The Need For Solid and In-depth Women’s Ministry - Andy Webb

 There are a couple of falsehoods I’m seeing more and more often on social media that I want to push back on in this article. The first is an idea becoming popular in evangelical Christian circles that the only way Christian women can avoid the dreaded "Pink Bible" studies and get substantive teaching, discipleship, and fellowship is by embracing evangelical feminism and joining egalitarian churches. That simply isn’t true. There are plenty of Reformed evangelical churches like our own congregation that are committed both to the principle of male headship in the church and family AND robust teaching, discipleship, and fellowship of both men and women. 

As an example of that our Ladies Bible Study recently finished a months-long study on the Westminster Shorter Catechism, the study itself which was mostly taught by my wife used G.I. Williamson’s “Shorter Catechism” and the Bible as its core books along with additional readings from Thomas Watson’s “Body of Divinity” and “The Ten Commandments.” The teaching was at least as in-depth as the teaching at the men’s studies on Tuesday and as you can see from the picture I took of the whiteboard after one of these studies, the notes were actually better than the ones I normally prepare!  The women’s study is currently doing a study on Prayer using the same book on the subject that several seminaries and bible colleges have used. 

It just isn’t the case that you have to embrace evangelical feminism to have substantive teaching for women in your congregation, and it has been my experience that the church that only makes pablum available to their women is giving the same sort of thing to the men. 

If your own church isn’t providing solid biblical teaching in its women’s bible studies and fellowship then I would humbly ask the following questions and make the following suggestions:

1) Is it because your church is weak on doctrinal preaching and teaching generally and more oriented towards entertainment and social activities? If that is the case, then the problem isn’t male headship, it's that your church isn’t following Christ’s explicit instruction to make disciples by “teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you” and not following the example of Paul in opening up the “whole counsel of God.” If that is the case, then it's probably time for you to find another congregation that takes biblical teaching and discipleship more seriously regardless of the social cost or inconvenience of doing so.

2) Is it because your church doesn’t have women who feel qualified to teach and disciple other women? There are ways around that as well:

a) Have the Pastor or an Elder team teach the women’s studies with their wives. Have the elder do the teaching and then allow him to leave and have his wife handle prayer and fellowship.

b) Make a doctrinally solid book or video with a teaching guide the center of your study. Make sure that if you are leading you know the material and aren’t “winging it.” The reason many Bible studies are wretched is simply because the core material isn’t good and the leader isn’t doing sufficient preparation.

Regardless, remember that the answer to a lack of good teaching is never to simply sit back and curse the darkness on social media, instead be active in bringing in the light! Whatever you do, seek genuinely biblical solutions not agendas like evangelical feminism that are actually worse and more damaging than the problems they claim to address.

 3) Now, it is possible that you might be part of the happily rare genuinely imbalanced churches (like the one once run by the now infamous Doug Phillips) that teach a caricatured modern version of patriarchy that discourages theological education for women. Clearly, if you are in a church where Aquila AND Priscilla could not have privately taken Apollo aside, “and explained to him the way of God more accurately” after the service, then there is a problem. It should be stressed that churches like that are not sound nor are they the evangelical or Reformed norm nor are they even “trending” in the current culture so attempting to use them as though they were the rule rather than the exception is highly misleading. If you are part of one of these churches, you should get out for a host of different reasons many of which are related to their defective ecclesiology. It should be noted that properly understood such churches are merely the other side of the feminist coin and that both of them fail to follow the Biblical standard. But always remember, the answer to falling into the ditch on one side of the road (male chauvinism) is never to choose to fall into the ditch on the other side (feminism)!