The Extravagant Dimensions of Christ's Love

"My response is to get down on my knees before the Father, this magnificent Father who parcels out all heaven and earth. I ask him to strengthen you by his Spirit—not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength—that Christ will live in you as you open the door and invite him in. And I ask him that with both feet planted firmly on love, you’ll be able to take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God." - Ephesians 3:17-19 (MSG)

Watercolour and ink portrait of Junia by Sarah Beth Baca.

I am brought to tears as I write this. It feels like decades since the first tears I shed when I considered the possibility that maybe, just maybe women were made for more than what we were told in the Church. All those years ago, the tears were full of pain and confusion — what would this mean for me to call this into question? What would become of my relationships? My participation in church? What did I believe about God?

Now, my tears are a joyful release — of disbelief, of years and years of questioning how to reconcile my heart's deepest convictions with my physical participation in worship. A deep exhale of sorts. An exhale that I feel in my bones prays Yahweh.

My church has decided that women can be elders. 

It's been strange to interact with people outside of church over the last couple weeks. How are you? I've wanted to scream from the top of my lungs, "My church is FINALLY affirming women in leadership with no restrictions, no footnotes, no fine print — we are FREE!" But I think the response I'd get from most folks is something along the lines of... your church didn't allow women to be elders? What kind of backwards BS is that?

It's tough to explain to the world. In fact, most of my immediate non-church world is disturbed that I've continued to participate so eagerly in a community that explicitly limited women's participation for so long. When I tell people I love Jesus, I will typically have an escape route planned in the back of my mind in case I'm asked about gender roles in church. I am so relieved to tell my Christian and non-Christian friends back home that my church made this decision.

This is what I want to share when people grieve the loss of complementarianism as a diminishing of our "set-apart" witness to the world. In my three decades of being, I have yet to encounter someone who came to believe in Jesus because they were thrilled by the idea of gender-based headship and submission. (I recognize this experience could be out there, but from my perspective, it's not commonly Christianity's best selling point). At a surface-level, there's not much that looks countercultural about complementarianism— throughout most of human history, women have had to submit to male leadership— in the home, at work, in random public spaces, you name it. This is not new. Patriarchy isn't a refreshing, distinct mode of operation. It's the same exhausting, insidious, and oppressive system it's always been.

At the same time, I get it. I remember meeting my first-ever female pastor in college. I remember naively asking her, "If you're a pastor, who's the spiritual leader in your marriage?" I could not even wrap my head around the possibility that God's design expanded beyond male headship & female submission. I remember hushed late-night conversations in campus ministry, where my female friends and I would anxiously speculate about our potential relationships (if only he'd pursue me! it's so hard to wait around!). I remember the intoxicating sermons from an Acts 29 church I attended, where men were described with bravado and heroism, and women were spurred on to embrace our submission with sexiness (the lead pastor wrote a book on dating your wife and keeping things spicy— it was a whole thing). Complementarianism in marriage was such an exciting thing for so many of us because it (seemingly) brought clarity to the never-ending tumult of romance in young adulthood. He does this, and I do that, and it's simple, right?

Because our campus ministry wasn't affiliated with a larger college ministry network, we were completely autonomous — our structure and systems could change every year if they wanted to. I remember the continuous controversy around my best friend (and the woman before her) serving as the campus ministry lead. 

• We're not a church, so we're not breaking any rules... right? 
• What about the leadership roles under her — how do men submit in that structure?

In hindsight, it's funny that a ministry with such strong complementarian culture kept selecting female leaders, but similar to churches today, many women were actively serving in the organization and it just made sense (especially because we weren't technically a church). This raised some other questions for me that I conveniently shoved away in soul storage for a few years:

• If women shouldn't teach men, what about boys in Sunday School? Seems like most complementarian churches are okay with women leading kid stuff.
• At what point does a boy become a man — 18? Because of our modern American legal definition of adulthood? What about in Biblical times? If an 18 year old participates in youth group and the youth group leader is a woman, could they accidentally LEARN from a woman?
• What if a wife went to seminary, has been a Christian for decades, and loves Jesus a lot, but her husband is a newer Christian? How would he spiritually lead if he simply has... less information about Jesus as a factor of time? Maybe that doesn't matter?

Complementarianism was so foundational to my understanding of God's character that it felt nearly impossible to consider alternatives. In fact, the church I attended in college talked about male headship and female submission nearly as often as they discussed the cross. Maybe more. It felt like the most applicable expression of Christhood that we could enact on Earth: submission was Christlike for women. And uh, headship was Christlike for men. On the other hand, Egalitarians were painted as those Christians — the ones who didn't really read the Bible, the ones who didn't take Scripture seriously, who didn't take Jesus seriously.

(I found out many years later that there were quite a few closet egalitarians in my campus ministry the whole time! It grieves me to think about how I might have perpetuated such dogmatic complementarianism in my time as a leader and quieted these voices.)

So I get why it's hard to consider anything outside of complementarianism. Ironically, the sermon that sparked my initial investigation was delivered by our former very, very complementarian pastor. He was an academic at heart, and was attempting to equip us with a deep understanding of the Scripture-based argument for egalitarianism, so we could bolster & refine our convictions of complementarianism. He accidentally did too good of a job expositing the egalitarian side, and I couldn't unsee the compelling presence of female leadership over and over in the Bible.

And now we're here. On Tuesday's church meeting to discuss the changes, I felt the tension in the air. I think we all did, to some extent. The fellowship hall was packed with old and new faces (nothing like controversy to get folks curious!), and our dinner conversations hummed with bright discussion about anything other than the topic at hand. Then, we dove into the conversation and the mood shifted. People were serious, thoughtful, honest, but still open to finding levity in whatever moments we could. I appreciate our church community so much for that. We stuck it out together, although it might have been painful or disheartening at different times for some folks.

After leaving the meeting, I knew that some people were going home saddened by the decision. I know that now there might be closed-door conversations about whether this church is still the place for us, and that saddens me. I know that for some, there's a sense of loss and identity that accompanies this decision.

I know that many folks who are struggling with this decision probably don't want to process with an excited egalitarian like me, but if I had the opportunity, I'd want to say: is it possible we were taught something wrong? Is it possible that women and men might flourish under the diverse leadership of men and women working together? 

After that meeting, I couldn't help but think of the history of the Church wrestling with Scripture. The Bible has been used to justify genocide, war, slavery — and with less gravity, vegetarianism, omnivorism, head coverings at church, worship music without lyrics, and a variety of human behavior over the years. You could use the Bible to justify almost anything you want. 

And for the big bads (genocide, war, slavery), at some point, Christians like us sat in a room and decided: is this really what we believe? There were Christians who were deeply convicted that slavery seemed bad at first, but when rooted in God's design for humanity, could be a beautifully redemptive structure. Here's one quotation from that article:

"Critics of slavery should “consider whether, by their interference with this institution, they may not be checking and impeding a work which is manifestly Providential."

(This is a much more complex topic, and it's important to note that Biblical slavery likely had a different dynamic than the chattel slavery we think of in American history -- but hmmmmm what if that applied to historical female/male relationships too? Hmmmmm?) 

At some point, Christians had to decide to question a long-standing institution that would disrupt their core beliefs about God's justice and design for the world. And I'm so glad they did!

I just pray that everyone in our community is willing to do the same.

I want to dance. I want to shout from the rooftops. I want to sing and revel in the expansive love of God! I want my church community to know how elated I am to finally experience unity in the way I and so many other women relate to God and who we are at church!

But I can't. It's not the time, or the place, as so many people in our church are grieving, processing, and experiencing destabilization. So I will pray fervently instead. May you find your faith strengthened in uncertainty. May you see the fullness and richness of how God can work in unexpected, delightful ways to liberate God's people. May you know the extravagant dimensions of God's love. Amen... and yay!