Hi everyone, we’ve had a couple of inquiries regarding why we didn’t talk about men’s and women’s ministry on Wednesday night at Church Life as promised in the promo info that was sent out. These are totally fair questions, so I wanted to write something here as soon as possible to let people know what happened.
First off, let me just say that I was super encouraged by the great discussion that we had at Church Life and for the community participation and feedback. Those who attended gave us lots of helpful input and feedback that we’ll improve our ministry work going forward and shape our approach to everything that we spoke about.
The second thing I need to say is that having reread the promo information that I wrote, I can see that I raised expectations that we’d be looking at the Men’s and Women’s stuff prominently last night. This was a communication mistake on my part. I was only ever planning on briefly speaking to some of the stuff that we are going to be looking when we run our workshop on May 25. I wrote the promo too quickly without having mapped out the night fully. I wanted to give people some stuff about Men’s and Women’s ministry to reflect on and mull over but not get into things too deeply as that is the plan for the workshop. So, I’ll post the stuff below I was going to share last night.
The third thing I need to say is that the reason we didn’t speak about it at all last night was that we simply ran out of time. The questions and discussions surrounding the Kitchen Renovation, our Mother’s and Father’s Day plans, and the discussion around checking in at ministry events and church services all went longer than expected.
So, in short, please forgive me for raising people’s expectations that we would talk a lot about men’s and women’s ministry last night, and then for disappointing people when we didn’t talk about it at all. Both of these were my fault and I apologise for the frustration this has caused.
Next time round I’ll make sure that I have clearer outline of the night before I write the promotional material. Furthermore, I’ll plan the agenda better and make sure that we cover everything that we say that we will.
James Snare.
What I was going to share Wednesday night was the big ideas that we are going to look at in the workshop. These are:
Male and Female are distinct and fundamental ideas in the bible. Lots of good things have been achieved through Men’s and Women’s ministries across evangelical churches and we can thank God for this.
However, many men’s and women’s books and resources have unhelpfully said that certain qualities or virtues are essential for what it means to be a ‘man’ or a ‘woman’. This has led to subtle changes that have shifted the focus from men and women pursuing Christlikeness.
Rather than men and women being encouraged to be fully like Christ, men are encouraged to be a ‘biblical man’ and women to become ‘biblical women’ in ways that are not truly biblical.
Often the picture of ‘biblical manhood’ or ‘biblical womanhood’ is shaped far more by culture and politics rather than deep engagement with the scriptures.
We need to reflect deeply on the resources that have shaped our understanding of what it means to be a man or a woman, look again at the scriptures, and then work hard to rebuild men’s and women’s ministries at Living Church so they can serve our vision and mission statement as a church.
This is what we are going to be doing at the workshop on May 25 and I look forward to seeing as many of you as possible there.
