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What does God want from Eve's daughters? A forum with Jill Briscoe, Mary Kassian, Jean Thompson, and Miriam Adeney

Times have changed in the hall-ways of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. In the past two years we have added to our ranks an assistant editor, an associate editor, and a design team who have strengthened the "feminine voice" in our magazine. CT, like many aspects of evangelicalism, has incorporated women into its structures in greater numbers.

Women in all sorts of Christian service are finding new avenues of ministry. Jill Briscoe highlights below the unprecedented number of women entering seminaries today. Mary Kassian affirms that women are discovering and exercising their spiritual gifts in inspiring innovative ministries. However, both concur that ambivalence about women's roles still exists: seminary-trained women don't always receive a call to a church; women gifted in leadership are not always encouraged to lead.

Last December associate editor Wendy Murray Zoba and assistant editor Helen Lee met with Miriam Adeney, Jill Briscoe, Mary Kassian, and Jean Thompson for a live forum on women's issues. These participants represent a broad scope of perspectives, ranging from advocacy of women in ordained leadership roles to submission under a male headship model. But rather than focus on the "debate" about who says what women can or cannot do, they explored affirmations that can be agreed upon regarding women's roles as active members of the kingdom of God.

HAVE WE "COME A LONG WAY" AS WOMEN IN THE CHURCH?

Kassian: In the early church, ministry was something that belonged to everybody. Everyone was a minister. Everyone was commissioned and "called by God" to have a ministry. And so women were very involved. But as the church became more institutionalized, the "ministry" became owned by professionals—the clergy.

So as we institutionalized the church, we lost a lot. Women lost a lot. Because, if you hold to the view that church leadership ought to be male, and that church leadership is the only arena in which you can minister, then there's no ministry open to women. In a sense, we've been clawing our way out ever since.

Briscoe: In New Testament times, women were being given permission to submit. They had no option before. When Paul said, "Submit to your husbands," they answered, "We've been doing that." But he gave them the choice to do it. That is so foreign to us.

Women in America have incredible freedom. I know a woman who is an evangelical leader in an African nation, who told me that she literally has to kiss the ground in front of her husband—still. She could not relate to the sort of freedom we're talking about here.

When I visit seminaries, I'm overwhelmed at the wonderful, bright young women who are being trained. This has never before happened in the history of the church. But then we send them back to churches that are not as far ahead as the seminary in their thinking about women, and there is no place for them to minister. So, yes, we have come thousands of miles in some ways, but, at the same time, we haven't come a very long way in churches making opportunities for godly, gifted, trained women on staff.

Thompson: We've come a long way when you think about what happened during the so-called Dark Ages, when a lot was lost. People were not reading Scripture for themselves such as we do today, and so, over time, some truths got twisted, including the apostle Paul's teaching. He really encouraged women. He said that we're neither male nor female, neither bond nor free, neither Jew nor Gentile, but we're all one in Christ Jesus. When he spoke of Phoebe as a "minister," he used the same word he used to describe male ministers. And he said to "give her whatever she needs" because she risked her life. She was a minister in the full sense.

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April 8 1996, Vol. 40, No. 4