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Approving the Minutes
Dennis Fletcher
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Reviewing the Point
Ron Morgan
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Church Conflict Gets Weird
Dennis Fletcher
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The Importance of Presence
Dennis Fletcher
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Fellowship or Hanging Out?
Dennis Fletcher
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Pastors
Tracey Bianchi
A case for church membership in a culture that views it as odd or optional.
CT PastorsAugust 23, 2016
People Praying in a church
The idea of church membership strikes many as strange. I chat regularly with worshipers whose eyebrows shoot up at the mention of officially joining a church.
“You mean like the gym?” they ask.
These aren’t non-Christians or nominal believers. These folks attend church, participate in programs, and serve. But when asked to officially join their church?
“That sounds sort of elitist, doesn’t it?”
“I thought everyone was welcome at church, so why do we need membership?”
“What do I get if I join?”
“Is there a test?”
Confusion and apathy over church membership is increasingly common in North American churches. Pastors lament declining “enrollment” and a wave of religious commitment-phobia that was uncommon a generation ago. This trend goes beyond the exodus of people abandoning church altogether; it takes place inside many congregations among some of the most faithful attenders. New church plants increasingly choose not to implement membership while established churches consider jettisoning their once stalwart programs. Despite the drift away from membership, it is essential that pastors consider the vital role church membership can play in the life of a congregation.
In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul exhorts believers to share spiritual gifts and reminds them that they ought to depend on one another. He offers similar instruction in Romans 12 using the human body to explain how the body of Christ should function. We cannot live out God’s kingdom purposes alone; congregations need everyone involved in order to flourish.
We cannot live out God’s kingdom purposes alone; congregations need everyone involved in order to flourish.
To participate fully in congregational life is to recognize that God has called each person to use their unique set of gifts and talents for the common good. Doing this well means individuals within faith communities are accountable to one another (James 5:16; Eph. 4:25; Gal. 6:2). It requires a system of leadership, direction, teaching, discipline, and a set of rules and practices on how the community will carry out its shared life. The decision to “become a member” of a congregation means a person agrees to live within this system while contributing to the ethos and development of it.
The Process
Becoming a member of a church is a significant decision, more significant than membership in any of the little rewards programs that litter our lives. Hundreds of groups and clubs invite us to become a member in just a few clicks. “Like” this, “follow” that, or enter a few lines of basic information, and we’re in. Joining a church is completely different. It should be a solemn decision, one made after a period of prayer and consideration.
To join my home church, individuals must step forward and tell someone in leadership, “I want to join. I want be part of the life of this community.” We invite them to a series of classes where we discuss their personal faith journey, our posture toward serving others, and the theology and practices of our congregational life. These classes become small fellowship groups and participants spend time together learning, sharing, and questioning.
Like most, our congregation is filled with busy people trying to balance work, family, school, and the chaos of everyday life. Much of their time is already earmarked for other endeavors. We recognize this but boldly ask them to give us some of their sacred time. We believe in our church and what God is doing there.
At the conclusion of their classes, we ask participants to stand before our congregation during a worship service and respond to a set of questions that reflect their faith and desire to do life in this community. The whole congregation stands with them and agrees to welcome them into the fold. This agreement is deliberate. Are those of us who are already here willing to walk alongside them? Are we willing to befriend them? To learn more about them? To perhaps disagree and dispute matters with them? To help carry their burdens? To make ourselves accountable to them and they to us? This is no small moment and joining our church requires something of both parties.
On “New Member Weekends” there is a renewed sense of energy in the building. New members often express great joy and invite extended family and friends to come celebrate and worship with them. When crafted with grace and anticipation, membership programs serve as rites of passage in congregations. They mark a distinct moment in the life of a Christian. So, why is the knee-jerk response to church membership often one of apathy or disdain?
At least three major trends have impacted church membership today:
Trend #1: Consumer Culture
The idea of membership has been diluted by consumerism. In a culture that haphazardly promises rewards and perks for everything from groceries to gas, membership comes across as a marketing ploy. This has shifted our understanding of membership language.
The word member can be defined as something essential to the operation and success of a system. For instance, components that hold structures together are essential members of a particular architectural design. They can be support beams that hold entire homes or buildings in place. Biologically speaking, our body parts are members. To lose a body part is painful, and can result in death. To be a member of an entity is to bring strength and vitality to it. But in our consumer culture, these nuances have been lost.
Today membership language often means an optional allegiance, something that’s not fundamental to our lives. “Members who spend $500 this month earn double points!” Consumers join clubs in order to become better consumers. Membership viewed through this lens is cheap and manipulative. No longer does it call us to play our essential role in an organization. Instead, it is a choice based on consumption preferences.
Congregations must transcend consumer language with reminders of the essential role all members play. These communities carry power and divine purpose that makes membership compelling.
Trend #2: Elitism
In our increasingly polarized society, membership often takes on a negative, exclusionary meaning. Membership in some organizations can perpetuate systems of injustice and limit access to resources and power. Social clubs might limit entry based on anything from gender to race to economic status or educational background. Economic and social divides run deep and organizations that offer membership are, understandably, met with suspicion.
This suspicion also plays out across generations. Builders and Boomers are more likely to express their trust in organizations while X-ers and Millennials appear more skeptical of organizational power. They are also less inclined to sign up for a long-term commitment than previous generations. These are generalizations but they have merit and impact the way pastors approach teaching and encouraging membership.
Church membership defies elitism. Rather than serving as a barrier to keep some out and others in, membership serves as a way to serve and invite others in.
Trend #3: Low Commitment
Worshipers tend to choose churches based on what they get out of it rather than what they give to it. This is tied to consumerism. When the music, pastor, or small group program no longer feels exciting, people start looking around for another church. There are plenty to choose from. Why join a church when we might not like it by Christmas?
Many growing churches will confess their increased attendance is the result of “transfer growth,” attracting attendees of other congregations. When a program, preacher, or a parishioner begins to disappoint, rather than engage in the hard work of healthy debate and discussion, many people pack up and move down the street for worship.
Ultimately, church membership is about commitment, sacrifice, and accountability to God and his community. Scripture is clear that all three are holy pursuits. Poorly run membership programs abound, and church history is littered with congregations who abused their power and neglected their most vulnerable members. But such stories should not deter us. Membership is too important to abandon because of past abuses or prevailing cultural trends.
When we welcome new members to our church we remind them that they just signed up for the hard work of serving, loving, and giving to this community. They agreed to struggle through life and faith together. They agreed to support one another and walk through vulnerable and sacred spaces together.
This is a high and holy calling that only the local church can provide. In our increasingly rootless and isolated culture, we need local church membership more than ever before.
Practical Guidelines for Membership Programs
- Shared language. Your staff and congregation should share the same definition of membership. When asked to explain, “Why join the church?” everyone should be able to offer the same set of reasons and extend the invitation in a similar fashion.
- Flexible classes. Most membership programs require coursework to learn the theology and ecclesiology of the church. Lower the barriers to attend by accommodating different schedules. Offer evening or weekend options and, if possible, provide childcare so parents can attend.
- Visible celebration. Welcome new members to the life of the church in a tangible way, preferably during worship services. In these moments, explain your church’s position on membership. This provides an opportunity for others to see the process and consider whether they plan to join.
- Remember. Joining the church is just one part of a shared journey. Regularly invite current members to recall their commitment to one another and find moments to help seasoned members reach out and connect with new members.
- Pray. Every new member is a sacred soul who has trusted their life to your congregation. Never underestimate the power of that trust and fellowship. Pray that God enlivens your members, protects your church, and helps bring about God’s kingdom purposes. In a world where the meaning of membership is increasingly diluted, pray that God strengthens the meaning of that time you share together in a divine way.
Pastors
Interview by Daniel Darling
Pastoral succession expert William Vanderbloemen shares his tips for a smooth leadership transition.
CT PastorsAugust 23, 2016
One of the most critical, anxious seasons in a church’s life is the time of transition that follows the choice of a new pastor. More often than not, the task of making sure that transition goes smoothly falls to the church’s lay leaders, who may or may not be equipped to handle such an enormous responsibility.
To help our readers think through the challenges that come with changes in church leadership, The Local Church reached out to William Vanderbloemen, CEO and founder of the Vanderbloemen Search Group, a firm dedicated to placing leaders in a wide range of faith-based organizations. Vanderbloemen is a recognized expert on pastoral succession with experience ministering as a senior pastor, serving in church leadership teams, and working in human resources for Fortune 500 companies. His latest book, Search, is written to help churches find their next pastor. Here’s what he had to say about how your church can not only survive, but also thrive during the pastor search process:
In your experience, are most churches equipped to search for a new pastor?
The short answer is “no.” Whenever I meet with a pastor search committee, I ask for a show of hands: “Who here has experience hiring a staff member in the corporate realm?” Often, a few hands go up. Then I ask, “Who here has experience hiring a pastor?” More often than not, no hands are raised.
Hiring a pastor is an entirely different animal than hiring in the corporate arena, and search committees don’t know what they don’t know. Not only do churches face the lack of pastor search expertise when they dive into a search process, they also face a huge challenge of time—both their lack of time available to devote to a full-time search and the large amount of time it takes to complete a pastor search. The average church takes 12 to 24 months to find a new pastor when the previous pastor vacates the pulpit. This is a huge challenge to most churches; as momentum and direction is lost, some members leave the church, and giving often goes down as well.
What is the most important way for a church search committee to prepare for a pastoral search?
Before beginning a pastor search, it’s vital for churches to decide how many people will be on the search committee and who will be on the search committee. If you get this part wrong, the rest of your search can be a mess.
Every church’s polity is different, but I typically recommend that the size of the pastor search committees be around seven to eleven people. Making sure the committee is an odd number of people prevents any stalemates when taking any votes. You should also beware of forming a pastor search committee larger than eleven members, since it’s difficult to reach any consensus when there are too many opinions involved. The more differing opinions and voices that need to be heard on your search committee, the longer the pastor search process will take.
Find people for your pastor search committee who have in mind the best interests of the church as a whole and who have broad enough perspective to see beyond their own personal preferences and needs. Select people who have spiritual depth, who have a broad vision for the church and its mission, and who truly want what’s best for the church and not what’s best for them.
Some churches will put a “squeaky wheel” on the committee—the somewhat difficult person who insists on having a say and giving their critique on everything. It may be tempting to put this person on the pastor search committee: you may think, “If we give them a voice in the decision, they won’ t complain about it after the person they chose is here.” While this may seem logical at first, though, it’ s a quick way to torpedo your pastor search. This type of person can bog down the entire process.
What is the one thing search committees often get wrong in their searches?
Too often, pastor search committees fail to establish a communication plan at the beginning of the search. One of the biggest tension points churches have is miscommunication or lack of communication between the committee, the church staff, the congregation, and the candidates. A communication plan minimizes the risk of this tension. Clear and consistent communication of your pastoral transition is paramount to the success of your search; it not only keeps the congregation involved and engaged, but also garners support for the search committee efforts and sets proper expectations for the process and timing of the search. Without effective communication, the church will grow impatient, the chance for gossip increases, and candidates may pull out of the running.
A great way to maintain effective communication with the congregation, staff, and the candidates is through a webpage on the church’s website. There, you can include a job description, contact information, search and timeline updates, and answers to frequently asked questions.
What is something aspiring senior pastors get wrong as they candidate for open positions?
Sometimes, we see candidates who are being unrealistic about the kinds of positions they are qualified for. Not many pastors can make the leap from leading a church of 100 to leading one of 3,000. I advise pastors to be realistic about what is next on their ministry path, always following God’s leading, and to be sure that their resumes and their video teaching samples are up-to-date and are a clear, professional representation of their experience and expertise. Search committees place a huge value on video teaching or preaching samples, so you should make sure yours are high quality and not outdated.
How can church leaders best prepare their congregations for a pastoral transition?
Churches are often tempted to try to protect the congregation from too much information. In doing so, though, they usually create more questions, more controversy, and more division. It is best to be direct and honest. Your church members will feel respected, and in turn, they will give more trust when they know you are being transparent. Tell them what is happening and how the church leadership is moving forward.
Posting a video announcement is a valuable way to help your church community process the transition that is taking place. Not every Senior Pastor transition will have the ability to make this a part of their communication plan, but it is extremely useful when possible. Pastoral transitions are difficult for church members, and allowing them to hear the announcement directly from the pastor will lessen the confusion and hear-say that can often follow a pastor's transition announcement. It also mitigates the chances of people hearing different versions of “what happened.” Finally, it allows everyone to hear at the same time. If you’re in a church with more than one worship service (or more than one campus), serious consideration should be given to a video announcement. In the case of retirement, your outgoing pastor can also write about his succession plan on their personal blog, which is one of the most effective ways pastors can communicate with your church community about their own transition process.
Additionally, we recommend the entire church have a prayer calendar they can pray through together. A sample prayer guide is included in SEARCH as one of the 13 practical search committee appendixes.
You can purchase a copy of Vanderbloemen’s SEARCH: The Pastoral Search Committee Handbook at PastorSearchBook.com.
Pastors
Karen L. Miller, as told to Kevin Miller
What does it take to develop leaders in your church?
CT PastorsAugust 23, 2016
To say this church plant was unlikely would be an understatement. We had our family, one other family, and five people in their seventies. Sitting on a folding chair in the living room, I realized, If we are going to have a church, we have to develop the leaders we have right now.
One Sunday morning Irene, one of those in her seventies, set up the Communion table. I noticed that she then went around to make sure everything else was in order—and people did whatever she asked them to do.
Afterward I asked her, “Irene, have you ever considered that you have leadership gifts?”
“Absolutely not!” she said. “I am just an ordinary woman, housewife, and mother.”
“But you lead our Communion setup ministry.”
Irene was not persuaded. “That’s not a leadership gift,” she told me. “That’s just service.”
But if I didn’t convince Irene that she was a leader, she didn’t convince me that she wasn’t, and I kept her in mind.
Some months later, our young church received a visit from a bishop in Rwanda, John Rucyahana. He told the church how he dreamed of starting an orphanage and school for children whose parents had been slaughtered in the genocide. We decided we had to help. Could we hold a banquet to raise funds?
Irene agreed to help put on the banquet.
When she visited a possible caterer and told her what the event was for, the caterer decided to donate most of the food. Irene talked with a banquet hall, and they gave her a deep discount. So did the tech people. No one could tell Irene no. On the banquet night, over 200 people came, and enough money was raised to build the school and its first dormitory.
I teased her afterward: “Irene, that was amazing! Maybe you are a leader?”
She laughed, for she finally had to acknowledge the truth. She started coming to my leadership-training meetings. Each May, Irene led the banquet again. Now we could see photos of kids who had lived on the streets and never brushed their teeth flashing broad, white smiles. Boys who had been malnourished, their arms and legs painfully thin, now ran and jumped across the courtyard on strong legs. Girls who’d come dressed in rags showed off their neat school uniforms and barrettes.
Then Irene went to be with the Lord. Only when Sonrise Orphanage named a dorm after her did I find out that the banquet she’d led had singlehandedly covered one third of the school’s operating costs.
Why does leader training matter so much—especially when we’re busy with a thousand other things? Because for any change to happen, there needs to be a leader. And for any God-honoring change to happen, there needs to be a God-honoring leader like Irene.
Leadership involves caring for your soul; this is not optional or extra credit.
Looking around our churches, though, you and I may feel, We don’t have enough leaders! But we may miss someone like Irene, not recognizing the leadership within her or not knowing how to develop her leadership.
After training leaders for 30 years in small churches, midsize churches, and very large churches, I’ve learned that the essentials remain the same. Here are three secrets of developing your next leader.
Secret #1: Many people won’t accept they have a leadership gift—but they will accept they have a leadership style.
I used to think, Everyone knows when they have the gift of leadership. But why did I think that, when it took me years to discover my own leadership gift?
My family didn’t see or call out the leadership gifts in me. In high school, though, I joined a backpacking group, and our leader, Mr. Brown, put me in charge of the year-end banquet for 150 people. That went well, and I got a first glimpse that I could lead. Fast-forward 35 years, and I was serving as executive pastor in a large church, serving as a second-chair leader to the senior pastor, overseeing a staff of 29, and making decisions that affected the church, the budget, and people’s lives. Often I would leave the church office shaking my head. God, you took an insecure child who was paralyzed by decision making, and you healed her and blessed her so that every day she makes major decisions as a leader.
Now I start with the assumption, This person may not accept that he or she has a gift of leadership. It’s not enough for me to teach—as I do—that leadership is a gift of the Holy Spirit (Rom. 12:8). Because while I’m teaching that, some are thinking, Leadership is just for the few, the proud, the Marines. That’s not me.
For example, I invited Janie to my leadership-training program at church, and she agreed to try it. On her application form, she was honest. The application asked, “On a scale from 1 (low) to 10 (high), where is your leadership now?” Janie marked her leadership at 3.
What helped Janie accept her leadership—and what has helped scores of other people I’ve worked with—is asking, “Did you know there are different styles of leadership? What’s your particular style?” Most have never thought about that question, and it unlocks something for them.
I point developing leaders to Bill Hybels’s helpful article, “Finding Your Leadership Style,” which lays out 10 styles, ranging from directional to shepherding to bridge-building. People finally say, “Well, okay, if that’s a style of leadership, then I guess I have that style.”
Then I can take them the next step, the one they weren’t ready to take before: how do you lead? I help people determine, “Do you lead more as a first-chair leader or second-chair leader?” I have them take the SHAPE inventory (developed by Saddleback Church, and free), Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (or the similar, free Keirsey-Bates), the Strengths-Based Leadership assessment. I even help them become aware of the “dark side” of their leadership.
When people start to embrace their God-given leadership, wonderful things happen. Janie, for example, began leading part of our women’s ministry and also took on more leadership at her work.
Secret #2: Leadership training is as much about soul care as it is about skills.
Many churches, when doing leadership training, don’t cover soul care. That’s for a separate Bible study. But to be a Christian leader, your soul needs to grow at the same rate as your skills, or even faster. I tell developing leaders, “Leadership involves caring for your soul; this is not optional or extra credit.”
I’m constantly surprised by the number of leaders who do not intentionally care for their soul. Once when teaching at a pastors’ conference, I asked the 20 pastors in the room, “How many of you have taken a day for prayer in the past year?” Only one person raised his hand.
Great leaders produce other leaders. Start looking for your replacement.
At my church, I asked each staff member to complete an annual “Soul Care Plan,” planning how they were going to care for their relationships, physical health, and life with God. (Most people list way too much on their plan; I have them cut their plan in half, but follow through on the remaining half.) To care for your leadership soul takes building practices into the rhythm of your life. For example, we asked every full-time pastor to take a prayer day every month—on the clock.
Bill Hybels put it so well in “The Art of Self-Leadership”: “Nobody—I mean nobody—can do this work for you.” Most people around you in a church will not come and say, “You are working too hard,” or “You seem irritable and lacking joy.” It’s no wonder Christian leaders can become ministry-aholics. Two years ago, I went for the monthly meeting with my mentor, and she picked up something I was ignoring: “You are dangerously tired, Karen,” she told me. “You must stop right now and take a three-day prayer retreat.”
“I don’t have time!” I protested. “I’ve got too much going on.”
“You don’t have time not to,” she insisted. Only when I stopped for that retreat did I realize how deeply I was depleted. I had lost the ability to see clearly. That intervention saved me from burnout and preserved my leadership gift.
In my leadership coaching, when I ask, “How are you caring for your soul?” usually people feel guilty. They know they should be doing something, but they live fast-paced lives. Also, they have a certain idea of quiet time. Often as we talk, I learn that their idea has become a box with no room to move or breathe. “God has created you in a certain way to connect with him,” I explain, and help them discover their sacred pathway. One leader, for example, admitted, “I pray best when I walk my dog.” She walks a mile or two every day, which gives her built-in time for prayer. I assured her, “That counts.”
Secret #3: Leaders don’t do it all.
If they do it all, they’re not a leader. They’re a doer.
Yet it’s surprisingly hard to get developing leaders to do less so they can lead more. Why?
- Passion. Leaders have passion and skills; they love to jump in and make things happen. One worship leader explained, “I love leading worship, so why would I get others to lead it?”
- Patterns. When the church was small, they could lead the men’s ministry by themselves, so they continue to do that.
- Pride. One leader told me, “I could run every ministry in this church.”
- Partial misunderstanding. The phrase “servant leadership” has been misunderstood as, “If I’m a leader, I should do all the serving.” Instead, it means, “I will lead, but with the humility of a servant. I will submit my pride to God.”
The reality, though, in any organization, is that I’m not going to be able to do it all. Desperation can lead us to develop others.
In one church, besides the pastor, I was the only staff member, and I was part-time. I thought, We need a men’s ministry. I can’t exactly lead a men’s ministry. So I recruited someone who could. Then the pastor wanted us to have a food pantry. I loved that idea, but I realized, I can’t do everything, so I need to find someone who can lead a food pantry. I did.
After a while, I noticed a pattern to the times that recruiting was successful.
- I prayed. Jesus spent all night in prayer before he chose his disciples. The best leaders came when I took my time and grounded my decision in prayer.
- I determined what I needed. Before I started recruiting, I defined the role and wrote a ministry job description. One important distinction is whether you need to recruit a leader (for example, to lead a small group) or a doer (for example, an usher).
- I asked for help. I asked other key leaders who they thought would be a good fit for the role I needed to fill.
- I recruited based not on need but on giftedness. Once I wrote the ministry job description, I determined, “What gifts does this role require?” As I got to know new members in the church, I would ask, “What are your spiritual gifts?” and if they didn’t know, I encouraged them to take a spiritual-gifts inventory.
- I asked boldly. I might say something like this: “I’m excited about the vision for this ministry of _____. A key part of that vision is having someone with the gifts of ______. I’ve been praying for God to send us someone, and I think you’d be great at doing this. Would you pray about it and consider becoming part of our ministry team?”
I tell developing leaders, “You are there to recruit and equip. Great leaders produce other leaders. Start looking for your replacement.” As John Maxwell says, “There is no success without a successor.”
Karen L. Miller is a leadership coach, long-time executive pastor, therapist, and founder of StrengthenYourLeadership.com.
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Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra
The plight of the 218 kidnapped Chibok schoolgirls remains uncertain after a recent split in the world’s deadliest terrorist group.
Christianity TodayAugust 23, 2016
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A fracturing Boko Haram isn’t good news for the 218 mostly Christian schoolgirls who have been held captive since 2014.
In fact, militants killed 10 and kidnapped 13 more women and children from the primarily Christian village of Chibok on Saturday—the same place the girls are from. And a new video of the girls seems to signal new pressure on the Nigerian-based radical Islamist group.
Outside pressure comes from Nigeria’s military, which cracked down on Boko Haram’s territory in the northeast after the country elected Muhammadu Buhari as president in 2015. Buhari promised to dismantle Boko Haram within a year; although he hasn’t done so, military pressure on the terrorist group has increased and its territory has shrunk.
Buhari has also been working on his relationship with the United States, which stepped up military help to the area. Secretary of State John Kerry will visit Buhari in Nigeria this week; security concerns are on the agenda.
Boko Haram also faces internal fractioning. Earlier this month, ISIS backed a new leader for them. (Boko Haram transferred its loyalty from al Qaeda to ISIS last year.)
Abu Musab al Barawi, who is the son of Boko Haram founder Mohammed Yusuf, was reportedly chosen because he is less violent toward Muslims than his predecessor. He immediately promised to narrow the scope of attacks to Christians.
The militants will handle Christians by “booby-trapping and blowing up every church that we are able to reach, and killing all of those who we find from the citizens of the cross,” al Barawi reportedly told an Islamic newspaper.
But Abubakar Shekau, the previous head of Boko Haram, hasn’t stepped aside. In a new video, he called al Barnawi an infidel who was trying to usurp him.
The change-up in leadership might lead to more targeted attacks—both on Christians and on security forces, like the recent attack on a UNICEF humanitarian convoy, according to an analysis by the Institute for Security Studies.
It might also account for the video of the kidnapped Chibok schoolgirls that appeared last week. It seems the girls are still in Shekau’s control, since the militant in the video referred to Boko Haram by its traditional name and claimed to be Shekau’s successor.
The video, which portrays about 50 girls, may be a way to remind the world that even though Shekau doesn’t have foreign backing, he still controls the girls and cannot be ignored. A masked militant said that the girls will never be returned unless captured Boko Haram terrorists are released. He also demanded that the government halt its air strikes.
The footage swung public attention and sympathy back to the girls, who were kidnapped from their boarding school in April 2014. The militant claimed that some of the girls were injured in government air strikes, and indeed, several bodies of young girls could be seen on the ground.
He also said that 40 of the girls have been “married” to their captors. (One of those married girls—and her Boko Haram “husband” and baby—managed to escape and was picked up in Sambisa Forest in May.)
The Nigerian government is “in touch with those purportedly behind the video,” but things have been compounded by the militant group’s infighting.
“We are being extremely careful because the situation has been compounded by the split in the leadership of Boko Haram,” stated Nigeria’s minister of information and culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed.
Boko Haram has killed more than 20,000 people since 2009, making it the world’s most deadly terrorist group and Nigeria the third-most terrorized country in the world (after Iraq and Afghanistan). Fatalities from terrorism increased by 300 percent from 2013 to 2014, to more than 7,500, according to the latest Global Terrorism Index Report from the Institute for Economics and Peace.
The country is No. 12 on Open Doors’ list of the hardest place in the world to be a Christian.
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Kate Shellnutt
For complementarian women, the debate was more than abstract.
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The evangelical blogosphere engaged in a major theological debate about the Trinity this summer, with more than 150 posts published within five weeks. Malcolm Yarnell, theology department chair at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, said he had “never seen anything like it.”
The debate focused on Christ’s relationship to God the Father. Some argue that the Son is eternally subordinate to the Father, while others say the Son was subordinate in his earthly life only. It transformed a decades-old proxy war between some complementarians and egalitarians over what the Trinity reveals about God’s design for gender roles into a civil war between complementarians (see CT’s explainer, Gender and the Trinity).
While complementarian women wrote only a handful of the posts, they played a significant role in launching the conversation and raising concerns over how the distinction can play out in the pews.
The original post came from Presbyterian pastor Liam Goligher. He stated that theologians Bruce Ware and Wayne Grudem are distorting Trinitarian relations in order to uphold their view of gender roles. (Grudem is the founder of the complementarian Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood [CBMW].)
Goligher’s post appeared at Housewife Theologian, a blog written by Aimee Byrd and hosted at an Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals website. Byrd, alongside co-hosts Carl Trueman and Todd Pruitt, have challenged certain complementarian rhetoric and teaching for years.
“She is the one continually bringing it up to these men and calling out patriarchy,” said Hannah Anderson, author of Made for More, a book about Christian women and identity. “She can ask the question that men wouldn’t have thought to ask.”
Anderson also critiqued the link being made between eternal subordination and gender roles in a post co-written by Wendy Alsup on the blog Practical Theology for Women.
The women speaking up in this debate see the Trinity issue as tied to ongoing concerns about how complementarian leaders discuss and apply teachings on gender. While these women affirm male headship in the home and male eldership in the church, they suggest that complementarianism’s current emphasis on authority and gender roles restricts a fuller understanding of femaleness, maleness, and true complementarity.
The Internet has given lay women from across denominations an entry point into conversations once reserved for seminarians and theologians. “For a lot of time, women have not been in ‘the room where it happens,’ ” said Alsup.
When Rachel Miller, news editor for The Aquila Report and blogger at A Daughter of the Reformation, saw the first post go up on Byrd’s website, she assumed that it would be overlooked, as when she, Byrd, and others had critiqued eternal subordination before.
“I invited a man to write and suddenly, men were concerned and noticing it,” said Byrd, who belongs to an Orthodox Presbyterian church and advocates for stronger theology in women’s resources, including in her book Housewife Theologian.
But plenty of theologians in the debate didn’t mention gender roles at all, as most regard the Trinity as an unrelated issue.
“The women I’ve read have approached the subject in very similar ways to the male theologians, with the obvious exception that the application has been followed through into areas that affect them while the male theologians have often left the application out of the picture,” said Andrew Wilson, a teaching and training pastor in the UK. “I’d imagine the debate is more personal for the women.”
The women acknowledged that even without theology degrees, they offer a practical view of how they believe this teaching has “trickled down” to affect women’s daily lives.
“I don’t think I could change the mind of [Ware, Grudem, Goligher, or Trueman],” said Alsup, formerly a women’s ministry leader at Mars Hill Church who now attends a Presbyterian congregation in South Carolina. “My burden was for those who were reading it and don’t understand the implications or feel some dissonance.”
When complementarian women spot problematic teaching in their own congregations or in church resources, they can bring it up more readily online, knowing that other women are asking similar questions.
These challenges typically don’t come from well-known names; by critiquing aspects of complementarianism, these writers say they risk losing their complementarian bona fides and being dismissed as liberal or egalitarian.
In recent years, some complementarian women have championed more robust roles for women serving alongside men in the church; critiqued John Piper’s suggestion that a woman shouldn’t be a police officer; tracked patriarchal themes in homeschooling curricula; and discussed how the doctrine of eternal subordination gets tied to efforts to subordinate women.
“This isn’t an academic, esoteric debate about ideas,” said Miller, who attends a Presbyterian Church in America congregation. “Many of the women are speaking up because we see the effects.”
While complementarian men share concerns about domestic abuse, for example, they may not make the same connections as women. “They aren’t the ones who sit through countless Bible studies about how to be submissive wives, and then have to help a friend extricate herself from an abusive relationship,” said Anderson.
CBMW’s only female editor, Courtney Reissig, is sensitive to the criticism from the women whose writing she follows online. She consults with her male colleagues about the words, writers, and arguments they use as they discuss gender roles.
“That’s why the complementarian movement needs men and women working together, because men and women see this differently,” said Reissig, author of The Accidental Feminist. “Because I am more broadly connected, I can see how CBMW is perceived. . . . There are people out there who have been hurt by distortions of complementarianism.”
Complementarians who belong to organizations like CBMW often agree that abuses of headship have taken place in the name of complementarianism. But they maintain that eternal subordination in particular isn’t to blame.
“I get really tired of people who argue that complementarianism leads to abuse or subservience of women. It mischaracterizes the complementarian position,” said Mary Kassian, women’s studies professor at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and author of Girls Gone Wise. “I’d urge complementarians to make sure they are balanced and they are upholding that women are co-heirs and co-laborers.”
CBMW maintains a neutral position in the Trinitarian debate. Its core beliefs—outlined in the 1987 Danvers Statement—do not delineate a position on this particular issue, said Denny Burk, who replaced Owen Strachan as the organization’s president in July.
CBMW’s only blog post on the Trinity comes from its founder, Grudem, in defense of the Eternal Relations of Authority and Submission (ERAS) position. Other prominent complementarians, such as Al Mohler, argue that ERAS is not heretical but also not essential.
“It’s good and right for brothers and sisters to be talking about this issue,” said Burk. “There’s room for people on all sides of the question” under the Danvers Statement, which he says will be his focus as president.
But not everyone wants to belong to a complementarianism that they see including positions with problematic theology and application.
“Complementarianism got caught up with the movement, and it’s gotten out of hand,” said Byrd, who has started to use Biola University scholar John McKinley’s language of “necessary allies” to refer to women’s roles. McKinley proposes the term as an alternate translation for the Hebrew phrase in Genesis that introduces the notion of gender roles: ezer kenegdo, typically translated as “suitable helper.” Byrd explained: “I’m trying to move forward without replacing a label with another label.”