Carolyn Custis James

My earliest Mother’s Day memories are of my father purchasing flowers for the whole family. The tradition he taught us was that on Mother’s Day you wear a flower to honor your mother: red if she is living, white if you’ve lost her. So my three brothers and I, along with our mother, wore red. My dad wore a white boutonniere.

Over time Mother’s Day changed for me. My inability to conceive a child (which I felt every day) was annually highlighted on that one special Sunday. Mother’s Day was the one Sunday in the year I was tempted (and have been known) to play hooky from church.

I recall feeling it acutely one year, as mothers rose to be honored, and I remained seated alongside an incredible young wife who couldn’t have stood even if she had a child, which she didn’t and never would simply because a debilitating disease had overrun her body. That’s when I began to look beyond my own discomfort to realize how, for so many women Mother’s Day is one date on the calendar they’d just as soon skip.

Jesus had the opportunity to memorialize Mother’s Day. Twice He had golden opportunities to celebrate His own mother in public. Instead, He redefined our reasons to honor women and changed everything for all of us.

On one of those occasions, Jesus was preaching, when a woman in the crowed blurted out, “Blessed is the mother who gave you birth and nursed you.” Instead of celebrating motherhood, Jesus pointed to another reason to celebrate women.

“Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it” (Luke 11:28).

In God’s gracious providence, He gave me a little girl and made me a mother. Looking into her blinking eyes the first day I met her, was the first of many glorious moments. But as much as I love being a mom, I cannot forget the women who share the heartache I felt for so many years.

Maybe instead of celebrating biology—and leaving out so many women—we should take Jesus’ advice on the subject (now there’s an interesting idea!) and celebrate ezers who follow Him and are fulfilling His mandate to be fruitful and multiply by advancing His kingdom in the lives of others. Maybe then, instead of giving young women examples to follow that may be physically beyond their reach or easily lost in this broken world, we’d be showcasing role models every woman can and should follow.

A Blessed Ezers Day to ALL my sisters!

Although as far as I know, we aren’t sitting on a fault line in Orlando, the ground moved underneath us anyway last week.

Of course, the much-anticipated moving experience was the Synergy2009 conference which delivered on its promise to be earthshaking. As seems to be the case at each conference, Synergy ramped things up another notch this year. It’s Monday, and I’m still feeling the aftershocks of an incredible gathering of women and men. Despite the sagging economy, we had more attendees this year than last (from 31 different states!). The synergy among us was alive and well as we tackled the Blessed Alliance and worked to understand better God’s vision for male/female relationships in His kingdom.

More about Synergy later.

Right now, you may be asking yourself, “Why in the world am I looking at a photo of “hunky” Frank James?”

Well, there was a second earthquake in Orlando resulting in seizmic changes for our family that I didn’t expect.

The Richter Scale recorded a big one when Frank traveled to Boston early in the week for meetings at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Wednesday, he accepted their enthusiastic invitation to be their Provost. Needless to say, we are excited about opening a new chapter in our lives.

You can read their announcement here.

So much for all my gloating about warm Florida weather. Like the rest of you up North, this time next year I’ll be shivering from the cold outside, feeling overheated indoors, and longing for the first sign of Spring.

This time next week, Synergy2009 will be in full swing, and I can hardly wait! Women (and men) will be gathering in Orlando from 29 states so far, representing a variety of Christian ministries and theological seminaries.

I’ve just returned from the wintry Chicago area, where I thoroughly enjoyed (from indoors) the first snow storm I’ve witnessed in years. Outdoors, I felt the bitter cold of single-digit temperatures. Best of all, I spent the weekend with the women of Wheaton Bible Church—a group that really knows how to have a good time (consider that an understatement!), but where there is great hunger to dig deeper into God’s Word.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve also interacted with the women of Asbury Theological Seminary here in Orlando and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois—all fresh reminders of why I do what I do and why Synergy is so important.

Seminary training is vital. Landing a job in ministry is a significant accomplishment. The job search is often a major challenge and the point at which a lot of women hit a wall that eventually causes them to choose another line of work.

Synergy is building a support system for women training and searching for ministry jobs and women already in ministry positions. We focus on continuing education, networking with others who are in the same line of ministry, and tackling issues and problems that come up on different ministry fronts. Eventually, our goal (at least one of them) is to do more to help connect gifted women with fulltime ministry opportunities.

If you’re among those migrating south for this year’s Synergy conference, you can look forward to warmer temperatures and to refueling for the challenges and opportunities ahead. If you’re not coming, please keep us in your prayers, and start making plans to join us at Synergy2010.

I live in Florida . . . where it is always summer never winter. So it’s a shock to my system whenever I head north to colder climates. It feels like tumbling out of the back of a wardrobe, suddenly finding myself in the bitter cold world of Narnia.

This week I traveled with my friend and fellow Synergy promoter, Susan Nash, to the snow-covered campus of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts. On our arrival, Dr. Alice Mathews, GCTS’s Academic Dean, delivered on her promise of a “a very warm welcome in frigid, icy, snowy New England.”

Her greeting wasn’t the only reason I felt warm in wintry Massachusetts.

Chilly outside temperatures can’t beat off the warmth I feel when I hear the passion of women to study and learn, to pursue a deeper relationship with God, and to follow His call to minister to others. I feel even warmer when I see theological seminaries putting out the welcome mat for women and hear of professors valuing the presence and contributions of women in the seminary classroom.

I feel a different kind of heat (more like fire!) inside when I hear stories of respected Christian leaders and even beloved mentors attempting to dissuade women from pursuing a seminary education. Or when I hear, as I did this past week, of studies that focused on female graduates from two leading evangelical seminaries over the past decade indicating only 13% of them have been able to find jobs in ministry organizations.

What is wrong with this picture?! Are the challenges the Christian church faces so small, that we can do without these ezer-warriors? I think not.

My hat goes off to the many women who, without the benefit of seminary training, have studied and done their best to teach God’s Word. What some have accomplished with one hand tied behind their backs is extraordinary to say the least. At the same time, I have to wonder what more they could have done with the tools and training available at evangelical seminaries. Or how the church might have been strengthened and seminary communities themselves been enriched by involving, better yet recruiting, women at the seminary level in the study of theology and Scripture.

What possible advantage can there be to the church in making sure women know less or are less well-equipped for ministry? Where is the verse that says a woman should only know so much about God and no more? And what can we do to make the most of this growing resource of trained women God has called into Christian ministry?

Both kinds of heat fuel my commitment to Synergy. This is at least one place where we believe in women and are getting behind them as they train for, seek and engage in ministry opportunities.

Next weekend I’ll be digging out my winter coat, gloves, and scarf again and heading for the bitter cold Chicago area where I’ll be meeting with the women of Wheaton Bible Church and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. And where, I’m pretty sure, instead of shivering, I’ll be feeling a lot of warmth inside as I interact with women who have a passion for learning and who are moving forward with their seminary training.

Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay

A conservative pastor of a denomination that does not believe in ordaining women once asked me point blank: “What do you think of women pastors?”

I thought I knew where this was heading. Groaning silently, I was sure his question was probably another attempt to locate me on the map of opinions on the role of women in ministry. So I dodged his question by answering with a question of my own. “Why do you ask?”

His answer couldn’t have surprised me more. “Because I want to hire one!”

What came out in the conversation that followed was neither a plot to subvert his denomination nor a private confession that he had switched camps in the debate over women. Instead, he expressed his heart for the pastoral needs of his congregation and his growing conviction that he needed a woman to help him address the diverse pastoral concerns within his congregation.

The issue he raised transcends the question of women’s ordination and goes to the heart of the foundational statement God made when He created the first woman: “It is not good for the man to be alone” (Genesis 2:18). This pastor was experiencing first-hand the problem God diagnosed when Eden was male-only territory and offering his hearty “Amen!” to God’s solution.

At creation, God created his image bearers—male and female—to serve Him together as a Blessed Alliance in every sphere of life. The scope of their mission encompassed “all the earth” (Genesis 1:26). Therefore God’s special blessing rests uniquely on this male/female partnership both in marriage and everywhere else (Genesis 1:28).

This divine mission is much deeper than deciding which view we hold on the role of women in ministry. It goes beyond logistical issues or efforts to figure out better ways of dividing the workload and getting along. The mission is bound up in how well we represent God to our fractured world.

According to God’s design, male/female relationships are focal points of His plan to reveal Himself in this world. A lot is riding on the quality of these relationships and on how well we, as brothers and sisters in Christ, band together in common cause. This Blessed Alliance between men and women is a crucial kingdom strategy, then and now.

God’s original vision—a vision He has never abandoned but revives in the work of His Son—was for relationships between men and women to be dazzling points of light on this spinning globe. Dynamics between men and women were never intended to be a battle of the sexes or a heated debate within Christian circles. Male/female relationships in Christ are to be a glowing testament to the fact that we are followers of Jesus. This is where God means to put on display a gospel-powered love. This is where the world is supposed to see men and women laying down their lives for others, offering strength and wisdom to each other, and investing ourselves fully for God’s kingdom.

The whiplash I got from that conservative pastor’s comment has stayed with me as a reminder that kingdom work is handicapped when men or women move forward alone. Neither males nor females can do the job God has called us to do or be the people He created us to be if we divide up kingdom work by gender. God has called us to be a Blessed Alliance!

When I first heard the title of Professor Scot McKnight’s latest book—The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible—I must admit I was both baffled and intrigued. What on earth does a blue parakeet have to do with reading the Bible?

The professor who (along with his wife) is an avid birdwatcher, found an illustration for some of our worst Bible reading habits in his own back yard when a blue parakeet suddenly appeared in the midst of his sparrow-dominated property.

At first, the strange little flat-beaked blue newcomer terrified the flock of sparrows. Bird psychologists would have been taking notes as they observed the sparrows’ nervous behavior. In time, however, the sparrows adjusted. Even though the blue parakeet remained—blue as ever—the sparrows carried on as though nothing odd or unusual was among them.

The Bible, according to Dr. McKnight, is full of blue parakeet passages—texts that disturb a first-time reader, but to which we grow accustomed over time, learn to ignore, and eventually don’t even see. Instead of allowing these blue parakeets to fly as they were meant to do, we domesticate them with methods that relieve our discomfort and put these awkward, disturbing, and seemingly disjointed passages to sleep. Instead of wrestling with what we’re reading, we grow comfortable with portions of Scripture that should jar us into asking hard questions and so we forfeit important opportunities intended to challenge our thinking and help us learn. In the process we’re muting the message God means for His Word to speak into our lives.

Dr. McKnight exposes the rampant tendency among believers to “pick and choose” verses they embrace and those they push aside. Everyone is doing this. He identifies five widely-accepted parakeet taming methods that keep us from digging deeply into God’s word and points us to reading the Bible as story—the grand story God is weaving, composed of “wiki-stories” told by the writers and characters of the biblical narrative.

He takes for a case study verses relating to the role of women. Given the fact that leading evangelical scholars can’t agree on how to interpret these passages, it is difficult to argue with the professor’s assertion that the subject of women in the Bible is classic parakeet territory. I must say it warmed my heart to read his sincere apology to the women of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School for not standing up for them when he was a professor at that seminary. You may or may not agree with his conclusions about these texts, but don’t let that stand in your way of reading this excellent book. He’ll make you think about how you read the Bible and guide you into a richer reading of God’s word.