*whispers*

What if the conversation about gender roles in the church isn't so much about gender itself but about how we form community & what we think that community is supposed to do?

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised at this point, but I continue to be amazed by how little we question the shape of modern ministry.

When a church operates like a business or government, it will have little need for spiritual mothers b/c our culture understands family formation as a private (vs. public) endeavor. "Mothering" is exclusively biological, directed toward home. It's not a mode of being elsewhere.

When a church functions like family, however, spiritual mothers will be *essential* b/c there can be no new life without fathers AND mothers.

ISTM that the sidelining of women's gifts tells you a lot about the way a ministry understands its mission. Folks will disagree w/ me but I also don't think the debate should focus fundamentally on ordination.

The questions are much more about the cultures we're building & what those cultures reveal about our sense of mission & vocation. How we relate to the gifts & contributions of the women in our midst tell us whether we think they're necessary to the community's life & well-being.

So the questions I ask are:

"Who are the mothers of your church?"
"How are you honoring & equipping them?"
"Where does your time, money, & attention go?"
"Is your church operating as the household of God or Big Box ministry?

Caveat: "Family" is doing a lot of work in this thread & I don't presume that we naturally understand all that the family is supposed to be. To be clear, family =/= nuclear suburban family model of domestic consumption.

Instead, I'm using family to describe a lifegiving community of distinct individuals bound together by shared begottenness & with a shared vocation.