and all of
00:12:11.820 | us that God would guide us into truth and give us the courage to stand for it.
00:12:18.860 | Amen.
00:12:19.860 | Yeah, and that little 80-page book, "What's the Difference?
00:12:23.420 | Manhood and Womanhood Defined According to the Bible," is available right now for free
00:12:27.420 | at DesiringGod.org/books.
00:12:32.300 | Worth noting at the end of that little book is a list to celebrate the dozens of ways
00:12:37.100 | that women can serve God and others and flourish in ministry.
00:12:42.420 | That list, that book, and this episode today all remind me of something that you said,
00:12:47.060 | Pastor John, back in 2014, that there are endless ministry possibilities for women in
00:12:52.460 | this world that do not put them in a position of spiritual authority over men.
00:12:59.860 | Such a great and related episode, one to cast a vision for women in ministry, and particularly
00:13:04.380 | for women who are called to teach God's Word.
00:13:06.820 | That was in APJ 388.
00:13:09.340 | Be sure to check that out.
00:13:10.340 | Thank you for joining us today.
00:13:12.020 | You can find APJ 388 or ask Pastor John your own question by going to our online home at
00:13:17.980 | AskPastorJohn.com.
00:13:18.980 | I'm your host Tony Reinke.
00:13:22.980 | We will see you next time talking about sibling rivalries, sibling rivalries, a common theme
00:13:28.500 | in Scripture and a common challenge in the home.
00:13:31.480 | See you Thursday.
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