Part 5 - Heading to Seminary
After a couple of years in Oregon, I began to feel it was important for me to go back to school, which for me meant finding a seminary within an hour’s drive of our home. I landed at Western Evangelical Seminary where I decided to pursue a Master of Arts in Theological Studies. It was a 2-year degree that seemed like it was more reasonable to achieve than the 3-year Master of Divinity.
What I very soon discovered only a couple of terms into my program was WES had a very PRO-WOMEN-IN-MINISTRY stance. There were women taking ministry leadership classes, there were women professors, there was a constant egalitarian message that came through the lectures in classes and the chapel speakers.
In a class on Paul and his writings, I chose to do a research project on Paul’s views about women in ministry. I spent that quarter reading numerous books on the subject. I studied commentaries on the meanings of Greek words Paul used in passages related to women as well as how his words would likely have been interpreted by the original audience.
What I learned was a mixed bag. I remember the conclusion I wrote in that paper was that there were compelling reasons to believe Paul believed women should be freed from gender-based limitations in their use of spiritual gifts, but that the plain sense reading of the texts in 1 Timothy and Titus limiting the roles of women in ministry was very difficult to set aside. I discovered there was not one clear message that Paul taught and lived out, but sometimes he would say ground-breaking things like “In Christ there is no division between male and female” (Gal 3:28) and in another setting he would say “women must be silent in the churches” (1 Cor 14:34).
I found this all very confusing, and difficult to reconcile, for at the time I was still trying to hold to an understanding of scripture that it was without error. I knew there were contradictions, but somehow I believed if I could just study enough I’d be able to find a way to smooth these over.
In my heart I wanted the scriptures to say, “God gives gifts to people as God desires, and they should use them to their full capacity regardless of who they are.” But what I read and studied left me somewhere between two worlds. One world, that of the conservative Christian church where I served, did not even allow women to serve communion during the services or be ushers. The other world, the one of academia, and the one that seemed intuitively right to me, encouraged women to use their God-given gifts freely.
It would actually be many years later that I would be introduced to the idea that even if the Bible endorses or prohibits a thing, that does not mean it is endorsed or prohibited for all people everywhere for every generation. For many years I dealt with the nagging sense that my beliefs about the Bible were not big enough to contain what seemed true about God’s goodness, mercy and grace. I wanted the Bible to be clearer and without doubt about a more beautiful approach to women and their place in the Kingdom of God. But it just wasn’t. As I kept growing and maturing as a church leader and a man of faith, I would discover other issues that created this same tension.