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It’s Time to Bless Women in Their God-given Leadership Roles

Gideon YutzyLeave a comment

As the great Iain McGilchrist documents in his ponderous yet brilliant book The Master and His Emissary, we use the right side of our brain to perceive and experience. Religion is concerned with the transrational, meaning it embraces logic but also goes beyond it. Religion thrives in intuition, emotion, and experience.

The left brain, in the parlance of McGilchrist’s title, is the Emissary. It belongs to the realm of concept—those things that can be rationalised and categorised. The right brain, by contrast, belongs to percept: that which we enter into as sacred mystery. Left‑brained activities require black‑and‑white, binary thinking. We engage the left brain in the realm of machines and in any activity where the laws of physics are in motion. We are thankful for the left brain’s role in determining the laws of physics, whether a jet’s engine is big enough, for instance.

The problem arises, says McGilchrist, when we switch the roles of the Master (the right brain) and the Emissary (the left brain). When we try to approach mystery with logic, it leads to all sorts of chaos in our society, especially in religion. Humans are not machines. Churches are not machines.

Here is where I wish to make a connection between the brain’s hemispheres and leadership roles in the church. Too often, we elevate the Emissary—left‑brained thinking—in our vision of the ideal church leader. We exalt leaders who can verbally defend the faith, those who can articulate doctrinal traditions with precision. Yet doctrinal purity is subservient to the weightier matters of the right brain, such as mercy and care.

This is where my contention may become contentious. Despite our different understandings of the strengths of women and men, most societies and cultures have agreed that women, more often than men, are well suited for mercy and care. Does it not follow that women would make excellent pastors? This is not to say that no men exhibit pastoral qualities, or that all women do. It is only to say that women, by their very nature, are equally suited for pastoral leadership.

But (our left brain screams) doesn’t Scripture forbid women in church leadership? I have already written some of my thoughts about that and I invite you to read them. Here, I will simply make the plea that we stop using 1 Corinthians 14–“Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak.”–as a proof text. Something else must be going on in that chapter, because earlier both men and women are exhorted to share “a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation.” It would be difficult to do that while remaining silent. This explanation might be helpful in understanding the context.

Sadly, in many circles Christians still hold a strong taboo around women in pastoral roles. Similar to heinous crimes like cannibalism or human sacrifice, the topic is avoided—or, if it is addressed at all, spoken of only in hushed whispers. And I get it: change cannot happen overnight. Sometimes centuries, not days, are needed for societal change to take place.

Yet hasn’t this discussion already dragged on for centuries? Someone may express resistance to same‑sex marriage on the grounds that the church has only been talking about it since “five minutes ago.” Whether or not that is true of same‑sex marriage, the discussion on women in leadership is as old as the hills. It has existed as long as Scripture itself. Consider just one chapter—Romans 16. Phoebe was a deacon. Priscilla was a co‑worker with St. Paul. Junia was an apostle among apostles.

The church has not reached a consensus prohibiting women in leadership roles. If anything, a pattern of suppression of female leaders has developed. Julian of Norwich, possibly the first woman to write in English, wrote authoritatively and prolifically about the Christian faith, yet the church hid her writings and even actively blocked their publication. Likewise, Junia’s name in Romans 16 has at times been deliberately mistranslated as a man’s name. More recently, a woman who founded an Anabaptist Bible college was asked by the all‑male board to step aside as president to make way for a new president—male, of course. I do not know all the details. Perhaps the decision was legitimate and appropriate. But given the church’s past treatment of women, the optics are egregious.

Furthermore, we deceive ourselves if we say that no female members—half of the church—should hold any leadership roles whatsoever. The undeniable reality is that women already lead. Leadership has many components, including organisation, mentoring, teaching, and articulating a vision for the future. Even in congregations most intent on reserving leadership for men, women lead. Why not formalise those roles, and even ordain the women who are already exercising them?

A critical reader may say that I, as someone who has traded a more cautious church for a less cautious one, am overly chipper with my newfound liberty. They may be right. I will even go one step further and say that I am probably coming off like the ex‑Mennonite who cannot stop gushing about the benefits of ayahuasca in curing her anxiety and judgmentalism. Let us grant that. Still, is it not better to envision a full‑orbed Christian faith—one that offers life‑giving opportunities for all Christians, men and women alike, to grow and be transformed into the image of Jesus Christ—than to cling to a stultifying belief that is becoming increasingly difficult to defend? That which is no longer prohibited can now be accepted, embraced, and even celebrated.

Let me end on a note of charity. I agree with my more cautious brothers and sisters that men and women are profoundly different. We are all better served by acknowledging and celebrating that reality. In homes and churches, at work and at school, men’s and women’s roles will—and should—look different.

But this should not keep us from experimenting with new roles for either sex. Let each congregation be guided by this question: how are both our men and our women being stretched so that more of God’s glory may flow through them? If a man has a calling and ability to deliver sermons, let him do so. If a woman has a calling and ability to bring in the flowers for the sanctuary, let her do so. But equally, if the Spirit wishes to reverse the roles, we should never allow our left brain to hinder God’s work.

Thus Saith the Lord, Slow Thyself Down

Gideon Yutzy3 Comments

I committed two highly avoidable (and highly costly, for a working family) blunders in the last six months.

However, my frustration did not reach its fever pitch until yesterday. I arrived late for my morning class because: a. I encountered snarls of traffic after dropping the girls off at school and b. I then still took the time to pick up some miscellaneous hardware at the local Screwfix. In my frenzy, I wretchedly parked on a double yellow line, a fact I was not fully cognizant of until I got out of class three hours later, whereupon I found a menacing yellow clamp on my front driver’s side tyre.

After paying the 60-euro fine, I had to wait nearly two hours for ‘yer man’ to come de-clamp me, by which time I was twenty minutes late for my afternoon class on another campus. My English language students were patiently waiting and greeted me with pleasant smiles. I gave them an impromptu lesson on the words clamp, de-clamp, and government overreach.

That was actually the final lapse of judgment in a series of three. I haven’t even told you about the first two:

  1. I hastily put some kind of inferior, off-road fuel into our brand-new lawnmower. Obviously, I was trying to save money, but I had to pay 60 euros to have the fuel lines drained. Just like the de-clamp: 60 euros. That must be my default stupid tax.
  2. Then, the other day in the final lap of the final mowing of the season, I was mowing too close to the conservatory window, which caused a stone to ricochet up and shatter a significant portion of the same.

Esther says it only goes to show I’m not really a fully-functional adult but only posing as one. Actually, what she said was, “This means you are spinning so many plates that a few of them have to shatter.” I said, “Thank you, dear wife, that’s a very charitable reading of the situation.”

But I also think I have absorbed the lie that I am infallible and infinite. The reality is that I am profoundly limited. My plan for the next few years is to earn and learn (finishing a degree in English and Religious Studies, yay!). Moreover, I am trying to pour my attention into my daughters before they cross the Rubicon into adolescence, not that I expect all communication to be cut off at that point, just that it might become more complicated. All these endeavors require serious energy and time and I don’t have much left over.

At any rate, last evening as I did the examen*, the Lord said, slow the ____ down! John Mark Comer, citing Dallas Willard, said that the only spiritual advice we really need to follow is, “Ruthlessly eliminate hurry.” I try to take that onboard, more because Willard said it than Comer. Somehow, he comes across as superficial, but I know that’s a harsh evaluation. At any rate, I did read Comer’s book on ruthlessly eliminating hurry–albeit on 1.45 speed!.

Several specific actions I could take to train me to slow down:

  1. Set the timer for one minute and do nothing.
  2. Ride out the impulse for checking my phone. Time how long the impulse lasts. Work on building the concentration muscle.
  3. Say out loud several things that could go wrong in any given situation. It sounds stressful, but I think it might help me close the loop between what my subconscious is trying to tell me and the realm of the fully conscious.

* No, I don’t have elite spiritual practices, the examen is just something I stumbled across through an odd sequence of events, i.e., reading the above-mentioned J.M. Comer, as well as his holiness, the Bishop of Waterford, recommending it. It really does work. Surprise, surprise, right? It’s not like it hasn’t been around for 5 centuries.

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The other morning I read a news headline out loud as we ate breakfast: “There were three executions in the US in the last week.”

My 10-year-old daughter’s instinctive response: “How are the bad guys ever going to learn if the government kills them?”

My 7-year-old daughter’s equally fast rejoinder: “Yeah, and don’t cops know the murders have a bad mental illness!”

I smiled paternally but could not help agreeing. The catalogue of explanations for their responses surely includes the following:

  1. They are speaking from the God-given sense of right and wrong.
  2. Their parents indoctrinated them;
  3. They have lived in western Europe for too long.

Sorry for all the lists in this post.

Hell Maybe

Gideon Yutzy1 Comment

A few years ago I wrote a post on my views about hell. It was written–you’ll pardon the pun–in the heat of the moment, but nearly 4 years on I still hold to the basic points. Nonetheless, here is an addendum to the piece: I believe hell exists as a path people can go down.

Now, that does not mean that I disagree with Karl Barth when he says that the event of Jesus of Nazareth was so cosmic, so final, so extensive, so resounding, so loving, that ultimately it can exclude no one. Call me a buttercup, but I still believe that. And not only is it a belief, it is a guiding belief.

Yet humans can enter, for a time, a Gollum-like existence in which their humanity is scarcely recognisable. When we gnash our teeth in the outer darkness of un-humanness, it is a serious and ghastly state of affairs, whether it lasts for a minute or a million years.

As the ECT crowd is wont to point out, Jesus says a (helluva) lot about hell. Interestingly though, the inhabitants of hell in his telling are religious and respectable. They are the rich (Matthew 25). They are bitter, joyless hypocrites pretending to be religious teachers (Matthew 23:33), though he does also address unrepentant, unbelieving sinners in general (Mark 9:43; Matthew 10:28).

One final point. Because there are already four discrete terms for hell within the canon of Scripture (see my original post), perhaps in the spirit of the tradition, we could keep experimenting with the language around the concept. Think, for instance, of the phrase, “Their humanity is dying within them,” as opposed, “He’s going to hell.” This would broaden the category, in faithfulness to Jesus, to include respectable people.

Living in an extended state of diminishing humanity is terrifying, whether that comes through worship of money, technology, reputation, or whatever else–more terrifying perhaps than the most vivid medieval depictions of a literal fire.

Create, Don’t Just Consume

Gideon YutzyLeave a comment

In keeping with my recent resolve to create something–to create anything, even if it seems like rubbish–I’m going to exercise the discipline needed to write for half an hour this morning before I consume anything online.

Running has featured heavily for me in the past several weeks. Sometimes I run with two other guys, Rudy and Carl. They both run faster than me, but they never make an issue of it. In fact, I make more of an issue of it than they do. We’ll be running and I’ll say, “I’m sorry that I’m creating a bottleneck.” Usually they don’t seem to know what to do with comments like that. We just run in silence for about one kilometer after I say that.

Carl has been teaching me about pacing. As a relative newcomer to running, I tend to hit my stride and then speed up. But knowing when to hold back is fundamental to good running. For several years now I’ve wanted to run the half marathon in under 2 hours. The three of us have signed up to run the Viking Marathon (this Sunday!) and the other day we decided to run a half marathon in our training. Lo and behold, we did it in 1:55! At around 15k I started surging ahead, but Carl reined me back in. It was good that he did, because I’m almost certain we wouldn’t have come in under 2 hours if he hadn’t. Then I would have had to make my bottleneck comment and it would have all gotten pretty awkward again.

Running captures my imagination for several reasons, but one that I’ve been thinking about recently is that it’s distinctly human. AI can’t really touch it. I’m not against AI and Chat GPT per se; I just happen to agree with the computer scientist and artist (intriguing combination) Jaron Lanier when he says that any technology that doesn’t serve humans is a contradiction in terms, a technology that should be abolished.

Lanier also believes that AI companies should pay the individuals they harvest information from. Because if you think about it, no matter how much AI and Large Language Models bedazzle us, they never do more than synthesize what humans have worked hard to produce. So why shouldn’t the humans be compensated for their efforts? For example, Lanier suggested that if AI “creates” something and incorporates a picture of your shoes in its creation, say from a picture you posted on your Facebook account, then you should get a few pennies for even that. He calls it data dignity or data as labour. I think his instincts are right. Whenever I use Chat GPT now, I’ve started asking it to go and remunerate the source where they got their information from. Heck, it might even draw from this blog post one day. Chat GPT, I ask you: will you be man enough to pay me if you scour my blog for data?

Also, Chat GPT is an asinine name. We should all start calling it information collector.

I say with Cat Stevens, hey, baby, baby, it’s a wild world. But as long as we can create, we are still human. Chat GPT/Information Collector can never create, it can only curate and maybe synthesize. The form of creative expression we as humans pursue is secondary; that we regularly do it is what’s important. Our technology has to serve our creativity but if we cease creating, our world will implode. And that won’t only be the fault of our technology, it will also be our fault for abandoning our task to be divine image bearers and create.