Women's ministries make me terribly uncomfortable. They seem to me to be the popular way of making up for the androcentric nature of the church. But I'll leave that for an offline conversation.
Let me backtrack to the beginning. Discomfort. I may be alone in this, but the places I am most uncomfortable are the places where I am most driven to movement. Meditate on that just a minute.
discomfort → desire for change → change
If I am comfortable and happy with the way things are in some aspect of the church (or really in general) I am least apt to invoke change. So given that women's conferences and women's small groups and other such women-only gatherings give me hives, they also spark a desire for change and movement within me.
This isn't something new. Homeless ministries and mission trips and AIDS research initiatives are birthed from a place of discomfort — someone somewhere gets so bothered by a particular issue that it sparks in them a desire to move and change the lives of those affected by it. My most recent discomfort happens to hit really close to home, in the midst of the community of twentysomethings I am a part of.
Tonight I sat in a room with about 20 other women who are uncomfortable in some way with the current ways we are (or aren't) ministering to the women of STATUS. I realized that I am not the only woman who desires conferences about more than clothes, and speakers who do more to connect with their audience than make jokes about shopping or the latest Danielle Steel novel.
We desire teaching deeply rooted in scripture, about real issues that affect not only our lives but all members of our community. We desire women's conferences that don't look like women's conferences, small groups that wreck lives instead of making us feel better about them. We desire integrity and authenticity and accountability for holding close to the teachings of Jesus.
Today's verse from Galatians 3:28 encapsulates these desires: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." Rather than being better women, we simply want to be better living examples of Christ.
If we focus too much on the fact that we are women, then we are flirting with narcissism. It is only when we start to view ourselves as people who desperately want to look more like Christ that we can be sure He is our central focus.1
The women of STATUS better prepare to have their worlds rocked.
1 I should clarify that I don't mean to discount altogether the fact that we are trying to minister to women. Our identity in Christ is not separate from our identity as women. He has assigned us our gender for a purpose. But our filter for how we minister to women shouldn't be based on a gender role that is easily swayed by what society tells us about who we are. Rather, we should minister to women through God's lens, growing them first in Christ.