Stick Your Neck Out

This book by Travis Kolder is about 65 pages and easy to read. As the title suggests, it encourages people to take a step of faith to begin the journey into true fellowship. The excerpt below is from a chapter entitled Calling Forth the Women. The excerpt may be a bit long but it’s an important topic, we need women fully functioning in our gatherings.

For those women who have grown up in the church, one of the big questions isn’t whether they want to but whether they believe Jesus and the church wants them to be involved in this process. Many have grown up in a church culture that only allowed men to do most things, especially related to leadership, while the women were left to care for the kids and teach women’s Bible studies.

This is a huge discrepancy from what the New Testament teaches. You will be hard-pressed to find stories in the New Testament of women just tending the house and the kids. Yes, they did that, but they also did much, much more.

Let’s start with Jesus. While we know that Jesus had twelve male disciples who followed him around, we also know that women played a significant part in his ministry. He had no regular job and no home to speak of. His travel seemed to be funded at least in part by a group of women who he’d significantly impacted: “Soon afterward Jesus began a tour of the nearby towns and villages, preaching and announcing the Good News about the Kingdom of God. He took his twelve disciples with him, along with some women who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases. Among them were Mary Magdalene, from whom he cast out seven demons; Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s business manager; Susanna; and many others who were contributing from their own resources to support Jesus and his disciples” (Luke 8:1-3). The women who had encountered Jesus and were changed by him were traveling with him and helping finance his ministry.

Jesus also seemed to have a strong relationship with Mary and Martha of Bethany along with their brother Lazarus. Martha was known for taking care of the house and hosting Jesus and his disciples. In one story, Martha attempts to rebuke Mary for not helping her tend the house. Jesus’s response to Martha is that Mary had chosen the good part, something that would never be taken from her. What was Mary doing? Was she sitting starry-eyed, looking at Jesus and thinking of a restful, spiritual state in heaven? Was she just being “so heavenly minded that she was no earthly good?” No! Luke tells us that Mary “sat at the Lord’s feet, listening to what he taught” (Luke 10:39). She was positioning herself in the place of a full-fledged, participating disciple. She saw her place in God’s kingdom and prioritized that over the typical domestic concerns and even restrictions that parts of Christianity assign to women.

Need more examples? Jesus’s birth starts with a holy, humble virgin who says yes to an angel who came with a mysterious message (Luke 1:38). His ministry begins as that same woman, now older, insists her miracle son do something about the party that ran out of wine (John 2:1-12). He spent an unprecedented amount of time speaking of the kingdom to one woman at a well by herself, partly because he loved and cared for her and partly because she was key to reaching a whole Samaritan village (John 4:1-42). Mary Magdalene was the first person Jesus sent to others to announce the news of his resurrection.

Yes, Jesus mostly taught with and worked with his male disciples. So while these stories of women don’t demand our focus, the fact is that they do exist. This should cause us to stop and re-evaluate if we’ve sold Jesus short on what he would allow a woman to do in the name of expanding the kingdom.

Jesus’s disciples continued his inclusion of women in church ministry. Women were part of the prayer meeting that preceded the arrival of the Holy Spirit in the upper room (Acts 1:14). They believed that their “daughters [would] prophesy” (Acts 2:17), and they did (Acts 21:9). A woman named Tabitha had a ministry serving the poor and others (Acts 9:36). Her illness, death, and resurrection became the basis for the spread of the gospel throughout her region. Now, this would happen with who died and was resurrected, but she was well-known in the city for her service to others. Other women who came to Christ opened doors for significant ministry in an area. God opened the heart of a woman like Lydia (Acts 16:11-40) or God-fearing women in Thessalonica (Acts 17:4).

Let’s not forget, either, that the apostles also traveled in teams with their wives, which Paul says that Peter, the other apostles, and the Lord’s brothers did (1 Corinthians 9:5). Now, in the West, when we think of women traveling with their husbands in ministry, we think of hotel rooms, airline flights, and luxury. This was not the New Testament understanding of apostolic travel. It was a hardship with the potential to be robbed, left out in the cold, or even die. These women who traveled with their husbands were not treated to a luxury trip; they were responsible for participating in the hardships of ministry with their husbands.

Paul wrote of a similar reality. His letters to the churches were filled with acknowledgments of his female co-laborers. Phoebe was a servant of the church in Cenchrea (Romans 16:1). Paul uses the word “deacon” to describe her role, which is elsewhere in the New Testament used to describe Paul himself, Timothy, Apollos, and other members of his apostolic team. In that same letter, he acknowledges Priscilla, the wife of Aquila, as a co-laborer (Romans 16:3). He recognized Mary as a hard worker for them, which actually meant that she was a co-laborer in the gospel. Junia was a woman who was highly respected among the apostles and possibly even considered an apostle herself (Romans 16:7). He also acknowledged Tryphena and Tryphosa, whom he calls the Lord’s workers, and Persis, whom he says had worked hard for the Lord (Romans 16:12).

This wasn’t just a unique situation in Rome. In many places where Paul greets the church by name, he names women who were helping him spread the gospel. The letter to Philemon is also addressed to Apphia, a woman and possibly Philemon’s wife, in Philemon 1:2. In Philippians 4, he appealed to Euodia and Syntyche to reconcile with each other, but, in the process acknowledged that each of them “worked hard with [him] in telling others the Good News” (Philippians 4:2-3). In his letter to the Colossians, Paul greets Nympha and the church that met at her house (Colossians 4:15).

One of the clearest examples of a woman working to host and mother a church in the New Testament comes from the book of 2 John. This book is written to the chosen lady and her children. Commentators are split as to whether they believe this was a literal woman or an image for a church that had many disciples (children) because the whole letter involved church matters. I believe both are true. John wrote to a real woman who was likely a natural and spiritual mother. The church that probably met in her home was an extension of her family, so while the letter was sent to a literal person (a woman) and her children (probably both natural and spiritual), these matters were to be handled as a church, because they were a church. The entire book of 2 John was written to a church most likely started and hosted by a woman.

Travis Kolder, Stick Your Neck Out