Don’t miss this important conversation if you are a leader in your church!
Dr. Lucas Rogers shares with Dr. Sandra Glahn what he has learned from his research on conservative churches rethinking women in leadership. His extensive study of churches going through this process provides wise and practical advice for any church leadership considering this issue.
Dr. Rogers is available to consult with churches who are interested in being true to the Scriptures while being open to other interpretations. He suggests that it’s not where the church ends up, but the process used that will determine the health of the church.
Recommended resources
Cultural Intelligence: Living for God in a Diverse, Pluralistic World by Darrell BockThe Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan HaidtWomen in the Church’s Ministry: A Test Case from Biblical Interpretation by R.T. FranceRecovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism from editors John Piper & Wayne GrudemDiscovering Biblical Equality: Biblical, Theological, Cultural and Practical Perspectives by Ronald Pierce and Cynthia WestfallThis episode is available on video for those who prefer to watch.
Timestamps:
02:57 Introduction to Dr. Rogers’ research on conservative churches that landed on different sides of the issue
10:23 Various influences on the churches’ decisions about this issue
14:08 The approaches to understanding Scripture in the various churches researched
16:20 Best practices to work through this issue
19:12 What Dr. Rogers learned from the three churches studied
26:32 Consulting with churches about the process of considering this issue after this study
28:59 The need to take the time necessary and involve the congregation
32:21 Resources used in this process, sunk costs bias and cultural engagement all affect this process.
35:13 Suggested books on both sides of the issue
38:33 Any other advice to help this process go well?
45:04 BOW resources on other issues facing the church
Transcript
Kay >> Hi. I’m Kay Daigle. Welcome to the Beyond Ordinary Women Podcast and video. We are so happy that you’ve joined us today. We have two special guests. We have Dr. Sandra Glahn with us. Welcome Sandi.
Sandra >> Glad to be here as always.
Kay >> Yeah, it’s always a treat to have you. We always look forward to having you. Dr. Glahn is a professor at Dallas Seminary. She is a professor of Media Arts and Worship there.
She’s written over 20 books. She has so much to say about her that you just need to go to our website and read her bio because she has done a lot and she has produced a lot of work. And you can find her in many of our videos. So hopefully this won’t be the last when you watch go on to BeyondOrdinaryWomen.org and search for her name. And you can connect with some of her other conversations that we’ve had.
And Sandra invited another friend to be with us, the third male that we have had on our podcast. And it is Dr. Lucas Rogers. Welcome, Lucas.
Lucas >> Thank you so much. Great to be here.
Kay >> We are so happy to have you. Lucas is the lead pastor at Easton Bible Church in Hainesport, New Jersey. And he has both a master’s and doctorate degrees from Dallas Seminary as well. And we’re really happy to have you.
And despite the fact that you’re only the third man, we really appreciate it.
Lucas >> Well, it’s my honor.
Kay >> Well, since our ministry is Beyond Ordinary Women, we have tended to focus on women in these conversations. But we’re so happy to have you. And I’m going to turn around over to Sandi and Lucas to talk about our topic today, which I’m very excited about. I feel like many, many churches need to hear about the research that Lucas has done.
Sandra >> So Lucas has done a hard look at the best practices for churches that are reconsidering where they stand on their position on women in ministry leadership. So let me start out by lobbing a question like why don’t you share with listeners how you and I met and how you ended up diving into this topic?
Lucas >> Yeah, well, I first started my doctorate back in 2017, and it was during that time that looking into different topics and, and I think we’ll probably get into a little bit about why I chose this one, but really I was interested in women in church leadership. And so, Dr. Glahn, that’s when I reached out to you and asked if you’d be one of my readers on my dissertation and which is obviously aware of your work and all of your research that you had done.
And it was, that was the beginning of that relationship. And it’s been a great journey.
Sandra >> And the topic of your dissertation was?
Lucas >> Was essentially, women and church leadership. But really the question that it was seeking to answer is looking at churches, and specifically churches that are theologically conservative. I come from a Bible church tradition, all of my life. I went to Dallas Seminary and looking at churches, they kind of shared that DNA, if you will, of conservative theologically, biblically. And then recognizing that over the last two decades or so, more and more of those churches are reconsidering and revisiting their position on women in church leadership specifically.
And the question that I wanted to wrestle with was, why is it that you’ve got churches that on paper all look more or less the same. That on paper they would all affirm the same things biblically, theologically, and yet when it came to this issue, they were landing in different places. And so it became clear to me that just to say, well, we’re reading the Bible and this is what the Bible says just wasn’t sufficient.
And so I wanted to kind of delve into that more and try to unearth what are some of the factors that are going into the way these decisions are being made. What are some of those factors that are influencing how churches and elder boards specifically are wrestling with the question and how they’re interpreting and then applying the Scripture in their churches?
Because it just isn’t uniform. It doesn’t look the same at every church anymore. And that was just something that really fascinated me.
Sandra >> Well, I mean, there are a zillion topics you could choose. You’re a guy. What made you choose this topic?
Lucas >> Yeah, I think, you know, one of the advice I was given is find something that’s personal to you. You’re going to spend a lot of time delving on a topic when you’re writing a dissertation as we can all attest to.
And so for me, interestingly, enough, in 2017, when I was beginning this process, I had the opportunity. I was invited to observe at a church there, elder board, walking through this kind of deliberative process. They wanted to revisit how women were serving and leading within their church. They wanted to unpack, you know, what did the scriptures say? Where they getting it right in a sense, this kind of the way they wanted to approach it.
And so I got to observe that firsthand. And just to be candid, I walked away kind of disappointed. I walked away just feeling like they didn’t have the tools and the resources necessary to even begin the conversation and to begin the discussion. And it wasn’t necessarily, you know, it certainly wasn’t a moral failing. These were not bad people, but there was just a lack of understanding of even how to go about research, about just being aware of some of the biases that they were bringing into the conversation.
And so, I walked away from that thinking, how can I help? You know, how can you know, even if I was in a position where—regardless of whether or not I agreed with their final decision—just the process of the decision making mattered to me.
I felt like that was something that the churches, if we’re going to be having these conversations, we need to know that as we’re making these decisions, the process is a good one, right? It needs to be effective. It needs to be constructive.
So that was where I began. I think for me, there’s always a variety of factors that come into when you’re deciding on a topic. For me, that was a very personal one. I think also my experience in churches, it had become clear to me that there was a hedge that had been set up around the law.
And so for churches that, you know, they would read some of these passages, I’m sure we’ll discuss at least a little bit 1 Timothy 2 and other places where Scripture, at least historically and traditionally in some of these Bible churches, have read that to be very restrictive of women in leadership.
I was part of churches that went way beyond some of those applications.
So you might have a church, for example, that will limit women to saying, well, women shouldn’t be pastors or should be elders. But I was part of churches where women weren’t allowed to, you know, even get on stage. They weren’t allowed to make announcements. They weren’t allowed to hand out bulletins in the sanctuary. And to me, this was a hedge that I could find no biblical basis for. And so that was something that bothered me.
And the more I observed that, I just felt like—how are we treating them? You know, what are we communicating to women and their value and their worth within the church?
And then lastly, as a pastor, I just have a deep passion for church unity. And this was an area that even as my journey over these last several years in terms of like my own personal conviction beliefs, it just seemed to me that how we have these conversations matters both within the church and outside. And it became something really I was very passionate about is how to help churches have the conversation in a way that still reflects the grace and the goodness of God and love for one another.
Even if we agree, we can agree to disagree or even if we disagree, we can do so in a way that’s gracious and loving to one another. And so that was all part of the motivation of tackling this topic.
Sandra >> So it sounds like you were way more concerned with how we get there than where we land?
Lucas >> That’s true. That’s true. I have my convictions. I have my own beliefs and I, but for where? For the project itself, the way I wanted to approach it was thinking about if I was going to be help a church that wanted to reconsider this, that wanted to revisit this, how can I help equip them to do so in a way that at the end of the day, wherever they land, their church is healthier for it and that they can still even engage and appreciate other churches with other perspectives instead of having these rifts.
And, you know, we’re in a society right now where there’s so much vilifying and if anyone who disagrees with us in the slightest way. And so that was something I really wanted to try to push back against, if there was any way of doing so.
Sandra >> Especially if they’re in our own camp. Right. It almost seems like
Sandra >> punish our own for talking with the other. Right?
Sandra >> So what were your hunches? I mean, what did you suspect? You had to frame the question? What were your hunches going in that you thought might be influencing where people landed?
Lucas >> Yeah, I started with three as I was sort of thought about my time observing the elder board. I was sort of going, okay, what did I see there? And it seemed to me that the one and none of these I think if you stop and think about cognitive bias, you think about how we approach questions and how we come up with our answers.
Anyone who’s done any kind of research in psychology are going to be aware of some of these factors at one level. One is that our past influences the way that we see the present and the future. And so.
Sandra >> Everybody. Right?
Sandra >> Not just the “others.”
Lucas >> No, it’s true for all of us. So I was interested in, okay, what are the experiences within those churches that may have shaped the way that they approached the question? The second one was thinking about how do they view everybody outside of the church? So how do they view culture. Is culture an enemy? Is culture something that they’re trying to influence this culture? Something to run away from? What is kind of their posture towards cultural engagement?
It seemed to me that churches would be really influenced by it if they thought a position or a view reflected too similarly to the culture. And if culture was an evil, that might be something that they would run away from. Conversely, if they thought, how do you engage the culture, they might be more inclined to take a position that in some ways they someone might say, reflects the culture. So what is the dynamic there?
And then thirdly was what’s their chosen biblical hermeneutic?
One of the realities of you know, for years, you know, when I first started going back to the data was back in 2006, I was introduced to this idea that there’s a there are different ways of reading Scripture, that there are actually different lenses that we all bring to the interpretive exercise. And so I was interested in what are the underlying either conscious or even subconscious hermeneutics that these churches have adopted? And are they even aware of them as they’re seeking to interpret and then apply the Scriptures.
And so those were the three.
Sandra >> Only at churches like within Orthodox Christianity, correct?
Lucas >> Right. Yeah, correct. Yeah. So when I started it was yeah, exactly. It was elder-led, conservative kind of from that Bible Church DNA.
Sandra >> Okay, and talk to us.
Kay >> I just want to say I love so much that you’ve done this and you just describing those churches. I think I’ve been in all of those churches.
Kay >> All of those churches. I mean, I can think of one church that I was in that I think they feared dealing with this. Really, sort of a hidden agenda that the elders would deal with if something came up. But they didn’t really want to come up with a paper on it, a position on it. They just sort of avoided it.
Another church, the elder group, tried to do this, and it all kind of fell apart, and nothing really happened. And, you know, I’ve been in the churches that you know, you can’t call a woman a minister much less a pastor, you know? So I feel like I’ve sort of been the gamut that you’re talking about. But all of these are definitely orthodox conservative churches.
Sandra >> Yeah. Believe the Bible, but woo! Oh, yeah. Okay.
Sandra >> So you said hermeneutics, plural.
Sandra >> Can you can you kind of give us some approaches like a people who have a high view of Scripture, what are some approaches you’ve seen them take to Scripture?
Lucas >> Yeah, I think I mean, I think there’s two ways of thinking about hermeneutics. One is kind of in a formal academic sense. And then one is just the reality is, as we were saying earlier, is that we all have a hermeneutic that we’re bringing to Scripture based on who we are and our own experience and even personality. Right? All of those things, how we’re wired comes in to how we interpret Scripture.
But I think it’s important that what hermeneutics does is it’s acknowledging that there’s a gap between Scripture as God has breathed it. And that is as all of these churches that I looked at was confessed to, is that it is inherent, infallible, the Word of God.
But there’s a gap between that the Word of God as it is, and then my interpretation, my understanding that that is not infallible. And with so there’s the informal reality of that. Then there’s the, the more formal and there’s a lot of different research now, and it’s been going on for quite some time. There’s been something that scholars have been aware of for a long time.
But how we interpret Scripture, even within that high view of Scripture, can differ. So you have different models. For example, you have some that are like the redemptive historical model. You have a philosophical and theological model, you have historical literal model or cultural, you know, looking at the context. So these are different ways of approaching the Scripture in order to understand it, and then to interpret it and then to apply it.
And what I found from my own experience was a lot of times that’s just not really realized. It’s not known even by elders, other leaders within the church. What they’ve been given is often assumed to be the only model that there is. And so I was interested in looking at these different churches and going, okay, which one are you actually leaning on for your interpretation, and do you realize it?
Sandra >> So talk to us then about how do you frame it? Like so you got a question. How what’s the best approach? Where are the best practices? How am I going to come up with the data? How do you go about it?
Lucas >> Yeah, I chose three churches that I was familiar with that I had connection with in some way. And that all had, as I said, a very similar DNA. On paper all three of the churches would look very similar. They all had very similar histories in terms of like coming out of that Bible Church tradition. And all three of them in the last ten years had gone through a deliberate conversation. These were all elder-led churches among the elders.
Revisiting this question, how should women be serving within the church? What is the Scripture say? And yet all three landed in different places, and that’s what fascinated me.
So you had one church that after this process said, no, we want to say women should can be pastors, they could be elders like Scripture supports that. We’ve read it wrong essentially for all these years because they’re coming from very traditional male dominated leadership. And so they, you know, using the language of egalitarian, they said we’re going to be an egalitarian church
Then the second church that I looked at, they went through another, you know, their own process. And they said, well, we want women to be pastors. We want them to teach and to preach, but we’re still going to reserve elder for only men. So it’s sort of like this, this next step.
And then the third church that I looked at, they went through a process and said, we’re going to stay with our traditional conservative reading of Scripture. And so to this day, they do not permit women to be elders or pastors, and they would never use that language, Kay, to your point, you know, not even women Ministers, much less Pastors.
You had three churches that all had their own process. That were all very similar, and yet landed in three different places.
And so what I did for my research was really just try to embed myself in the culture of these churches as much as I could.
Now came a lot of interviews. I talked to everybody that I could convince to talk to me within those churches, within their leadership, their pastoral staff, their ministry staff, the elders who are part of these decisions. I tried to avail myself of anything that they had published about their decisions, any of that process that was available online. And just try to understand as best I could their history, what their process looked like. And through those conversations, unearth some of those influences, factors that I suspected were there.
Sandra >> And so what did you learn?
Lucas >> Yeah, I mean, what I learned is that yes, there are influencing factors. This isn’t a surprise in one sense, but what I found with those churches is, and I kind of take up each one individually if I can.
So, you know, one of them, I call them the leadership church. This was a church that, you know, as they set about to have this conversation, they started with this question of why do we want to have this conversation?
And they are a church that really wanted to empower women to live out the full potential of their leadership. They believe that that they wanted to unlock the leadership potential of the women within their church that they felt and believed had been stifled and limited for a long time.
If you look at these three factors, experience, cultural engagement and biblical hermeneutic. For them, it really began with the experience and so what happened was they had started—they had women on staff who are uniquely gifted and leadership and teaching. And over time, this began to press on their convictions because they saw God using these women in really powerful and dramatic ways. And so that led them to revisit their biblical hermeneutic.
They said, we see these women they have these gifts. They’re leading, and they’re teaching. Okay, is it possible that we need to rethink the way that we’re reading Scripture? And so there was an openness as they then approached the question with Scripture.
And so they didn’t go into it trying to, you know, say, this is what we want to find within Scripture. But there was this, again, this revisiting process because of what their experience led them to.
And so they began with experience that then began to shift the way that they looked at scripture and they began to investigate different hermeneutical models. And as they were looking at their biblical hermeneutic, they were open to other models.
And one that they wanted to look at was static. It was very much frozen in time. If Paul says that this is happening, then that’s what should be happening today.
And the other model was a what you might call a trajectory model. And this is looking at our Scripture from the beginning and through the end how there’s a progression of greater freedom, more grace, or a different expressions of grace throughout Scripture.
And so that openness to other hermeneutical models then began to change their conversation.
And in the midst of that, it also made them because they weren’t afraid of the culture. While there were some who were pushing back and saying, look, you’re just buying into what the culture is telling you. This is during the MeToo movement.
They were saying, Actually, we’re just not afraid of the culture. We want to be able to engage the culture. And again, that allowed them to have these open conversations in good faith. I would say like one of the descriptions they gave me repeatedly was that they wanted to be open, open minded, and they wanted to be open hearted around these conversations and allow the Spirit to lead them and guide them.
And so it was very open and they took a lot of time. There’s a lot of prayer involved.
And so it began with looking at their experience with women who were just demonstrating great leadership and teaching. And that then influenced the way that they that they read the scriptures and the hermeneutic models that they were open it.
The second church, I’ll call it like the missional church, and this is one that they were interested in how do we make sure that we are engaging with the culture? So they began with the culture where they were not afraid of the culture. They wanted to engage the culture.
And as part of that conversation, they wondered, are we are we a safe place for women? And that they begin to have conversations with women on staff and even women from other ministries and discovered that women didn’t feel safe often within their church. The women felt stifled, that they felt limited, they felt disrespected and undervalued. And they gave a lot of stories around how that was communicated to them from the leadership even. And so there was a real.
Lucas >> Yeah. It was really heartbreaking for them. And so, you know, you have this moment where the elders are sitting down with these women and are hearing these stories from them. And there’s really just this conviction and a heart of repentance that comes over the whole elder board going, we have not treated these women the way that they should as sisters in Christ.
And so for them, the conversation sort of began with the cultural and then moved to experiential because now they’re aware of how women were treated and how they felt within the church. And that then again led to this openness when it came to how are we going to read the scriptures to make sure that we’re honoring women and valuing them the way that they should be?
And then the third church really began with experience as well. And for the third church, you know, their past is very much part of their identity. It’s who they are. And so because of that, they look at the past as a buffer against the dangers of the culture. And so there’s really no gap between how Scripture has been interpreted in the past and the truth of Scripture. So that whole idea of a hermeneutic and that gap between what God’s Word said and then understanding and interpretation is all but lost.
So the past then becomes very much the hermeneutic for how they approach Scripture. And it becomes a buffer and a defense from the culture that they want to make sure doesn’t begin to permeate the church.
And so you have these influencing factors with all three churches, but in all three different ways, and it leads to different interpretations of the scriptures in different applications, again, in all three ways.
And let me just say, I have great respect for all these churches. My research was never intended to, you know, in any way denigrate or hurt anyone in these churches. I have great respect for each one of them. I simply wanted to observe and say, okay, what are the processes that you are going through? What are those factors that you may not even be aware of that are playing a part in how you’re making these decisions?
Sandra >> So you’ve been doing a bunch of consulting with churches since. What’s your advice now based on your findings?
Lucas >> You know, the questions that I would start with, one is why do you want to have this conversation? I think that the you know, the motivation behind it really does, again, influence a lot of how you’re going to approach the conversation.
So if your elder board or your leadership team, whoever it is within your church, I will say you need to know that you’re on the same page in terms or at least understanding what the motivation is. What is it that you want to get out of this process?
With each one of those churches what I appreciated was that they did each have this shared sense of why. The first church wanted to, each one of them wanted to be true to Scripture. Be clear about that. But the first church was saying, hey, we see a missed opportunity with really unlocking women’s potential leadership. So there was that motivating factor.
The second one was, we want to be a church that’s safe for women and missional in that sense. We want to be true to Scripture. So what is that going to look like for us?
And the third church said We want to be true to Scripture, and for them they wanted to be true to their past. That was their driving value.
So why is it that you want to engage this conversation? I mean, you have to be very honest with yourself about that.
I think if you’re not honest with that piece of it, then you can’t answer the second question, which is, are you willing to change your mind? Are you willing to be pushed? Are you willing to consider other perspectives genuinely? Right?
One of the churches that I consulted with, they realized that they were at a place where some of those on their leadership board were simply when they asked that question, when they pushed, they said, no, we’re not. We’re not willing to we know what the outcome of this deliberation is going to be, what this investigation will be. So they realized they had to table the discussion. It just wasn’t going to be done in good faith.
And so I think starting with why and then are you willing to really engage in this investigation in good faith, being willing to change your mind, being willing to be challenged and not to vilify everybody who disagreed with you. All right, that’s all part of that.
And then third part of that, that advice I give is that you have to take your time if you’re going to have a good process for making this kind of a decision, having this kind of deliberation, then you have to take the time necessary. One of the churches that I consulted with, they felt a time crunch and they tried to really push the discussion as quickly as possible.
And it’s when you’re coming from a tradition that oftentimes these churches have long histories, even if it’s a newer church, you have people who have long histories in Bible churches or conservative churches that only have seen it in one way.
If you try to change something quickly, or even if the process is done too quickly, you simply don’t allow space for more consideration, more deliberation, more exposure, to different ideas. And frankly, you end up losing credibility with those people who know you make the decision.
Lucas >> I think that credibility is a big part of it. I always encourage churches. At some point you have to think about how you’re going to be transparent with your church around the conversation. If you try to have this conversation all in back rooms, and then come out with a decision—whether they love the decision or not—you again, you’re going to hurt your credibility. You’re going to hurt really just the overall health of your church because there are going to be people who are going to question. And they’re going to be hurt that they weren’t at least involved or at least have a voice.
Sandra >> You didn’t even ask me.
Lucas >> You didn’t even ask me. It will feel very authoritative, very heavy handed, even if you have all the greatest rationale in the world.
Even if you spent two years, if you didn’t let people in on the process, you’re going to end up hurting your church. One of the churches that I talked with, one of their regrets was—and I think they went through a really good process overall—but they said we didn’t involve the congregation, we didn’t involve the membership early enough.
And it wasn’t that they needed to have an all congregational meeting, where everybody was able to grab a microphone. But along the way, being intentional about letting people know, hey, we’re having this conversation. Here’s why, here’s why we think it matters, and then informing them and updating them along the way. Giving people space to think and to respond at times is really vital if you’re going to try to maintain that unity of the church.
Sandra >> So I can echo that. I talked to a pastor who said we went through this whole process. We’re happy with how it ended. But if we had it all to do over, we would do a lot better job of communicating. Even, here are the books the elders are reading. Here’s we’re discussing this in this six month period—just more of a transparency about how they were doing it rather than we, the officials are going to come down from on high with a decision you have to live with.
He’s like, you know, we were wrestling, honestly, but we should all let our people know, yeah, and maybe they could have wrestled to even if they if we weren’t asking them their opinions, they would have had at least the same resources.
Speaking of which, what are some resources that you used in the process?
You know, where I began was one, there’s just there’s so much research out there that’s available. If you do a little bit of research, starting with just the experience—how experience shapes the way that we interpret the present and the way that we then respond or move into the future.
You know, one of the things that I suspected as I was looking into this was for a church like the church that I would say is more traditional and conservative and have held their position. One of the things that I was interested in is how when you look at your history as a church, it’s really easy to go well, this is almost like a sunk cost. You know, this is how we honor the past. This is who we’ve always been.
Sandra >> Talk about the sunk cost, because that’s not a familiar term to everybody. But I think it’s a really important one in this conversation.
Lucas >> Yeah. So the sunk cost fallacy is really just this idea of a bias where the more we have invested in something, the less likely we are to change our direction. Right? So I have this investment that I’ve made, and I’ve put a bunch of money into it, and I see it going downhill, but I can’t live with the idea that I’ve put all this investment into it so I actually double down.
And so this is a, you know, it’s a fallacy that we buy into. And I think it actually plays out. It’s a very common one when it comes to like what we’ve experienced. So we’ve experienced something where we’ve said this is what’s right, this is what’s true, this is how we have to think. This is how we have to interpret scripture.
And over time, even if we start to think, oh, maybe we didn’t have that right, we can’t afford the loss. We feel the loss of the people that has taught that who came before us, we feel the loss of those who have invested and all of who our church has been for so long.
And in this way we feel like it’s dishonoring and it’s a hard decision to realize, you know, I want to change my mind because I have all this investment in who we’ve always been. And so that was something that I think, you know, you have to be aware of if you do have that long tradition and you’re really tied to. And for a lot of good reasons, like who your church has been, there’s a lot of good there.
Yeah. And are you losing that? Are you willing to do that? So there’s a lot of research on that and just that reality, that one. And that’s one of the biases that I think creeps in.
Also just within cultural engagement, obviously, there’s a lot of different things you can read. And Dr. Bock has Cultural Intelligence, that’s one of the more recent ones.
But, you know, some of the books that I found really helpful, the first one that comes to mind is The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt. That’s a book that just talks about how we come to thinking about different topics in the world and the different biases that we bring to them, almost like different flavors that we have. And just being aware of those is really helpful for having these types of conversations within obviously within the topic itself.
One of them there really made an influence on me from the very beginning was R.T. France’s Women in the Church’s Ministry. This is based on a series of lectures that he did, and the subtitle is “A Test Case from Biblical Interpretation.”
And what I love about R.T. France is just his candor throughout these lectures. And he really approaches this question of how are you interpreting Scripture. And he kind of calls us to task to say, you know, you are not as infallible in your interpretation as you think.
I think it’s a great place to open a conversation for anybody who wants to revisit this, just to say, Hey, let’s just take a step back and really consider how much do you really know, how much certainty should you really have?
Sandra >> And that didn’t make you walk away deconstructing it all?
Lucas >> It didn’t. It didn’t. It actually was really, maybe it’s because I’m a philosophy major at heart. But actually, I found it really refreshing that he was willing to say we can uphold inerrancy of Scripture and not give our interpretations that same level of credit. And I think that’s really important. God’s truth is true and Scripture is true, but my interpretation is not 100% accurate. Right? And so there’s always room to grow and to learn.
The other two that are just kind of really well rounded and again, you know, I came at this not trying to argue for a position. But I would say wanting to just get a well-rounded exposure to the conversation, the two just as a starting place, one is Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. This is John Piper and Wayne Grudem.
And then you have to turn around and read Discovering Biblical Equality: Biblical, Theological, Cultural and Practical Perspectives. Ronald Pierce and Cynthia Westfall, editors of that.
So those are two works that are really in dialog with each other, not always in the most friendly of terms, but they are.
But it’s a great way to just go, okay, what are the different voices? What are the different topics and pieces of these arguments? Just as a starting place.
Sandra >> And they’re both within the inerrancy camp.
Lucas >> Both within the inerrancy camp. But I think that’s really important to see that you have both sides that, you know, they’re both conservative. They’re both orthodox. They’re both going to be within that. you know, like you said, Orthodox. But they’re going to see things very, very differently. And that’s a healthy thing to see and to be exposed to.
Sandra >> Yeah. So you said that one piece of advice is, you know, even why are you asking some questions? Is there anything else like inviting women in? Does that make a difference?
Lucas >> Absolutely. Yeah. No, I appreciate you asking the question. Yeah. So part of taking more time is to give yourself what I missed that earlier. Part of what I was thinking about in terms of who are the voices that you’re inviting in, you know. So it gives you more time to read more broadly, ask broader perspectives and being open to different perspectives and open to different voices, I think that’s really important again.
So going along those lines of those two different books that I read recommended there is you’ve got to have voices from different perspectives in different camps in order to really understand and appreciate all the different angles of the conversation.
And so, you know, one of the things that the churches that I would say their process was longer. They along the way discovered what different avenues they needed to pursue. They gave themselves that space to go, okay, you know what—because we’re not on a time crunch. I want to run over here and I want to see if we can go down this rabbit hole. Perhaps some sense and invite this person to talk. or to I want to encourage everybody to read this article.
And so they definitely had a much broader scope of exposure than, for example, one of the churches that I talked to that tried to do literally in three months. And it was literally a three-month process. And because of that, there were so few voices. There’s a basically ended up being a debate within the elder board itself.
And it was it was a couple of guys arguing with a couple of guys. And in the end, they didn’t really get anywhere in any sort of healthy way.
So, yeah, no, absolutely. I think you have to have as broad exposure as possible, I think. And you can do that within an orthodox conservative, you know, framework without question. Yeah.
Sandra >> Anything else you want to add we should know?
Lucas >> I mean, I would just encourage anybody who’s looking into this— take the time and this is this is the conversation I think every church should have. If your church hasn’t gotten to this point yet, they need to at some point.
And the reason I think that is because we’re at a time right now where so much is changing with our world rapidly. And there are so many different ethical questions that are coming into churches from every different angle.
This is one, though, that is so as you know, before we got in this call, you were talking about a church that you’re consulting with right now. They’re seeing their church started to get split over this. That’s happening all over the country.
And this is one that if churches are going to be able to be a positive voice, to be sort of light within the culture, then we have to be healthy. And part of that is understanding, not shoving these kinds of conversations under the rug, but bringing them to light and doing so in a way that is going to bring unity and not division even within the church.
And that’s what’s interesting is, you know, I think a lot of times there’s this fear of disunity. And so it’s like, let’s try to shove this under the rug. Let’s not have this conversation. We’re afraid of what this would do to our church.
And I think it’s actually the opposite. I think the healthiest churches are the ones that are going to say, we’re going to lean into the hard conversation but we’re going to do so with humility and we’re going to do so with self-awareness. We’re going to do this with transparency and try to see this as an opportunity for spiritual formation even within your church.
But I think when that becomes the heart of your leadership, then I think that there’s real potential there for at the end of the day, your church being healthier and stronger for it.
And I think there’s an opportunity there that we need to have.
Sandra >> That has ramifications for a lot of other issues. Right?
Lucas >> Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely.
Lucas >> Thank you so much. I appreciate your work. I appreciate you joining us. Dr. Daigle, anything you want to add?
Kay >> I just want to say I totally agree, very much appreciate the research that you’ve done, the time that you spent on this. And it’s a benefit to the church in general. And just saying that for the churches, I can’t speak for them, but when they watch this or when they finally come to the decision to make a decision about this, I think that they will benefit from that, just as you pointed out, that this is an important conversation to have. Shouldn’t just be swept under the rug. It shouldn’t be hurried.
And those are some of the experiences that I had a hurried kind of where the church that it kind of fell apart. And they were trying to hurry because I think some of the elders were going to leave and they were going to need to get new elders who had not done any of the research because it’d only been the circle of the elders involved. And so it was being rushed and they did finally bring a group of us as women in to talk to them.
Kay >> There was division among the women, but many of them had never studied the topic. So they were
Kay >> blind. They were just talking from, this is the way I feel about it. It was nothing about their real biblical research.
Kay >> I really see the value in everything that you brought up. And these practices I think would really be helpful for any church.
So thank you so much for bringing this to light and doing all the work that you did.
Lucas >> That’s my pleasure.
Kay >> We have other videos on church issues that you might be interested in, other podcast on these. So if you go to BeyondOrdinaryWomen.org and look under resources, you will see that we have church issues listed, and that’s where this type of conversation falls in. So I would just encourage any of you out there who are on church staffs, or you’re elders in churches, or you have influence in a church that you bring this up, how important this is and just bring it to the light instead of just trying to hide. Let’s just not deal with it.
Sandra >> Ignore and it’ll go away. If only.
Kay >> Yeah, it’s not the way to go. So thank you and we will look forward to seeing you again on our Beyond Ordinary Women Podcast.
