This is my favorite of the images that appeared when I typed “Purpose Driven Life” into the Unsplash search bar:
I don’t know what it has to do with anything, but I didn’t like all the pictures of people running and jumping in the air. None of the proffered images seemed to have anything to do with what one might call “church” or “Christianity” so that is certainly a curious point of data to tuck away and ponder.
I don’t know much about the SBC, except that they have an amazing missions board—or at least did when I was a child—but I do love that a lot of the InterWeb is losing its tiny mind because they are having their annual convention. Dr. Kevin M. Young on Twitter, for example, had this to say:
Farwell, SBC #SBC2023
He also posted this meme:
I like Dr. Kevin M Young as a Twitter follow because he’s so cheerful, for one thing, and he never fails to articulate, clearly and simply, what professing progressive “Christians” think about things. If you don’t want to wade through piles of tweets, you can just pop over and you’ll get the gist.
And then there was that person who said that all women in all SBC churches should stop doing any “ministry” to show them all. If there are no women doing anything, then all the churches will collapse she explained. Except that no one has ever said that women can’t do ministry. Nor that they can’t do paid work in churches. The question is whether or not they can preach the sermon.
And finally, apparently, if you don’t let them preach the sermon, according to someone else on Twitter, you’re basically worshipping the patriarchy:
What a cornucopia of unseriousness. Or, to put it another way, what a fatuous time to be alive.
I shouldn’t be, but I am astonished that the SBC persisted in removing Saddleback from fellowship. (Is that how to say it? Something about friendly agreement?) From the conversation online, it seemed like maybe it would be a close call, but then it wasn’t. Only 11% of the convention voted for them to stay. And this is not because all SBC pastors and congregations want to “control women.” I don’t want to tell anyone what to do, but the daily barrage of slander about people who think that men and women can’t, or at least shouldn’t do all the same jobs is not a good look.
But it’s not surprising. The Purpose Driven Life is about the depth of most self-professing progressive Christians today. They read it, or books like it, and discovered that whatever they were already wanting to do was actually totally fine. Then, when they trotted over to the Bible, what they found was a text incomprehensible to them. Many decades of bland and shallow teaching about how to improve the church finances and how to achieve a flourishing small group culture and what did anyone expect would happen? Given the opportunity to jettison the essentials of the faith, most people, turned ever inwards toward themselves, can’t fathom another way of being.
Overlay that with the dark specter of disenchanted, technologically oriented disembodiment and most women don’t have any way of making sense of a world where they might not get to do whatever they want. There is no meaning or purpose outside of “leadership.” There is no true communion of men and women around the Lord’s Table. The only way to be a person is to be in charge, or at least to be an influencer. And so to tell half the population that they are not allowed to ascend to the pulpit, just because of their biology which none of them care about anyway, feels dehumanizing.
But the real inhuming (paging Terry Pratchett) happened a long time ago when Rick Warren didn’t think the Word of God was good enough or precious enough to feed his people. The real problem isn’t that women want to preach, it is that there is no preaching. No one is being fed anything of substance—at least not across Rick Warren’s many campi.
I’m grateful that the SBC is fighting the good fight. As usual, I’m praying for every single denomination in the West, that they would rediscover the Bible and start to read it—seriously, and not with endless Twitter breaks.
Have a nice day!
Two things. One is Galatians 5:17, which I reckon must be the most anti-Pride verse in the Bible or close to it:
"For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would."
People, apparently, don't like a religion that tells them they don't get to do whatever they want.
This part triggered me: There is no meaning or purpose outside of “leadership.” At the big corporation where I was an engineer for 29 years, they constantly harped on the "Leadership at All Levels" theme. It is hard for me to even say it without laughing. I don't know who invented it, but it really warped our company. People cursed with the disease of "Management" or "Leadership" assume that all other employees aspire to be like them. My manager once told me, in attempting me to move away from the technical career path into a management path: "This is a no-brainer. If you have people working under you, you get to claim all their work as yours in addition to any work you happen to do." It was not appealing to me. A quote comes to mind:
"It is not in the nature of politics that the best men should be elected. The best men do not want to govern their fellowmen." (George MacDonald)
Anyhow, at every performance review, we were required to list what we wanted our next 3 promotional assignments to be. But I didn't want any promotional assignment. I wanted to be allowed to keep doing the tasks at which I excelled, at my same position. This was NOT a popular answer.
My point is simply that it is possible to do crucial work without being in a leadership position.
Your writing is always good, but this essay is especially powerful. Each paragraph hits hard.