I first attended a complementarian evangelical church in 2002. I moved to another in 2004, where I stayed for quite some time. I’d never heard the word “complementarian” before attending these churches – but then, the term “complementarianism” wasn’t officially coined until 1988, so I guess that isn’t unusual.
At first, the complementarianism of these churches was a step up from the gender roles I’d inherited from the church of my childhood and young adulthood.
Women could serve communion and lead worship. Wives co-led small groups with their husbands. They even allowed women to serve as deacons. It felt like the sky was the limit for women, but of course, it isn’t easy to see a glass ceiling before you bump into it.
I’d been raised in a charismatic, anti-Trinitarian cult. Women were required to keep their hair long, keep their faces free of makeup, wear dresses, and wear little to no jewelry beyond a wedding ring. Our founder said, “When a woman gets out of the kitchen, she’s out of her place.” Women could sing “special songs” in the worship service when called upon, but they could not lead congregational worship songs. Not only were women prohibited from preaching or serving as pastors, but they were also barred from serving as deacons, administering communion, or doing much of anything in church or society.
Now you can see why the more popular form of “soft” evangelical complementarianism felt so liberating once I’d left the staunch patriarchal cult behind.
After a few years in the new culture, however, the cracks began to show. Both churches had male senior pastors who did most of the preaching, so it took a while to realize that women never preached, even when the pastor was on vacation and various male associate pastors, deacons, lay members, and guest speakers from outside our church family filled the pulpit.
My closest friend was a woman who mentored me in Baptist theology. She had one of the brightest minds I’d known. Our Lead Pastor cited her in Membership class, saying, “If preaching was simply about ability or gifting, we’d have her preaching all the time. But God reserves the pulpit for men.” Behind the scenes, she taught many men, critiqued sermons, and wrote worship liturgies. She just couldn’t teach multiple men publicly. This made no sense to me.
A year or two later, I traveled to a worship symposium with our music ministry. Our pastor told us to sign up for a workshop led by Marva Dawn. We were eager to do so because we’d read her worship theology, Reaching Out Without Dumbing Down, and thought it was brilliant. Dawn did not disappoint. As she led us through the scriptures in a seminary classroom, we took notes and whispered to each other, “This is so good.”
Later that day, we attended a symposium chapel service on the same campus. After some prayer and a few songs, the speaker arrived to preach. To our horror, it was a woman.
She did the same thing Marva Dawn did – taught from the Bible – but it landed differently because we were in a chapel. One man in our group stormed out mid-sermon, while the rest sat through it, too scandalized to move.
In the months that followed, I asked myself why it felt like I’d done something wrong by staying to listen to the homily (which was quite good, by the way). Why was it okay to learn the scriptures from a woman’s workshop lecture in a classroom but not from a woman’s homily in a chapel?
I began studying on my own, reading egalitarian literature by scholars such as Linda Belleville and Craig Keener. When I asked my pastor to show me where these scholars were in error, he only said, “They’re not in our camp.” I realized, with horror, that he didn’t understand this issue and didn’t care to.
During this period of self-study, I married a brilliant woman who led worship at our church. She’d been raised complementarian and tried to fit into that box. When I began preaching at our church a couple of years later, I told members who praised my sermons, “I’m not even the best preacher in my house.” The church celebrated her musical skills and sensitivity to the Spirit as she called God’s people to worship and led us through worship rhythms, such as the confession of sin and the celebration of assurance in Christ. She and I wrote doctrinal songs together, which many people in our church enjoyed, though they would not have approved of her preaching without music.
We continued to read and study as we moved from one church to another. We learned about organizations such as Christians for Biblical Equality and authors including Cynthia Long Westfall, Scot McKnight, Lucy Peppiatt, Andrew Bartlett, Nijay Gupta, Lynn Cohick, Rebecca Groothuis, and Terran Williams. Most of all, we searched the scriptures and fellowshipped with like-minded believers.
When I began teaching Bible classes with a woman friend who has become a true sister, I saw firsthand the benefits of mutuality and genuine, non-hierarchical complementarity. We work together as equals, each bringing our insights, scholarship, and unique personalities to the study of scripture and to facilitating discussion in our classes. I can’t imagine how anyone could experience this kind of co-leadership and then decide they’d prefer to go alone, and I can’t understand how a man could experience this and then decide he’d prefer that women remain silent.
For me, the final nail in the coffin of patriarchy came when I returned to school to pursue a Master of Arts at Northern Seminary under McKnight and Gupta. These professors, along with others such as Beth Felker Jones, Ingrid Faro, and Matthew Bates, gave me the tools to study God’s will for women and men more deeply.
My thesis research for McKnight cemented my belief in mutuality on a cognitive level, while my friendship with my seminary cohort cemented it relationally. This cohort, composed of equal parts women and men, journeyed through seminary together, encouraging, inspiring, and learning from one another. Rather than the awkward relationships or near-total separation that can occur in complementarian spaces, these women and men related to one another as siblings. Our cohort showed me a better way to dwell together in unity as equals, friends, and co-laborers in the gospel.
I write about this better way each week on my Substack, “Your Sons and Daughters Will Prophesy,” where I exposit the scriptures to show God’s design for mutuality and co-stewardship. I love hearing from women (and men!) who have awakened to God’s design and feel encouraged or enlightened by my articles. We are all in this together, once strangers but now siblings with Christ as our elder brother. What could be better?