Gender Roles in the Church

Resurgence recently featured a short post by Mark Driscoll on the prominent views of gender roles in the church. I had never seen them organized exactly this way, but find it interesting. Here's a clip from his post:

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There are three basic views prevailing today in the home and church:

• Egalitarian (Feministic): There is no innate distinction between the roles of men and women in the home or church. Women can be pastors and men can be stay-at-home dads so that their wives can pursue their careers.

• Complementarian (Moderate): Men and women are partners in every area of life and ministry together. Though equal, men and women have complementary and distinct gender roles so that men are to lovingly lead and head their homes like Jesus, and only men can be pastors in the church.

• Hierarchical (Chauvinistic): Women are not only commanded to follow male leadership, but are not given a voice with male leaders, as women are often chauvinistically kept under thumb as the polar opposite of egalitarian feminism.

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It is important for us to have a Biblical understanding of the roles of men and women within the church. It's perfectly wonderful to dialogue and even debate on this issue but it is important that our opinions are formed by our labor with the scriptures and not simply grounded in our opinion of what is right or wrong.