Churches who don’t allow women to be elders

[TheBeautifulMoors]

We’ve recently joined a new church and my main niggle initially was that it’s not really diverse.

Then I found out that people who haven’t yet been baptised cannot take communion.

However, my biggest concern now is that women are not allowed to be elders.
Apparently, this is what the “New Testament” teaches us”. I grew up in a Methodist church and my mum was one of the elders. I probably shouldn’t be surprised but I really am.

Their children/youth programme is very good and they guide the children well. There are also quite a lot of children, which isn’t that common in many churches today.

Do you attend a church with this belief? Or would this out you off?

I prayed about the communion bit and was ready to let that go because DC can have communion at home but I don’t know if I want DD growing up in a church where women can’t be elders, even though I have no intention at all of becoming one.

Slavery and misogyny have always been wrong- and if god is so all knowing he would have known that- not even a heads up in the bible.

I think there is actually. However, there are plenty of parts, yes, which are brutal. I think the thing to remember is that the bible consists of people telling others about their experiences of God. God is right in there in every circumstances but we have not experienced the exact context or lived in those exact times and through those exact circumstances ourselves. It is narrative to engage with and think on but complete understanding is challenging from a modern perspective. And slavery and misogyny are by no means restricted to the biblical people and times - it is completely cross cultural, ditto warfare. These things are a very common, pretty much universal, feature within human society, pagan and Christian.

And regarding slavery, misogyny and warfare being just about pretty universal across human cultures I think we need to not shy away from the fact that is people that are very much like ourselves in lots of ways that have capacity for such hatred and atrocities. In fact it is the 'othering' and viewing as somehow less than human of other human beings that allows this type of thing to happen as people are categorised as 'the enemy'.

Yes it would put me off and in fact has done. I have had quite a bit of involvement with NewFrontiers over the years as my husband grew up in their churches. The 'no women elders' thing caused me a lot of turmoil in my 20s amd I felt just so at odds with what it seemed they wanted women to be.

After a few years elsewhere we wentback to NF for reasons that are often cited - 'vibrant' church with modern worship, lots of young families and great provision for children, friendly atmosphere. Some people wave away the 'no women' thing saying that it's no big deal unless you'e a woman who wants to be in church leadership. But complementarianism cuts through so much of what they believe about everything - gender roles in the home, marriage, how acceptable it is seen as for women to have a 'career'/work full time, how women's gifts are nurtured and developed and how they are included. Ultimately I felt very uncomfortable with it all and like a complete outlier (have a career, work full time, identify as a feminist, have an egalitarian marriage) and left. Raising concerns about this stuff was often brushed off and silenced. I also found out they were very homophobic and had pushed people out of the church for being LGBT. They had pushed people out of the church when their marriages broke down too. I would never attend a complementarian church now. Better for my faith and wellbeing!

Yes, slavery has been widespread, but the bible is supposed to be a handbook for moral living.
The bible condones slavery, misogyny and homophobia.
God had a chance to tell people these things are wrong- and he didn't bother.
He too busy being precious and having hissy fits.

Speakout God, via Jesus, asks us to love our fellow humans as much as ourselves. That is incompatible with slavery, misogyny and homophobia- we would never want to abuse ourselves.
He also gave us free will - we can choose to love Him and other people, or turn our backs on Him and his reasonable requests, and continue our arrogance and abuse.
You also seem to be misunderstanding the Bible. It is not a documentary factual history in totality - it is a mixture of allegory, history, poetry, moral tales, and some lovely Jewish jokes (the story of Jonah sulking after God spares the Ninevans as a result of his own reluctant preaching is priceless), and it is also a record of humanity’s gradually increasing understanding of the nature of God.
Primitive tribes 5,000 years ago saw God as some powerful fearsome authority figure who would smite their enemies, and attributed their battle victories to Him. By the first century AD, and particularly in the incarnation as Jesus, people began to grasp the all loving, self sacrificial nature of God. God Himself has not changed - we have.

@Babdoc I like your post - expresses a lot of truth so well!

Slavery in ancient Israel was nothing like the African slave trade. In Biblical Israel there was no welfare state, so if a man found himself unable to pay his debts, he could offer himself as an indentured servant until his debts were worked off. This allowed him to keep his family together and maintain his self - respect. After 7 years, regardless of whether he had worked off his debts, he had to be set free.

Much as I disagree with the church on the matter, that would be because churches are one of the "certain environments".

they are not necessarily saying women are less capable/inferior etc (though maybe you have to find out more from their attitude as a whole), just think that God has said for certain jobs to be done by men.

I am pretty clear that God has said no such thing. A bunch of men writing in a period when it was commonplace to assume that men were more valuable, important, and educated might have decided that God ought to have said it, but he/she/it/they didn't. Much of any scripture, whether Christian or not, reflects the social standards of the time in which it is written. That shouldn't mean that those social standards have to be carried forward, and nor should it mean that the underlying message is invalidated by antiquated social standards.

OP, if the church that you have found does not represent the values that you hold, find one that does. Speaking purely personally, I would not feel that a church could guide children - either male or female - well in the modern world when they define leadership as male.

Slavery is slavery.

It's either ok or it isn't.

Ah, the death of nuance :)

What is described is what is called modern slavery today.

How do you imagine these people became indebted to these people? You didn't imagine they were ever coerced or tricked or forced into the situation?

Don't have any experience of attending a church with that attitude, and if I ever came across one, I wouldn't go back. I have a big issue with religions which promote misogyny and sexism in all their glory alongside the God bit, and treat women as second-class citizens. I don't care what it says in the bible (or what they interpret it as saying), because the bible was written not by God or Jesus, but by men.

I haven't been confirmed, so although I do attend church on an irregular basis, no way I would actually take communion. It wouldn't feel right to me and I wouldn't want to do it.

I agree re new frontiers church. Went to one in Bristol as a student and the misogyny was endemic. Bearing in mind this was in the last 8 years btw! You initially think it doesn’t matter if you don’t want to be a pastor and it really does! Went to a conference where the husband spoke about how men should follow the example of Jesus in bravery and speaking out for others. His wife said how women should embrace their caring side and focus on hospitality. Massive emphasis on finding your husband and getting married at 22, getting a “little job” to give up when they had babies at 25. The amount of women in their 20s I know with Russell group degrees who have never had a career beside Teaching Assistant, church admin and CU grad schemes because they want to focus on their marriage is shocking. They were assigning older people to students to do 1:1 Bible studies of course they worked through the boys first! Many other examples over 3 years

I think that whether or not it bothered me would depend on whether it seeped into other aspects of teaching or church life. Complementarianism doesn't have to equal misogyny or sexism. Even the head of the household thing doesn't equal misogyny if you look at what it actually says in the Bible about how the husband should love his wife as Jesus did the Church, ie be willing to sacrifice everything for her. All these things can be and are taken to extremes but don't have to be, so for me it would depend on the context.

Yes to all the women my age having been a TA/worked at the church office/at a CU or similar then quitting work. This was absolutely the case in the NF contexts I have been in. I had one pastor ask me why I worked full time as if this was something he couldn't possibly fathom!

Congregation appauld by sermon on why elders should not be women

Test what they teach against scripture. Don’t take their word for it, and equally don’t have a kneejerk reaction when something is said that you don’t like. We should expect some things that the Bible says to go against culture. Jesus himself wasn’t in the business of making everyone like him - he was nothing if not controversial. Test everything, prayerfully, and with an open mind, against the Bible. If you conclude that what they are teaching is false, then either challenge them on it, or move on.