(This is Part 2 in a series about empowering femininity. Part 1 is “Woman of God, Will You Lead the Church?“)
One of my deep desires is to empower women and encourage them to come alive in their natures as women.
This post is about how to do that.
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A prominent guitarist was desperate to meet the creator of industry-leading guitar pedals and effects, Pete Cornish, so he traveled all the way from the United States to England to find him. He had to see what gave Cornish’s boards such clear effects and how he eliminated the white noise and background hum to produce such a beautiful sound.
What he found surprised him.
When he questioned whether Cornish used noise gates or hush technologies to reduce the hum, the master effects guru looked at him matter-of-factly and responded, “We remove the problem at the source. We don’t deal with the symptoms, we remove the problem.”
That’s the thing about solutions, to find them you have to go beyond symptoms and on to source.
The same is true with people.
C.S. Lewis famously noted,
We remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.
We cut off their testicles and tell male horses to reproduce (that’s what that^ means). We do the same with women. We sabotage design by missing purpose. We kill what is most essential in our hearts while trying to fix what we dislike or devalue about society. And the static grows stronger around us.
It’s the source that matters, not the symptoms.
That sound you hear overtop C.S. Lewis is the hiss of popular society distorting the soundtrack to which men and women are orchestrated — which was designed specifically by God — while they try to coax a gelding who stands nutless with a funny look on his face in the corner of a pasture to procreate.
It’s God’s song. The best we can do is clear up the static by going straight to the source. And hear the music he intends our hearts to play.
God loves women (he loves feminists!). He loves men. He wants to empower the qualities and nature of womanhood so each woman comes alive with hope and purpose in her life. Everyone else should want that too. This is called femininity. Femininity is “the quality or nature of the female sex.” It is the music that plays within a woman’s heart, what makes her uniquely a woman. Feminism, on the other hand, is defined as advocating “women’s rights and interests.” It ranks in the top 1% of most popular words on Merriam-Webster. It is the 26th most searched word in the world.
Ironically, femininity is what feminism purports to advance. It is what feminists are really searching for. They’re trying to advance femininity; but in an attempt to right society’s wrongs and counter the invalidation and abuse of countless women, they seek to make women no different than men. Now, this is admirable in civil rights. But this mindset is downright frightening when it infiltrates the church. Because men and women are designed to be different there. To play different parts in the drama, in the home and the church. And that’s a good thing.
But femininity ranks so low — it’s so unpopular — that it’s in the bottom 40% of words searched. The word hopeless gets more look-ups than femininity.
Yet that’s where hope in this is found. The “quality or nature of the female sex.” It holds no one’s attention. It is vastly unnoticed. It is unsexy and uncool today, though between its letters is the most captivating and astonishing meaning in the world. It is what it is to be a woman. There are very few Pete Cornishs that know that’s exactly where we have to go if we’re really going to solve the need to empower women.
And that’s what we need. To empower women. To empower femininity. Not feminists. God forbid, we need to disempower feminists and forget the mindsets that focus on society’s symptoms without godly, design-based solutions.
We’ll only hear the clear sound of women’s true hearts if we empower the source.
Noise gates and hush technologies will give us nothing but a dimmer hiss.
How to Make Her Love Being a Woman
1. Listen to the Women Around You
I’m not an expert at any of this, but I’m learning. To empower femininity we have to begin with listening to women (Call me crazy!). My father is a pro at this. He listens to my Mom and practices the skill of recognizing wisdom in her. Exercise this gift. As a husband, church leader, or pastor you don’t have to come up with every brilliant plan for your family or church. If you practice the skill of listening to your wife and recognizing her brilliant ideas you will be a wise man (again, this is coming from a young guy who’s still learning).
My wife and I are intimately involved in starting a church plant. I listen very carefully to every piece of advice she gives and I treat it like gold. I can’t think of one time her advice has turned out bad, but countless times I’ve realized instantly her advice was perfect. I’m making this skill my practice. Like my Dad, I don’t need to be the brilliant one; I just need to recognize brilliance when I see it.
Conversely, my wife doesn’t need to pastor our church or be the head of our family to be respected, but she needs to be heard. And I’d be a bad leader if I didn’t recognize her wisdom in either context.
2. Put Her Dreams Above Your Own
Also, I need to listen to my wife’s dreams. This is one of my favorite practices, because I love her. When she starts talking about anything that sounds like a passion or dream, I listen intently. I ask questions. I want to know exactly what her dream is — what her passion is — because I want her dreams to come true. I am her biggest fan.
To empower femininity, you have to empower a woman’s dreams.
You don’t need to be married to her to listen carefully enough to find out her passion is working with youth, foreign missions and cultures, or teaching children. Those are my wife’s three deepest passions, but a church leader who’s listening could hear them just as I have. And when you hear, ask questions. Get at the heart of it. And work like heck to empower her in making them come true.
A great church leader or husband will do this, and you will find your church or family comes alive alongside her heart.
My wife has other dreams that I won’t share here, but I and our family are planning for them and working now long in advance. As I make her dreams my own.
3. Notice the Things She Cares About and Give Them to Her
This is a recent lesson. The women in my life care about things that really aren’t on my radar. But because they matter to them, they now matter to me. This is a secret to empowering femininity: make her desires and preferences things you care about. I’m not talking about ice cream or frozen yogurt fruit push-ups. I mean whether our bathroom gets painted. How clean the house is. I could exist in a hole in the ground; I really wouldn’t notice the difference between a blank wall and one with shelves, sconces, and pictures. But these and many other things stem from her heart in a way I can’t understand, and I’ve chosen to prioritize them anyway.
I know her nature is revealed in certain ways through these differences, and I’m going to value her desires even though they are different from my own.
4. Understand a Woman’s Feelings, Joys, and Pains are Different From Yours and Validate Their Worth
Closely related is understanding the way a woman thinks, feels, and processes her life, and I’m going to accept that. I’m not going to force her to respond or think like a man. I’m going to take Elisabeth Elliot’s advice and “let her be a woman.”
Along the way, I’m going to try to figure out who she is. And every time it gets through my thick skull, I’m going to validate her worth. In a church, family, or marriage, this is worth investing substantial time in. In fact, I’d offer that a man needs to spend extra time on this, whether husband or church leader, because it doesn’t come naturally to him to understand and relate to the needs of the women around him. They aren’t wrong. They are unique.
5. Invite Her into a Journey in Which She is Wanted, Needed, Loved
You will see a woman come alive in a way that is natural and inspiring when she feels wanted, needed, and loved by you. But don’t simply express that she is — invite her into your journey so feeling wanted, needed, and loved is the natural byproduct of her place in your life.
Even if you are a leader of a church, as well as a leader of a family, consider how you can invite the women of your church into a place where they are an essential part of the church journey. How have you invited them to live their hearts there? This is true if you are a husband who wants to be a godly leader of his family or a church leader who wants the women to be part of the church vision. You shouldn’t upheave God’s order of church leadership to do this, but if you haven’t invited the women in your church or family into a place of being wanted, needed, and loved as an essential part of the journey you’ve missed who they are.
Perhaps that’s a conversation for the next staff meeting or guys’ night.
We live in a world fascinated by feminism, the idea that we should advance “women’s rights and interests,” even in some cases — as my wife says — beyond the rights of men, but in a world that has very little interest in what that nature is.
And that’s what I love.
I love women. I want to learn about and empower who they are, with the nature God gave them as feminine reflections of Him. Then we will hear the undistorted, pure beauty of their hearts.
I mean this in a way, I have to admit, that I feel differently about men. And I’m okay with that.
Great suggestions!
I’m wondering though where you stand on female lay leadership in churches. Of course, assuming it’s a denomination that allows for women to be on the vestry or the equivalent.
At our current church, where my husband is Rector, our Sr. Warden is a woman and 50% of the vestry is made up of women. They wouldn’t consider themselves feminists, and most are married with children and grandchildren. The team functions well, because the individuals are strong committed Christians.
Can this model work, in your opinion?
Great questions! I believe women leadership is essential in churches, but I do not believe pastoring or serving on governance boards or vestries is included in this. The reason is God wants to empower men to grow in those roles of exercising authority in a church. Something is lost when there aren’t those opportunities to strengthen them as pillars who will hold up the church.
I believe this is consistent with the biblical design of men to lead/disciple/make formative decisions for a family or church, which stems from God’s call to their nature.
Of course, women’s gifts, advice, and intelligence are crucial to a church, as I outline above, but the call there fits in with God has called her to as Elliot and my wife outline in https://thefools.org/church-needs-elisabeth-elliot-against-feminism-in-the-church/
Great question, and probably not a popular answer, but I believe it is consistent with a comprehensive vision of the unique partnership of masculinity and femininity as designed for different roles (with distinct archetypes) in God’s body, as well as the family. We work together amazingly!
This was in many ways the theme of Breathing In and Breathing Out, how that partnership works together naturally, but breathtakingly.
:)
Of course, I have no criticisms of those who do it differerently. Only vision for what God can do in uniquely satisfying heart-roles!
I do think women lay leadership is important, even essential, in a church though, just not specifically in exercising spiritual formation authority over the entire church. :)
However, I think God can work in many situations.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. This is a fascinating topic.
I’m looking forward to reading your next Touchy Tuesday article.
I like the way you point out both sides, feminism and femininity, based on Biblical passages.
I pray that men will step up to take more positions of leadership in churches. Many churches are dominated by women. The men are sadly absent from the pews and the ones that show up on Sundays are often not lay leaders.
I think I see what you’re saying….If women step out of leadership it will mean men will step in?
I have seen some disastrous and malfunctioning vestries in my time. In one instance, a church vestry had 11 women and 1 man. The man was lost in a sea of women. The women wanted decisions to be unanimous, and would get bogged down on putting all their energies into making a dissenter happy. Thus nothing ever got done.
But, I believe a coed vestry can function well, if they let God lead and are in prayerful obedience to His will.
Would you say that the Missouri Lutheran Synod church operates closest to your ideal church? Or are there others?
I guess if it were possible to roll back time to the 1950s, a model of male leadership would work. But in 2015, unless one chooses to attend a church with bylaws forbidding women to be in positions of authority, how can this model work in a mainstream denomination? The theory works, but what about its practicality?
I agree with you that men can be fantastic leaders, when their hearts belong to Christ. A church led by men would be a dynamic place to be, but would be in the minority today. What are your thoughts?
Sorry for not responding sooner. I got caught up with family and wifely affairs (a wonderful date night being part of it!).
To respond to your previous question, it is men’s sin nature tendency to be tempted to give up leadership and passively step back, because God has called them to lead — the coward wants to do the reverse. Similarly, it is women’s temptation to control because God has called her to follow (see 1 Peter 3:6 – “don’t give way to fear”, which is grasping for control rather than trusting).
These designs were God-ordained in our natures, along with so many surpassing qualities that blow each other away, long before God called us to roles.
So it’s really about Him. And then it becomes about how a church (in the organic Body of Christ) naturally and most effectively grows. We know that men rising up to lead courageously and take responsibility is an essential part of the church. Without it, though women can try to make up for it, they will never replace the part God has called men to play (just as men cannot replace women’s nurturing, awe-inspiring, and emotive life-giving nature). That is why in 1 Peter, Peter talks about winning men over without words by women’s behavior and respect. Because in many ways, though he is talking about negligent husbands who aren’t Christians in the verse, this is how to get a man to step up, not by taking his place, but by respecting him into it. And if he is lost or his place is taken by another, his part in God’s grand design really is irreplaceable. I have seen this happen time and again in church. But even look at so many cultures with absent fathers. It doesn’t matter how many women step up, the loss is felt and it is real and in many ways irreversible (until another male figure takes the absent one’s place). We should be presumptuous if we think it is different in the church. We feel a real loss if we mix the designs and if men and women aren’t willing to take their parts in the drama, but also to let the other take theirs.
You are right, and it’s poignant, when you speak about the 1950s. Because this is a battle the church lost a long time ago. We lost it to the secular culture and to Christians who didn’t know the importance of the difference. And it’s what Elisabeth Elliot fought with most of her ministry to bring back.
There are still some mainline churches that hold to it, but many have become egalitarian. I’d say the majority. So practically speaking, as you say, it’s difficult to adhere to biblical framework in the current context, but God can still work in it. He’s always working with his Grace, even when we get in the way but desire to serve him. He really is that big. He’s doing that in all our lives in the areas in which we’re still works in progress!
If you haven’t read Breathing In and Breathing Out, I encourage you to do it; I think it will provide a lot of insights on these matters, or at least thoughts. ;)
If you want to know how I think it could practically work in a church context that has adopted an egalitarian view of church governance and women are already on the board or vestry, I think it would be best for it to work like Angela and I did when we were leading Crossfire together as singles. The two of us certainly officially led together, but she deferred to my natural leadership in the practical working of it. I was the acting head, out of no work of our own; we just naturally fell in step that way. But we did it together. Still, had she acted with practical headship over me and the whole group, that would have been difficult for the dynamics of all involved. It did work out beautifully for a time as we led according to our natures, though not all things within the organization were prepared to handle this long term.
Thank you for your thoughtful comments and questions. It is good connecting with you on this!
God bless you. :)
Thanks JP! God bless! :)