De Bron

I had the very lucky privilege of being at the TED workers meetings in De Brun in September. I was one of the few ministerial students who were allowed a look into this wonderful world of pastors and workers and it made for an interesting time.

One of the highlights for me was the impromptu meeting some of the women ministers had at that time. They managed to squeeze a minute in-between meetings and I was so encouraged by seeing the range of women in ministry currently. It was a true blessing to witness and to so many women from different backgrounds, cultures, races and ages together and talking about their work in ministry.

One of the most encouraging points was their willingness to embrace the female student ministerial students at Newbold. They have now got an email list that they would like us to be a part of. They are planning a retreat for the female ministers and would like to coincide it with our semesters so that we can be a part of it and they can encourage us. All in all it was an inspiration and they were an encouragement.

So on the back of that session we would like to meet with all the female DTS students next week Tuesday lunch in the canteen so we can have a chat about the session and see what we can do. We would like to collect email addresses so they can go on the mailing list. Also have a think about anything we might need or any support that would be good for us.

Please come along share lunch and fellowship with your fellow female DTS students, bring your ideas and enjoy some time together.

Female Student DTS Meeting

Tuesday 9th October

1pm

Newbold Canteen

New Women's Ministry Website

The British Union Women's Ministry Department has launched a new website. It can be found here.

Woman at the Well

I saw this posted on Emergine Women and wanted to share it with you.

Women Should Refrain from Speaking in Church!?!?

Many people find themselves in hot water when they quote Paul’s first letter to Timothy and assume that he was suggesting that women should stay at home and that they should not be able to teach in church.

Two thousand years later and this text is being used to discourage women from entering the ministry or, if they do enter the ministry, it is used to stop them playing a full role.

Interesting, however, readers continue to make the same perennial mistake and take the text out of its socio-historical setting. They also fail to appreciate or to recognise that there are different kinds of passages within the Bible. There are those which a) describe events practices at that time and b) to describe teach principles for universal application.

The passage in 1 Timothy 2:9-15 describes events and practices.

Without putting much effort anyone who is interested can find out that Paul was encouraging Timothy to confront false teachings within the church at Ephesus because his own trip was going to be delayed. In the meantime, his set his words down on paper and suggested that Timothy tell the women in that day and at that time to refrain from teaching as their teachings were false. They were, however, not alone in giving false teachings. There was much of it going on in the church and the men had an equal part to play.

It is also clear from reading other passages that Paul was, in fact, supportive of women in the ministry. See for example Romans 16:1,2,7 and Philippians 4:2,3. Note that, it is in this passage that the only female apostle is mentioned and that, despite the ongoing debate among scholars about the identification of Junia, no record of the male name "Junias" has ever been discovered in extra-biblical Greek literature. (What ever you think about women as minister, read the book reveiw about Junia or even buy the book for yourself.)

Paul also referred to Priscilla as ‘a fellow worker in Christ’ Jesus (Rom 16:3) and of Euodia and Syntyche, he said, ‘these women who laboured with me in the gospel’ (Philippians 4:3).

In reality, there is neither the time nor the space in this blog to do justice to the depth of study needed to tackle the sort of comments thrown at women as they go through seminary but there are plenty of resources on the internet which can be used to help deal with the simplistic generalisations we all too often hear.

Whatever your thoughts, this would make a good dissertation for Greek scholars out there!


Carole Williams