When God called Ethan into full-time ministry, my focus, desires, and calling also shifted from para-church ministry to the local church. I knew pastoral ministry is weighty and would require our family to be all in on this new mission. Prayerfully and thoughtfully considering women’s ministry at 5 Bridges Church is one way that I’ve been able to come alongside my husband. Thankfully, over the last ten years, God allowed me to serve in women’s ministry both in local churches across the US and continuously through Deeply Rooted Magazine (our former parachurch ministry). Every good and bad experience up to this point has helped shape our philosophy of ministry for women in the local church.
We knew a lot of what we didn’t want. We wanted to avoid operating a ministry that is:
Lacking Biblical Precedence
Event-driven
Consumeristic
Watered down
Personality-driven
Me-focused
Burdensome to the pastors, church, and volunteers
Rather, we desire a ministry that is:
Scripturally-supported
Quality-focused rather than quantity-focused
Kingdom-oriented
Scripturally-sound
God honoring
Sustainable in the long term
I picked up a copy of “Women’s Ministry in the Local Church” by J. Ligon Duncan and Susan Hunt last summer, and after reading a few chapters, I knew this was a book I wanted the other elder’s wives at our church to read through together. Our group of older and younger women recently finished the book, and I decided to write an honest book review to share what I loved and learned.
Overall, this has been an amazing encouragement to read, as I’ve definitely faced an increasing amount of discouragement in seeing the trajectory of many women’s ministries today. I’m grateful for the advice given from both a pastoral perspective and from a woman who has faithfully served other women and submitted to the elders at her church for decades. It is worth mentioning that this is written by two authors so there is some repetitiveness in the chapters and I also will point out that the authors are Presbyterian (I am a reformed Baptist) so whiles some of our theology overlaps, covenant theology is a theme throughout the book. That said, I definitely recommend this book to any Christian woman who is looking to start her own local church ministry or is currently serving in one.
LASTING FOUNDATIONS
The book is broken down into two parts: an introduction that explains the story, the need, and the motive for women’s ministry. The second part of the book is the apologetic, or rationale, for why we need women’s ministry in the local church. I really appreciate that each of their reasons has Biblical support explaining their why. The reality for any church ministry is that there need to be clearly defined reasons for why the ministry is in existence and how it supports the local church as a whole. When churches don’t have a clearly defined mission, they might start new programs just to fill a time slot or to please people, all the while creating siloed ministries that compete with the church as a whole.
The foundations for women’s ministry as outlined in this book are:
Submission (to the pastor and elders): 1 Timothy 2:9–15
Compassion: 1 Timothy 3:11
Community: 1 Timothy 5
Discipleship: Titus 2
Scripture: 2 Timothy 3:1–17
BIBLICAL OVERSIGHT
I greatly appreciate that this book takes a complementarian stance on Scripture, and I love that they include the Danver’s statement in the appendix of their book. The authors give a clear explanation for how the created order affects women’s roles within the church, which ultimately leads to how one operates their women’s ministry. They write:
Will the church conform her values to the prevailing cultural mores and norms, or will we impact and influence and shape our culture? ... Is our pattern in the church going to be to do a hermeneutical twist whenever we come to an issue where the Bible’s teaching makes us culturally uncomfortable, or are we going to let the lion loose, let God be God, and let His Word speak and rule in our lives? So, fundamentally, this is a scriptural authority issue. Just think how women’s ministry has the capacity of dealing with that in a unique way (page 132).
In other words, when we don’t get women’s roles right, we will not get women’s ministry right. They call the complementarian vs. egalitarian issue a “watershed moment” (p. 78), arguing that one’s view will determine “whether we have an integrative or independent ministry. The corporate application of this passage is that a women’s ministry should be under the authority and oversight of the elders in the church.”
Sadly, there are many churches who are complementarian in name and whose leadership might say they have oversight, but in all actuality are hands-off, only reviewing on a surface level but not actually sitting through meetings, studies, or reading the books women are studying, recommending, and passing around to one another. Rather than viewing a pastor’s cautious oversight as a lack of trust in the women’s ministry team, we should view this through the lens of the pastor’s shepherding heart, knowing that he is the one who God will hold accountable to fulfill the job of shepherd, watchman, and protector of the flock. Women ought to see their pastor’s active involvement in their women’s ministry as a sign of their shepherd love and care for them.
WOMEN’S MINISTRY STARTS IN HER HOME
Another thing I like about this book is the emphasis on the Titus 2 community. So often, women’s ministry can become programmatic, but Titus 2 relationships are forged in the everyday spheres of life, coupled with opportunities to use our spiritual gifts in service to the church. The authors remind women that:
"domestic duties are not a hindrance to sanctification; they are essentials of the common life. The family is a context in which to develop godly character that will qualify women for service beyond hearth and home.”
Prominent Christian women today may be effective communicators with some bible knowledge, but I would be curious how many, in their frequent serving those outside their home and through their phone screens, neglect their role to be helpers to their husbands, trainers of their children, and keepers of their home? They may give an appearance of godliness but their actions deny the very message they promote. I don’t write this in judgment but rather out of a desire to encourage and challenge Christian women to spend all her energy building a kingdom outside her home while tearing down her own home in the process (Proverbs 14:1). The authors wisely remind us that “it is obedience in the common duties of family life that will prepare her to one day tell women that God created us to be helpers and redeemed us to be life-givers in every situation and relationship, in every time, place, and culture.” This is a message that Christian women, myself included, need to be reminded of again and again.
ADDRESSING WEAK WOMEN
One of my favorite chapters (no. 9) addresses the topic of weak women as found in 2 Timothy 3:6-7:
For among them are those who enter into households and take captive weak women weighed down with sins, being led on by various desires, always learning and never able to come to the full knowledge of the truth.
I believe we have a severe “weak women” problem in our society today (2 Timothy 3:6-7). The influence of false teachers pervade Christian media and have crept into our churches, social media feeds, and books. While our society might label her a “strong woman” because she is self-aware, self-reliant, and does what is right in her own eyes, the Bible defines her as weak.
The authors write:
“One wonders about the sins that burdened these women and led them astray. It seems obvious that they were not functioning under ecclesiastical authority. It is unlikely that they were spending their time in ministries of covenantal compassion. Their doctrine of community was faulty because they were willing to follow divisive teachers. They apparently were not involved in discipleship relationships with godly women who would guide them to maturity. Their lives were already inconsistent with the principles of biblical womanhood, so their propensity was to follow the false rather than the true. These women were lovers of self and not lovers of God; so they were life-takers and not life-givers. Once immature women are captured by unsound doctrine, they begin a never-ending, self-indulgent quest for knowledge.”
Sadly, there are too many weak women trapped in this pattern of living. Their rejection of sound teaching and preaching sends them chasing after false teachers and messages that fit her desired narrative. The result of bad theology is bad fruit and it’s no wonder these women are plagued with all kinds of sin, anxiety, and addictions. (To be clear, just because you battle with depression or anxiety doesn’t necessitate that you are a Biblically-defined weak woman, but a Biblically defined weak woman is guaranteed to become “burdened” with many sins to include the above sins.)
The weak woman is not the only one to blame, but the pastors who fail to preach the full counsel of God’s Word and fail to hold the women in their church accountable. When a pastor neglects his role to feed the flock, what follows are spiritually anemic women’s ministries which create spiritually anemic Christian women. The homes of these weak women (and their weak husbands) become petri dishes for all kinds of sin to multiply and Satan loves nothing more than to destroy whole families from within. Pastors, churches and women’s ministries must do better. We have a unique opportunity through women’s ministry to equip women with the discernment they need to combat this growing epidemic.
Conclusion
We need more solid women’s ministries that will challenge women to walk worthy of their calling. While I’ve seen some bad ones, I have witnessed some healthy ones too. Ours is still in the infant stages, but thanks to the elders and their wives, we have a clear mission to guide us as we grow. This book has helped challenge and motivate me to pursue a healthy women’s ministry that encourages, equips, and mobilizes the women at 5 Bridges Church. While these are just a few topics addressed, and there is still so much more I can say on this topic, I challenge you to reframe your mind about the purpose of women’s ministry. And if you’re involved with women’s ministry at any level, I wholeheartedly recommend this book as a great place to start as you navigate the need for a healthy women’s ministry in your local church.
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