Celebrating women in the kingdom of God

My heart breaks for any women who heard John Piper speak these words. Author and blogger Rachel Held Evans has called for men to respond to Piper by celebrating the importance of women in the church, so, while I wish I had the time to write something fresh, I will instead highlight two sermons that I have posted here in the past.

The first one is called "The Story of the Women," which I preached in April of 2010 as part of our "The Story of..." series. The second is a little more focused on the issue of women in ministry: "Before and After: Personhood" (that link will take you to a .pdf file; click here to download a recording of the sermon) was preached in May of 2011 as part of our "Before and After" series.

Before and After: Personhood

Reading: Joel 2:11-32; John 20:1-18

This week's sermon was a shot across the bow — or maybe a shot right at — those who teach complementarian theology in the church. Complementarianism, if you're not familiar with it, is essentially the teaching that women were designed by God to submit to men, and therefore they are naturally excluded from leadership in ministry. This is a step backwards, folks. It has nothing to do with the good news of Jesus Christ.

I've never focused exclusively on the topic of women in ministry from the pulpit, though I have addressed it, so this was a fun sermon for me to preach. I find it incredibly frustrating that some of the points in this sermon even have to be made; the more I think about the infection of complementarianism in the church the more annoyed I get, especially when Wesleyan pastors subscribe to it. This issue should have been settled centuries ago. Repent and believe in the gospel, for crying out loud.

Click here to view a manuscript of this sermon (.pdf).

Click here to download a recording of this sermon.

Preached on May 8, 2011 at PLWC.