Women in Ministry

 I ran across a great discussion on X about the "Billy Graham rule" not to be alone with women. I have always had thoughts about that too. Here is what a young woman name Joy tweeted: My former pastor and I once had a conversation about the merits of the Billy Graham rule. Over email I described how, when men choose to avoid me, it makes me feel like a dangerous object.

He pushed back, explaining it was important for pastors to draw lines, because if they sinned, it could lead other people away from God. He said: “No one would stop going to school or drop education if you and one of your school coworkers had an inappropriate relationship. But, I have lists of people who endured who endured a pastor in their life having an inappropriate relationship and it has highjacked their faith.”

Today, I know around a dozen people who are now struggling with faith or not attending church because of that pastor’s behavior. And not because he had an affair, but because he became a domineering and abusive leader. He “ran me out of town,” to quote his own words, and has driven others away from church.

And so I have to wonder: How many pastors are like him today – men who fall into sin because, after all their efforts to avoid the company of women…they just ended up alone in a room with power.

Writing about Billy Graham, she added, Actually, he shifted his opinion and ended up meeting with women 1-on-1, but with open doors. Women weren’t the danger. Power was. I really just don’t believe rules help much; they can get in the way of self-awareness. If a person is tempting me, I need to figure that out & do work to change or avoid if needed. A rule can be a way to hide from myself and others what’s really happening. Ravi Zacharias practiced the BG rule, for example. -end-

Now, I have commented to Joy: I'm 72 now but from my return to faith at 31, I was always bummed at ministers fleeing from me rather than just talking to me which is what I was after.

It goes back to Church father Origen who blamed women for causing him to lust and reportedly he castrated himself instead of overcoming his own LUST. He really kick started the Christian tradition of blaming women for the lust of men.

I saw the same thing in Jerusalem outside the Old City walls when an ultra Orthodox man left the sidewalk to give a super WIDE berth to 3 senior aged women (me included). It was insulting.

Now I am adding additional comments:
It is one thing to flee a "Potipher's wife" throwing herself at Joseph sexually, and an entirely different thing to insult a woman like Deborah, walking in the wisdom of God and able to judge matters wisely. Treating all women as a women with evil intentions is degrading to women of integrity before God.

Men - even ministers need to overcome their own lust rather than blame and OSTRACIZE attractive women. It puts women out of ministry circles - especially in the learning stages - rather like the old Men's only clubs where men met to do deals and no woman was granted entrance.

Spiritually that is a big problem. In Messiah, there is no women in the balcony and men on the main floor division of the sexes.

Any minister who believes this will resolve the problem of ministers becoming engaged in illicit relationships with other women is fooling themselves. The only emphasis that should be taught is how to control your own lusts, not excluding women.

But also, I know of a ministry advising their male ministers not to be with a woman alone because of the MeToo propaganda that says accusation of sexual impropriety is enough to destroy any man. I do see that as a real potential in these days. I don't Believe the Women without solid proof of their accusation - due process for the minister involved.

This poses a problem that must be overcome, because Yeshua came to raise the bar of equal standing for women too! It is not feminism speaking here, because I believe in the chain of command involved in 1 Corinthians 11: 3, which I have endeavored to be faithful to since my return to faith in 1983: "But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Messiah; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Messiah is God."

This does not mean every man is the authority over me, but it means my husband does, and in living in that manner, I honor God. But in ministry, spiritual women like Deborah in Judges 4, is not to be an anomaly in the New Covenant. There should be many prophetesses, many women judges, many women writing their insights in the Word of God. We do stand on an equal footing of spiritual understanding. We are no longer just snake-vulnerable Eve's standing spiritually witless in the Garden of Eden.

Feminism is a poor imitation of the freedom Messiah died to give women. It is a poor imitation because although prompted by a godly impulse to raise women up to equality, it employs MOSTLY demon-inspired means to the end.

I want better than that...even in old age I want better than that. Messiah died for my equality too.