Does anyone care about Melbourne Anglicanism?

[jwhkuan]

This thread picks up a discussion from the 'new woman bishop for Melbourne' thread.

In response to Jereth's post, you might have noticed that the past few issues of EFAC Essentials have carried book reviews and commentary on men's ministry more generally, saying basically the same sorts of things.  There's a lot of recognition of this particular issue, even if we're not so effective at doing anything about it.

And while not everyone drinks water from Seattle, it might be instructive to imagine chatting to the bloke in your street about, of all things, having a woman bishop in Melbourne.  Would you??  What sort of response would it generate?  How would you turn that into conversation that leads to Jesus Christ?  It's one thing to cry 'irrelevant!', another to make use of every opportunity.

Maybe this could be your challenge for the weekend!

I'm going to church in a few hours, and our experience of a major building project is that it's helped lots of men get on board.  So much so that I fear that having a brand new building will be bad for the builders and heavy haulage types.  The interior decorators will move in and the men will probably retreat to a shed in the back!

Blessings on your Sunday.  

[Andrew Bowles]

It's probably helpful to get away from talking about masculinity and femininity in such broad terms, because stereotyping makes bad theology. Masculinity is not all about activism, and femininity is not all nurturing and aesthetics. I would also question whether the bloke in the street, if he does not know Jesus, really has a strong grasp on what it means to be a man made in the image of God. Football and building stuff and eating meat is probably not the fullness of that. The perfect man wept at his friends' tomb and humbly submitted to an humiliating death.

[Matt Williams]

Good question Wei-Han.

Actually a friend recently took me to a food and wine festival event and the main things the people seated opposite us were interested in were the positions of women and gays in the church, the history of sexual abuse and how we grappled with the issue of suffering in their lives. Intermingled with discussion about pork, wine, travel and Melbourne restaurants, my friend and I had a wide ranging conversation with them about those issues as well. They asked genuine questions and I was able to speak about how the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the gospel call to repent affected the way we looked at them all.

I reckon if we think theologically, listen carefully to where people are coming from, treat them with respect and understand the connections between the gospel and everything else we believe, then every conversation about everything the church is doing, whether we think it is right or wrong, ought to be a gospel opportunity of sorts.


I also agree with Andrew about stereotyping.

I hate building things and fixing things and feel useless, alienated and emasculated in churches that define what 'men' should be doing by working bees. Yet as Wei-Han says, it seems to work wonders getting men - and I might add particularly baby-boomer men - involved.

I also find the on-demand emotionalism of hand-waving charismatic worship singing words like "I-I-I-I'm desperate for you" pretty emasculating, yet churches that major in that sort of thing are not the churches losing men - check out Hillsong sometime, packed full of men - particularly Gen-Y men - who have redefined their sense of masculinity to accomodate that.

All of that suggests to me we shouldn't run one-size-fits-all cultural assumptions of why we are gaining or losing men in our churches...

[Jenny George-2]

Another response to Jereth's post.

I agree that there is a problem in some parts of the church where it seems like men are not connecting in. I think it is also true that there is (at least on an unsophisticated reading of the stats) a correlation in the Anglican church of Australia between acceptance of women's ordained ministry and numerical decline. -- (More of my thoughts on the stats in a little while, when I have all the graphs and charts, I promise! I'm already spending a couple of hours a day whenever I can but there's just a lot of numbers there) --

But should we make decisions about women's ministry based on numbers?

Firstly a counter example:

I am mindful of having grown up in a denomination that was traditionally extremely restrictive of women's ministry. Not only were women not allowed to preach or lead, they couldn't even speak - not even to read the Bible - in a church service and had to wear head coverings. Over time, some churches began to open more roles to women while some did not. In this denomination it is the churches that have embraced women's ministry that have flourished, where people are becoming Christians, and the ones that have kept almost all roles of any substance for men that have died. Nor is it true that the ratios of men to women in the more traditional of these churches were ever much better than the current Anglican church.

So I think that what is going on must be more than a simple gender issue about needing to give men roles so that they feel ownership of what's going on at church. I'm not saying there's no merit in thinking along those lines but it certainly isn't a simple "If A then B" equation.

Secondly a more general observation:

If it's right for men to have particular authority roles, it's right whether it causes numerical decline, causes women to leave the church or anything else.

Conversely, if it's right for women to be able to exercise particular ministries, it's similarly right whether it causes numerical decline, causes men to leave the church or anything else.

There's plenty of things that cause people to leave the church that we are comfortable saying is because their eyes are blinded and they are unwilling to be humbled and transformed by the Spirit of God. Even if men left the church because of women's ministry (and I'm not sure this is true), it is perfectly possible that this is an indication of unregenerate hearts that cannot accept hearing the truth of God from a woman.

Summary:

I haven't touched on the Biblical narratives re: women's ministry I know. That's not the point of this post. I just wanted to say that while we need to be concerned about whether we are reaching men with the gospel, we also need to be careful about using numbers to bolster a theological argument about the ministry that women can or should be exercising.

Jenny

[Jereth]

Jenny George wrote:

If it's right for men to have particular authority roles, it's right whether it causes numerical decline, causes women to leave the church or anything else.

Conversely, if it's right for women to be able to exercise particular ministries, it's similarly right whether it causes numerical decline, causes men to leave the church or anything else.

I agree with you Jenny. We do what's right regardless of what happens numerically to our churches. Sometimes a shrinking church is evidence that one is preaching the truth faithfully.

I don't think the preacher of that sermon was using the numbers as his primary argument -- indeed, as the sermon series progresses he goes on to look at Scripture. The numbers just seem to support the theological/scriptural arguments, if analysed a certain way; I doubt he would have pushed it much further than that. I certainly don't.

We've done a lot of speculating about numbers in these discussion forums: numbers, demographics, politics, sociology, psychology, etc. In hindsight I think that's unfortunate because it has served as a distraction from us looking at Scripture. If this debate is ever to be resolved that's what we have to do.

Jereth

[Luke Isham]

I agree with Jenny and Jereth that numbers do not tell the full story of why some churches grow and others decline.  In fact maybe evangelicals in general need to be careful in pointing to the numerical decline of 'liberal' churches and numerical increase of 'evangelical' churches as evidence for the superiority of evangelicalism.

[maria BS]

In responce to the sermon quoted on the other thread that has been moved over here.....

I find it interesting that a service (prayerbook services) which were written and designed by men are labeled too feminine...

I wonder is it really the flowers in churches that keep men from repenting of sin and turning to Christ, or could there be greater forces at work than floristry.

I wonder how those who follow this line of thinking would respond to historical exegesis of Song of Songs! For most of the last 2000 years our male Biblical scholars, Calvin included and particularly our Puritan friends have taken the whole 'Jesus is my boyfriend' thing to a whole other level!

When it comes down to it, the Bible doesn't describe masculinity and femininity in great depth - pop psychology does that. What the Bible does say is that we are to throw off the old self and put on our new selves in Christ, we are to above all love as God has loved us. Both men and women are called to imitate Jesus - not just men. We are called to love God and others, not just march in an army with flannel shirts. I worry that when we start to mix theology and missiology with too much pop psychology, we may find ourselves treading on dangerous ground.

Otherwise, I might be tempted to start a girls pink-skirt-wearing church...... and it might really take off...
but come to think of it... not all girls love the colour pink as I do.... some would probably rather wear flannel.

Ultimately, I think we must do our very best to share the good news with men and women - in ways that they can understand, but those who do repent and believe were chosen before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in God's sight.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/april/27.48.html
I found the above article a refreshing read on the topic.

[Hannah]

Hi,

I am new to this forum... and rather afraid of posting on forums generally but I have appreciated reading everyone else's comments so thought maybe I should add some of my own.
Going to start with an easy one though I think!

I'm afraid this is straying a little from the topic (which I am very interested in) but I am also interested in this issue of the supposed 'feminisation' of the church, and have heard many men talk about it in recent years.  The question Maria raises is a good one.

Given that public leadership positions (clergy, preaching, council's etc, I don't think including the number of women in children's ministry positions is helpful here as there ministry is very rarely (if ever) delivered to men) in our churches are still overwhelmingly held by men, by what processes have our churches become feminised?

Many of the most 'gushy' worship songs I know have been written by men.  In fact, most worship songs that we sing are written by men - and yet even singing itself I hear called 'feminine.'

I know that just because these ministries are performed by men, doesn't make them masculine.  But I am curious about exactly WHY church is labelled 'feminine' and HOW this has come to be the case.
 

[Hannah]

I guess what I am getting at is this...

[this is why I hate writing on these things:  you write something, then go away and think about it for a few hours and then you probably wouldn't say what you've just said....]

This issue was originally raised under a thread concerning the first woman bishop in Melbourne.  Implying (it seems to me) that the feminisation of the church is linked to permitting women to perform leadership and teaching roles.  I think this link was just a bit too quick.  As we all know, there may be other reasons why some churches that have been quick to push for the ministry of women are on the decline - if in fact they are (looking forward to your stats Jenny!).

Men may hate the church, but a lot more work needs to be done to demonstrate exactly what that's got to do with women teachers and leaders OR whether re-working our concept of Christian Masculinity (allowing it to be pretty broad I hope) must go hand in hand with complementarianism.

[Jereth]

Some great questions Hannah.

I don't think there is a direct cause-and-effect link between women's ordination and the "feminisation of the church". Without pretending to understand this issue fully (I don't!), my own hunch is that both phenomena are consequences of some other underlying socio-cultural change that has taken place.

Interesting that you mention songs. Maybe it's just me, but I tend to feel far more blokey singing the old hymns compared to many of the newer praise and worship songs -- some of which cause me no small discomfort to tell the truth! (Or maybe I'm just old fashioned)

[Hannah]

Matt Williams wrote:

I reckon if we think theologically, listen carefully to where people are coming from, treat them with respect and understand the connections between the gospel and everything else we believe, then every conversation about everything the church is doing, whether we think it is right or wrong, ought to be a gospel opportunity of sorts.

I  agree with Matt.
I didn't exactly make it my homework, but funnily enough I did find myself in two conversations with two different men (both of whom I had just met for the first time) about the appointment of a woman bishop in Melbourne.  Both these men - though neither Christians nor church-goers - WERE interested.  One of the conversations even led to a helpful discussion about some of the differences between Catholic and Protestant ideas about 'priesthood' and the role of the priest - esp. as it relates to 'confession' (i.e. we talked about whether you really need a priest to hear your confession, and the role of Jesus in it all....).

[jwhkuan]

What an excellent consequence of appointing a woman bishop!  

John Chapman used to play this game with his clergy mates: each morning after your quiet time, read the editorial of the Sydney Morning Herald/ Age (insert local newspaper here); figure out how to turn it into an evangelistic conversation; call your friends and discuss your idea in 2 mins; send each other out into the day prayed up, armed and ready!

Anyone to play?