women in Ministry

Scripture: Romans 15:13, Isaiah 43:19, 1 Peter 3:15, 1 Peter 3:15 (Amplified), Romans 18:18, Romans 18:24-28, Genesis 1:26-27 (NIV), Galatians 3:25-28, Acts 1:12-14,

(SLIDE) As we continue to work through our series, trying to make sure that we’re all on the same page in what the Church of God believes, we began foundationally of course with Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Savior. Last year when Chance Adams, Javon Lue and I first began filling in here in Burlington we did a whole month working on a foundation of Hope. Hope in times of transition, change, hope for the future. Where does hope come from? My hope comes from the Lord. (SLIDE) Paul writing to the Romans 15:13. “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

(SLIDE) We began a journey together you and I that we could have pulled right from Isaiah who was prophesying about the coming of Jesus Christ 700 years before a child was born in a lowly manger to a humble carpenter Joseph and his divinely impregnated wife, Mary. Isaiah 43:19. 19 Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. Even today, the Lord is doing something new, here among us. The Holy Spirit is bringing a new energy, a renewal, a revival into our church and our community. Do you not perceive it.

(SLIDE) All of these sermons, these talks over the past few months are a building up in all of us, me included, a stronger understanding of scripture. Of the power of the Word of God in our hearts, our minds, in our lives, that we might grow in our ability to be witnesses for Christ. Not in the way that the world sees most Christians. (SLIDE) As angry, violent, abusive theocrats who want everyone to believe, look, think, and act, exactly as they do. Forcing folks to change what they think and how they behave by regulations. (SLIDE) It didn’t work after God gave Moses the Law right? If first Adam and Eve, then Israel, and the rest of humanity had been able to maintain a right relationship with God, there wouldn’t have been a need for Jesus to lower himself as a man, and be sacrificed on the cross, right?

(SLIDE) For any of us who’ve had children, we’ve laid down the rules of the house. My Dad used to say “I’m the head of the family. Mom is the head of the house.” I think that might preach. All of us as children, then all of us as teenagers, as adults, and if we had children, as parents, made mistakes. We fell. Forcing people to change their behavior rarely works. (SLIDE) And that’s not what scripture tells us to do. People change because they choose to change. Because they choose to follow the Lord. And because we are able to set an example of what God has done in our lives through Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen?

And then we are able to listen to those who are struggling in some way, offer encouragement and support whether in prayer, or some addition means of support as the Lord our God provides for us to do so. (SLIDE) It is the scripture that hangs, among others, in our lobby, in the fellowship hall, and in the back of the sanctuary here. I Peter 3:15 15 but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect. Let’s look at the amplified version of this scripture. (SLIDE) If you’re not familiar with the amplified bible, it just shows you expanded meanings of the Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic in the translation. So here we read: But in your hearts set Christ apart [as holy—acknowledging Him, giving Him first place in your lives] as Lord. Always be ready to give a [logical] defense to anyone who asks you to account for the hope and confident assurance [elicited by faith] that is within you, yet [do it] with gentleness and respect.

(SLIDE) Christ first. He is Holy, the Lord God is Holy, when we’ve given ourselves to the Lord, accepted Jesus as our personal Savior and the Holy Spirit comes upon us. Becomes part of who we are as living and breathing beings, there are requirements. And as we walk through our daily lives, today, this week, next week, in order to share the Gospel. In order to not just be hearers of the word, but doers of the Word of God, we have to be prepared.

First to listen. Wherever we read in the eyewitness testimony of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, Jesus listened to those in need. Then he taught, healed or did both. Right. So we must first be listeners, demonstrating a love and patience for whomever we are spending time with that comes not out of our own selfish ambition, but from the Holy Spirit.

Active listening is a skill that can be taught, practiced and learned. Famed author and teacher Margaret Wheatley worked, as we talked about last week in servant leadership, developing leaders all over the world who put service to others over self. Helping leaders to be strong in times of crisis. Making a difference in ways that help other people grow in their kindness, generosity, creativity, and community involvement. She wrote this right after 9/11.

(SLIDE) Listening is such a simple act. It requires us to be present, and that takes practice, but we don't have to do anything else. We don't have to advise, or coach, or sound wise. We just have to be willing to sit there and listen. If we can do that, we create moments in which real healing is available. Whatever life we have experienced, if we can tell our story to someone who listens, we find it easier to deal with our circumstances. I have seen the healing power of good listening so often that I wonder if you've noticed it also. https://www.margaretwheatley.com/articles/listeninghealing.html

(SLIDE) I hope at some point in your life you’ve experienced that kind of listening from someone else. That kind of compassion, empathy, just simple acceptance of where you were at that moment in time. And if you haven’t, let’s have a cup of coffee. But just returning to 1stPeter. 15 But in your hearts set Christ apart [as holy—acknowledging Him, giving Him first place in your lives] as Lord. Always be ready to give a [logical] defense to anyone who asks you to account for the hope and confident assurance [elicited by faith] that is within you, yet [do it] with gentleness and respect.

(SLIDE) Active listening, just simply loving someone even in silence will prompt whomever we’re spending time with to ask you questions. The first might actually be a statement of “I don’t know what to do”, or “What do you think I should do? And if listening right now, you’re thinking, Jon’s going to give us the one tremendous outstanding answer that will fix everything for whomever it is right now, well, please accept my apologies.

Technically, I know that the answer to everything is Jesus Christ. The answer to every pain. The answer to every failure. The answer to every hurt, to every addiction, to every sin that needs to be cleansed and then overcome, is Jesus Christ. And we might have similar experiences, that we can draw from and share with someone else, but we, as servant leaders, as followers of the Most High God through Jesus Christ, His son, our Savior, must also be active listeners to the Holy Spirit.

(SLIDE) Let’s go back to Romans 8, which we’ve discussed before. Romans 8:18, 24-28. I’m going to, for now, today, skip over verses 19-23 but I’m not taking the word of God out of context. Ok. I’m just trying to focus our thinking. 18 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. (SLIDE) 24 For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. (SLIDE) 27 And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. 28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

As I have said before we often misuse this scripture in a way that pushes people away from the Lord who aren’t built on a strong foundation in the Word and in Christ. We respond with “Well, you know God works all things together for the good.” We forget“for those who are called according to His purposes.” Paul begins verse 24 with “For in this hope we were saved.” What must I do to be saved? So, if we’re listening to someone who’s struggling through something in life. If they haven’t confessed with their mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord and believed in their heart that God has raised him from the dead, they don’t know God’s purposes for their lives yet.

(SLIDE) For us to share the gospel with others, to help them walk through whatever it is this life has handed them, we must be in touch with the Holy Spirit. If you remember the sermon a few months ago about the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God. In the Hebrew Bible the word is Ruach. It is the ruach that imparts the divine image of God into humanity. It is a feminine word. Hebrew is a gendered language, so every word is either male or female. The Spirit of God is assigned a feminine aspect, personality, characteristic. Remember He created them equally, both male and female?

Genesis 1:26-27 26Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” 27 So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

I’m going to be very clear here. God said, let us make mankind in our image. Mankind. Humanity. When the word says “our image” that image is the trinity. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in a spiritual and moral sense, not physical body sense. Other translations, the ESV for example will say “man” instead of “mankind” The Hebrew word translated “mankind” or “man” here is Adam, as in Adam and Eve, but notice what the scripture says as verse 26 continues. “So that they may rule” or the ESV, “And let them have dominion…”

All over the world, we see societies, cultures, even here in the United States, placing men, the male side of the species, above women. Considering women to be lesser than men, subjugated to men, considered women to be servants to their, men. But the Lord our God right from the beginning gives dominion over the entire earth to both men and women. Verse 27: 27 So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

Sometimes I can be a little bit of a smart aleck. That’s part of how God made me. Last weekend, David Akers was preaching and in talking about how men and women are different, he described a situation where, you know, two guys can get into a fight, wrestle with each other and afterwards most men, not all, men will just be “hey you ok?” “Yea I’m ok too.” According to the stereotype men don’t talk as much as women do. David Akers said something along the lines of women say, about 10,000 words more every day that we do. To which I said, “That’s in an hour.” Got the laugh for that.

Here’s the thing, that really is a stereotype. (SLIDE) It’s a myth circulated from a 2006 book The Female Brain, published in 2006, Louann Brizendine, M.D. claimed that women say about 20,000 words a day, while men say about 7,000. Then it got spread all over the media. She later retracted those numbers, deleting them from future editions of the book. But that stereotype was already out there. Many of us believe things that aren’t true simply because somebody says it on television. With authority.

Evan back in 2007 a study out of the University of Arizona published in the journal Science found that the difference between how many words women say and men say are less than 600 words a day. We both say about 16,000 words. A Psychology Today article from 2019 notes - A review of 56 studies conducted by linguistics researcher Deborah James and social psychologist Janice Drakich found only two studies showing that women talked more than men, while 34 studies found men talked more than women.[6] Sixteen of the studies found they talked the same and four showed no clear pattern. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/marriage-equals/201910/do-women-really-talk-more-men

Male and Female, He made them equally in their image. What about listening abilities? Are those different? It depends on the research. I am confident that everyone here would say their wife, or partner, listens to the men, better than the men listen to their wives, girlfriends, or partners. A study that just came last year found that 68% of women are more interested in and have better listening skills when it comes to hearing someone’s story. Only 32% of men are interested in listening or have worked to develop that skill. If that were true, then, well, we as men have failed the example that Jesus gave us because I believe Christ was a great listener, and a great problem solver as well.

(SLIDE) As I said last weekend, I would tend to be more of a “get to the point” because I have things on my to-do list, if it were not for the Holy Spirit moving in me because the Lord needs to hear, through me, whatever it is the other person is saying. When Koen made a confession of faith in Coldwater last weekend, we were driving back home in the storm. If you’re familiar with most 15- or 16-year-old boys, getting him to say “yes” or “no” instead of just grunting or complete silence is a small miracle. He talked the entire hour plus it took to get home. First he wondered if the Branch County Men of Integrity was a cult, because they asked to back into a private room and took down his personal information to send him his own copy of a bible. I assured him it wasn’t a cult.

He wondered why more men didn’t come forward in the altar call, and why I didn’t come forward. I explained that I didn’t need to come to an altar call at that time, though I have many times in my life. But then, and driving in the storm with snow blowing hard across the roads I don’t remember why, Koen asked why there weren’t women pastors. So, I assured him there absolutely are, and he’d had dinner with one. The very Reverand Penelope Bridges, the Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in San Diego where my mother attended. She and I are part of an online theatre script reading group that began during COVID.

Across the state of Michigan there are at least 13 female head pastors within the Church of God. That doesn’t count the associate pastors who are women in the state. If we accept that Jesus Christ came to save all. That the Holy Spirit is given to all who confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. That God created both male and female equally in His image. He is the same God, male, female, Jew, Greek, Black, White. God is the same yesterday, today and forever, amen? Then the idea that women are less than, men, when it comes to leadership, to ministry, is tool of the enemy to prevent the gospel from being shared, from individuals and families from being healed.

(SLIDE) Paul to the Church in Galatia writes in Galatians 3:25-28 25 But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, 26 for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. 27 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Here in Burlington, it hasn’t been that long since there was a female pastor leading here. Now there are some churches or denominations that refuse to ordain women pastors or put them in leadership. One of the arguments they might use is that Jesus only chose men to be his disciples. Why didn’t he choose a woman. Well, here’s the problem with that kind of caveman thinking. Jesus only chose Jews to be His disciples. He didn’t choose any gentiles either. We have no quotes or parables from Christ saying only men could be leaders in ministry. In fact, he treated men and women equally when it came to how the rules of moral conduct should be applied. He calls all of us, all of us to go forth and make disciples of all nations. Greek, Jew, Black, White, Male and Female.

(SLIDE) After Jesus’ death and resurrection, followed by 40 days of walking this earth, eating, healing, being witnessed by more than 500 people, he ascends to heaven. We read Luke’s words from Acts 1:12-14 12 Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day's journey away. 13 And when they had entered, they went up to the upper room, where they were staying, Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot and Judas the son of James. 14 All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers. The women are not separated from the men. There is oneness among the body. Men and Women. Just as we are all one in Christ.

(SLIDE) The Church of God (Anderson) shares some similarities in the Holiness movement with the Nazarene Church, and the Free Methodist Church. There are even today, participants for over 100 years in all three who have spent time in different congregations within these three groups of believers. Benjamin Titus Roberts (1823-1893) was an American Methodist Bishop who studied at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. As an Elder in Buffalo New York, he struggled with the practice many churches had at that time of the pew system. That’s where wealthy families purchased or rented pews for worship. Thus, the formation of the Free Methodist Church. Free, meaning among many other things, that did you didn’t have to buy your pew or rent this space here from someone who owned it. Sound familiar. Every Blood Washed One is welcome here in the Church of God.

He founded Roberts Wesleyan University in Rochester, New York. Among the books and writings that BT Roberts published was one called Ordaining Women. In 1891.Almost 30 years before we, well behind most democratic countries in the world, finally gave women the right to vote. Here’s what Roberts wrote describing Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Too many words to put on the screen but listen to the authority of the Holy Spirit speaking here in this commentary on Galatians.

He (Paul) shows that Abraham was justified by faith; that the Mosaic law was temporary, to last only till Christ came; that all who have faith in Christ become the children of God. Then he (Paul) makes two general statements--

1. That in Christ Jesus all peculiar privileges based on nationality, or condition, or sex are abolished. In the Gospel one nation has the same rights and privileges as another, the bond the same as the free, the female the same as the male.

2. That all, without distinction, who believe in Christ, are the children of Abraham and heirs according to the promise.

With this agrees Dr. Adam Clarke in his comment on this verse. Now Clarke was a Methodist Theologian, farmer and village schoolmaster who studied under John Wesley before becoming a preacher. Here Roberts is quoting Clarke. So we have “Neither male nor female. With great reason the apostle introduces this. Between the privileges of men and women there was a great disparity among the Jews. A man might shave his head and rend his clothes in the time of mourning; a woman was not permitted to do so. A man might impose the vow of Nazirite (that’s abstaining from certain foods, cutting their hair) upon his son; a woman could not do this on her daughter. A man might be shorn (shaven) on account of the Nazarite of his father; a woman could not. A man might betroth his daughter; a woman had no such power. A man might sell his daughter; a woman could not. In many cases they (women) were treated more like children than adults; and to this day are not permitted to assemble with the men in the synagogues, but are put up in galleries, where they can scarcely see, nor can they be seen. Under the blessed spirit of Christianity, they have equal rights, equal privileges, and equal blessings, and, let me add, they are equally useful.”

(SLIDE) Just as within the Church of God, we would profess that every blood washed one. Everyone who has accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior is a welcome participant of our congregation, the Church of God has always believed that whom God has determined should lead in ministry, has nothing to do with race, color or sex. It has to do with the calling and anointing of God. I’ve shown you this picture before of Daniel Warner, seated on the left with a beard. This group of travelling ministers were together from 1886 to 1891. We can be certain they were here in Burlington at some point in time.

Sitting on Warner’s left is Sarah Sauer Smith, who, at the age of 61 was called into ministry and left her husband in the care of their eldest son to become a vital and necessary member of the Church of God. Her faith and exuberant enthusiasm for the work of God were well known, in part because she had a heavy German accent so she was easy to remember. Nannie Kigar was from Payne Ohio. Frankie Miller was from Battle Creek. The other young man above DS Warner is Barnie Warren who was from Geneva City, Michigan. He wrote 78 of the first 90 songs that are in the second Church of God Songbook called Anthems from the Throne.

This next picture includes Lena Shoffner Matteson, who in 1893 was a Church of God missionary to England and was heavily involved in the growth of the Church of God in Oklahoma, where Mid-American University is. Paul Hein, wrote some notes regarding this picture: Most likely pictured with fellow ChoG evangelists, preachers and gospel workers. Essays, articles and even videos have featured Lena's gifts of preaching and communication skills. Lena was so much like hundreds of other Church of God women ministers, preachers, missionaries, and workers. There are so many more we could share testimonies of. Another day.

But in wrapping up, let’s remember the word. And just in case there’s someone are saying but wait, what about 1st Timothy 2? That’s a whole sermon unto itself, which is most often taken out of context to again, try to make women inferior in some way. We’ll talk about that another day. What does God say?

Genesis 1:27 (NIV) 27So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. Galatians 3:28 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. There are some who would make women lower than men, and ineligible for ministry. That’s not how we read scripture. And if God calls anyone to ministry, while they must, as I must, pass the test that God approves of them stepping into leadership, who are we to go against the desires of the Lord our God because they are female. We are all equal in God’s eyes.

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