You wrote:
Could you please explain why your article specifically points to these women?
Because they are the big name teachers with huge followings.
You wrote:
Are you saying that their only teaching ministry should be one of ministry to women about a woman's role in the home?
No - God includes purity, kindness, and sensibility. Not to mention the very qualifications of the older women - reverent behavior, control of the tongue, and self-control. Everything a woman has learned as she has grown older should be passed down to the young women. But I will say that it is my observation that women today teach everything BUT a woman's role in the home.
You wrote:
Or are you saying that because women in audiences everywhere are glorifying these ladies, that these same women are themselves reveling in a ministry outside their families.
I cannot say that the women are "reveling in a ministry outside their families." But I do sense that we have a disturbing trend among Christian women that promotes a mindset that women must get away from their families on a consistent basis to be fulfilled and good and spiritual and all that. Frankly, I get sick and tired about all the "girlfriend time." I just got a brochure wanting me to promote a big girlfriend cruise so we can all laugh and have a good time and be refreshed. Why can't we teach women how to laugh and have a good time and be refreshed in the middle of what God has called us to do? I can't help but think of John the Baptist languishing in prison and sending two of his disciples to Jesus asking, "Are You the Expected One, or do we look for someone else?"
My heart breaks every time I think about that man sitting in that cell - all because He loved Jesus. Well, Jesus sent back an encouraging message to John - "Go and report to John what you have seen and heard: the BLIND RECEIVE SIGHT, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the POOR HAVE THE GOSPEL PREACHED TO THEM. Blessed is he who does not take offense at Me."
Jesus didn't release John from prison or "send him on a cruise to get away." Jesus sent an encouraging word - He let John know that John had not wasted his life - the message he spent his life preaching was right. This had to have been encouraging to John. This had to have brought him much joy and refreshment to him. And as you know, he was beheaded a short time later.
Please understand, I'm not saying that I don't love my girlfriends and that I don't enjoy being with them. But I want to love my family and enjoy being with them more. And I want to help young women find their joy in the Lord and in His priorities for their lives. I want to see them enjoying their husbands and children - and more than girlfriend time.
Also, my pastor husband along with many of his colleagues are concerned that about so many women who return from all these conferences wanting to be a speaker or Bible teacher like so-n-so or counting the days until the next big event - rather than being recharged to serve God in the most sacred place of home.
Another brochure I received a few years ago was called Global Celebration for Women. I was not impressed. It was all about exalting women, calling attention to women, celebrating women.
I think women's conferences can be good IF they focus on God's design for women as outlined in Scripture.
But at this conference there was not one workshop or main session devoted to biblical mothering, grandmothering, being a biblical wife, or the home. Why not?
Across the globe ~ MOST women are mothers and wives. If this was a global celebration for women ~ why not teach on this role that God has not only given to most women, but that most women have accepted?
Instead they were celebrating what God has done for women; they were rejoicing in women's contributions to kingdom building (perhaps they hit it there); they were motivating and valuing women in their giftedness; exciting women for evangelism (I personally believe that we need to excite women to evangelize their own children); and equipping women to touch the world.
Not a word about touching the world through raising a godly heritage. Mary and Elizabeth touched the world by raising their boys.
So yes, I am concerned about the Christian careerism/feminism that has infiltrated the church where even believing women are not convinced of the timelessness of God's Word as it concerns women's ministry.
Now it seems to be all about "getting away," "me time," "time with the girls" - it seems to be becoming the drive and focus of women's lives and even Christian women's lives - to an extreme.
The constant influx of these brochures try to pull me and the women in my church away from our homes and church responsibilities to attend some conference somewhere with a bunch of women - a conference that will cost us a lot of money and time away from the very place God has called us to be. Another one was offered last summer a couple of summers ago-
$114/person ($99.00 for groups of 4 or more), $29 for extra seminar, $29 for extra evening seminar, $12.00 for Praise and Worship concert, $12.00 for "Ask the experts" teen evening.
All this plus hotel, travel, meals . . . and time. No refunds. Please understand, I'm not saying that there's never a place for women's retreats or conferences but they should be geared to helping women do what God has called us to do. And they shouldn't be the drive and focus of a woman's life. Real ministry happens in the everyday, in the throws of what seems to be mundane - seeing, trusting, and believing God as we diaper babies, lose sleep, break up sibling fights, serve our husbands, clean our bathrooms, mentor young women walking through life.
We need a generation of older women who know doctrine - who know God's Word and can take it and show young women how it applies to their everyday lives.
Because I am a ministry wife with five children, I have done my homework in biblical women's ministry.
As a young woman growing up in a pastor's home, now as a pastor's wife, as a ministry wife serving alongside my husband through our years with Campus Crusade at Duke University, and our years at DTS and Southwestern Baptist Seminary where my husband earned his doctorate, my years of teaching children and high school girls, and as a mother teaching my own children, I know that the messages sent by the church seem to be the same ones sent by the world. I do not believe this is the intent of believers - yet this is what is happening.
Click HERE for Part III
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