Categories: uncategorized
Tags: church, Newfrontiers, NFI, gender, discrimination
Date: 11 July 2008 19:13:46
This week Newfrontiers is hosting their Leadership Conference in Brighton entitled “Together on a Mission”. They have a variety of different speakers including a load of Newfrontiers leaders, but also they have Mark Driscoll from Mars Hill Church in Seattle.
Adrian Warnock is blogging live from the event and summarising some of the main speakers and their messages. Yesterday he blogged about Mark Driscoll's talk entitled Missional Movements. Whilst I have no problem with quite a lot of what was said (or what was reported by Adrian at least) there is one things that really stood out for me in this blog entry. It is this statement...
"Young men, you need to step up...One prayer is for a bunch of 20 year old guys with hope who will plant churches and preach the gospel with hope. Be looking at all times for men in their 20's. They will be arrogant, foolish, impetuous, critical, disorganized, and they will be perfect for the task God has for them!"Now, in many ways I have no problem with this sentiment. I agree that the church needs younger leaders and fresh eyes to interpret and move movements and organisations forward. What I really object to however is this focus on men all the time. In my experience of being in several Newfrontiers churches this is one of the things that is focused on all the time. Men, men, men! Women barely got a look in and certainly for me being a part of one of these churches I always felt that the only way to be validated in any sort of ministry was through marriage . Then you would be freed up and supported in ministry.
This is all very well and good if you happen to be married, but there were plenty of young women who were passionate about God and really desired to serve him and the local church, and yet they were unable to be innovative, forward looking and creative in the ways they chose to serve God because of the barrier of their gender.
As a young(ish) single woman with no potential love interest on the horizon where does that leave me? Does it mean that I have to sit around waiting and searching for Mr. Right, or do I get on with living the life that I currently have and serving God in the places he has called me to? For me, this focus on men and Newfrontiers' denegration of women was one of the reasons I chose to leave. Whilst Newfrontiers may be critical of the Anglican movement, I have found this to be a more freeing environment as a single woman, something which has come as a complete surprise for me. It seems to me that whereas Newfrontiers churches view the 'established church' as being stuck in their ways, it seems to me that often they can be more forward-thinking than they are given credit for.