Why We Don't Need "Women's Ministry"
This really is a blog post - even if I'm directing you toward someone else's wise words and writing, but if I ramble a bit here, then I think it counts enough.
This is an AH-mazing article - this is what I've been telling my husband for years. Women need women who will be real with them (maybe men do too, I don't pretend to understand what they need... I just press ahead through trial and error!). But I do know women, well, okay, I know one woman. And those are the friendships I crave and have been searching for for 20-some years. Honest, dependent, gritty, joyful, compassionate, celebratory, just-checkin'-in, just-thinkin'-about-you, just-givin'-you-my-honest-opinion, yes-you-can-just-drop-by and yes-you-can-call-me-in-the-middle-of-the-night kinds of friendship. It goes agains everything the world tells us we need to be real women (independence, self reliance, putting our own needs first), when in reality, NOT being those things is exactly what being a real woman is. The reason we crave relationships like this and the reason it fulfills us to have them is because that is how we were created. Embrace it girls and go stalk somebody until they become a real friend :)
"The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is 'What does a woman want?'" - Sigmund Freud
Geez, Siggy, we could have answered that in one blog post.
I TOTALLY agree, Tanya! Good post!
ReplyDeleteAs of today, the last time I have checked, I am not a woman. I agree with the article completely. Evangelicalism has fought so hard against feminism and homosexuality by stressing traditional, but not necessarily biblical gender roles. In the midst of this push for gender uniqueness the church has ignored the reality that "In Christ there is no longer Greek or Jew, slave or free, male or female..." (see Galatians 3:28) We have made male and female into a kind of Christian marketing niche. What the American Church/Evangelicals have failed to do is to treat people first and foremost as human beings created in the image of God. Men and women both have human spiritual needs that can be fulfilled only in Christ. The church has come to believe the lie that men are from mars and women are from venus. The truth is both come from God creating them in His image. Along side of this the church has sacrificed depth at the altar of attracting more people. So ladies be women who roar and don't settle for less. Don't let any church push you to be something less than you are.
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