Women in Leadership Lectures

Audio from Week 1

Audio from Week 2

Audio from Week 3

Church-Wide Letter

April 19, 2022

Dear Hope Family,

On my sabbatical, I took some time to think about who had made significant gospel impacts in my life. After completing my list, I was able to identify many kinds of people—friends, mentors, family members, teachers—and several of those identified were women: my grandmother, my therapist, and a seminary professor. This should not be surprising, because God has been so gracious in the gospel to be my Father and place me in a family with other fathers, mothers, sisters, and brothers. The metaphor of family is one of the most common metaphors the Scriptures use to describe the people of God, so it should come as no surprise when you see both men and women on the list of people who have impacted your life. This is God’s intention!

Our denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), knew that both men and women make kingdom impacts, so it set out to write a position paper on women in ministry in the summer of 2017. Since the PCA’s founding in the early 1970s, our denomination has always practiced complementarianism, and one of the applications of complementarianism is that the office of pastor and elder is reserved only for qualified and called men. The position paper arrived at the same conclusion; however, it also found that our denomination had been overly restrictive in the ways women lead and engage in the life of the local church. Thus, the position paper challenged churches to expand the role of women. After sitting in those meetings that summer, I was eager to follow our denomination’s lead by expanding the role of women serving in our particular church.

In order for these changes to occur in the most helpful and organic way, I wanted the leaders of our church to take responsibility for these changes, so we needed to wait until March 2019, when we became Hope Presbyterian Church. We all know what happened after that…COVID. Before I went on sabbatical, I gave our elders a wide variety of materials on women in leadership. Some of the material was more restrictive than our denomination on women in leadership while other material was more permissive. They read the material while I was gone and we have spent the last eight months discussing what we have learned, where we still have questions, and what policies and practices we want to adopt. Some trusted women in the church have been an important part of the conversation and they have given us their input.

Having journeyed together these past eight months, we have come to a similar conclusion as our denomination. We want to affirm, alongside the PCA, that the offices of pastor and elder are reserved for qualified and called men; and, we think we must expand the role of women at Hope in order to better embody the reality of church as family where brothers and sisters work side by side.

There are two key areas of expansion:

Ministry to Women

The elders and I realize there is a need for women to minister to the needs of women. That could mean women putting on events just for women, or having women available to care for women who are in crisis.

Influence of Women

The elders and I want women to help shape the culture and direction of our church as a whole. Therefore, we want their presence and input at officer meetings, staff meetings, and in weekly worship.

This may bring up questions for you. That’s why we are going to hold three teachings directly after church on April 24, May 1, and May 15 in the Fellowship Hall. I, along with the ruling elders, will address our church on what we believe the Scriptures teach on these important issues.

In the meantime, I want to encourage you in two directions. The first is to pray that the Lord will help you see your blindspots. Ask him to reveal where your convictions are not in line with the Scriptures. Ask him to show you where your convictions are too strong or too weak. Secondly, pray that God would make us charitable with one another during this season. We need to beware of accusing others of being biblically unfaithful, unloving, oppressive, spineless, conservative, liberal, or any number of labels. Let’s suspend judgment. Be curious and presume that someone else is doing the best they can to understand what is a difficult issue.

I am excited about how the further inclusion of women in the life of our church will help us achieve our mission as Hope Presbyterian, to “bring the person and work of Jesus Christ to bear in every area of our life and our community.”

Because of grace,

Marshall