Looking to Jesus, Chapter 1

By BARBARANNE KELLY|CONTRIBUTOR

My husband and I just finished watching a CNN Original Series, “The Sixties,” which, according to their website, “explores the landmark era of cultural, political, and technological change during the 1960s, infusing new relevance to the cultural touchstones that changed the world.” Each episode of this ten-part series explores an aspect of the decade, from the advent of television itself, to politics, the space race, music, and political movements. Watching Neil Armstrong walking on the moon and the response of the world was thrilling; watching the extremes of the feminist movement was disheartening.

Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem and others gloried in the rejection of their traditional roles as women and sought freedom outside of God’s created order. They taught generations of women to resent male leadership and embrace the taking of life (through abortion) instead of the giving of life. Yes, things needed to change, but the corrupted desires which were written into our culture and laws opened the doors to decades of destructiveness in families and churches.

In the final episode, the (clearly biased) coverage celebrated the hippie culture, until it reached its logical consequence not at Woodstock, but at the Altamont Speedway Music Festival, where the organizers opted for “Hell’s Angels” to provide security for the event (paying them with beer and marijuana—what could possibly go wrong?) rather than more conventional, “establishment” means such as police, resulting in riot, violence, and several deaths.

Granted, I am firmly in the ‘over 30’ crowd and definitely a ‘square’ according to hippie standards, but as I watched the coverage of the ‘free love’ and drug culture that defined the hippie movement, my heart broke. Instead of freedom I saw bondage. Instead of life I saw death “in trespasses and sins… following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air… carrying out the desires of the body and the mind” (Eph. 2:1-3). The futility of their minds was on open display and the words of Paul rang out with renewed vigor that, “They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of their hardness of heart due to the ignorance that is in them. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity” (Eph. 4:18, 19).

CNN neglected to include in its documentary another important milestone of the 1960’s: the formation of the Presbyterian Church of America (PCA). When covering the feminist movement, there was no mention of either Shirley Ledford Duncan or Susan Hunt. These godly, servant-hearted women were there at the birth of our denomination, joining their husbands in rejecting a church which was chasing after the world’s ways and embracing a church submitted to Christ our Lord.

On Tuesday, we had our first meeting for our study of the book, Women’s Ministry in the Local Church, by J. Ligon Duncan (Shirley’s son) and Susan Hunt.[1] As we reviewed the first chapter, I could not help but marvel at the graciousness of God in maintaining a remnant of his faithful Church, especially in light of all that was happening around her in the 1960’s. While it seemed that all the world was galloping toward the cliff’s edge in a Bacchanalian rush to self-destruction, our Lord was protecting his bride, the church, and raising up men and women who were dedicated to the authority of his Word, seeking to glorify him in every arena of life.

The first chapter of our book is prefaced by a quote from John Calvin which sets the direction for our study:

The source and origin of the Church is the free love of God. . . . In the whole world there is nothing enduring but the Church. . . . Her happiness must be considered in consisting principally in this, that she has reserved for her an everlasting state in heaven. . . . [2]

And so, we began straight away with the fact that the subject which we will be studying is not, in fact, women, but the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, of which women’s ministry is only one component in the life and work of the local church. In learning about women’s ministry, we will be learning how women in ministry support the work of the church, coming alongside the session, committed to and loving the household of God. Ligon encapsulated our own hopes for women’s ministry in our church when he was describing the godly women in his life who helped to shape his understanding of what women’s ministry ought to be:

Their commitment is to a women’s ministry that serves the interests of the whole body and results in blessing for the whole congregation. In other words, their approach to women’s ministry is not consumer-oriented (“we deserve a ministry that focuses on us”), but kingdom-oriented (“how can we invest in women in such a way that equips them as disciples, for their own spiritual maturation, for the good of the marriages and families of the church, for the betterment of the total ministry of the church, and for their life in the world?”).[3]

I look forward to working through the chapters this summer together with you. We will be using this book to: study, that we might learn a biblical approach for women’s ministry; evaluate, to determine the strengths and weaknesses of our existing ministry; reorganize, as we determine our focus, direction, and strategy; organize, plans for new ministry; train, that we may maintain solid theological grounding; recruit, casting a biblical vision for women’s ministry; and educate, so all our women might understand a biblical approach to women’s ministry.

Won’t it be precious to cooperate with our Lord, who loved the Church so much that he “gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish” (Eph. 5:25-27)? May this study yield fruit for the kingdom of God, as we work with him, mining biblical truths and godly wisdom for the sake of our church, to the praise of his glorious grace.

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. . . .” (Heb. 12:1, 2)

[1] J. Ligon Duncan and Susan Hunt, Women’s Ministry in the Local Church, (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2006)

[2] John Calvin, Calvin’s Wisdom, An Anthology Arranged Alphabetically, ed. Graham Miller (Carlisle, PA: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1992), 50-51.

[3] Duncan and Hunt, Women’s Ministry in the Local Church, 21