Men & Women in Ministry Together

Imagine that you’re writing a long “catch up” email to a friend in ministry. Over the years, you’ve developed a deep bond, despite the challenges of distance and the demands of your separate callings. You share what’s been happening in your own life and tell them that you pray for them often.  You review some projects you’re working on together, and as you do, you feel a renewed sense of passion for ministry. 

After this, you reply to a few theological points your friend brought up in a previous email. There are differences between your contexts, of course, and this affects how you each apply certain principles. But overall, you’re amazed by how the gospel transcends these barriers to unite your hearts in worship.

Finally, as you wrap up your email, you remember some other friends serving in ministry in the same town—folks who are partners in proclaiming the gospel. You know your friend sees them regularly so you pass along your greetings.

Now stop for a minute: Who are those people? When you think of your partners in ministry, who do you think of? Who do you understand to be your coworkers in the gospel? Who is on your list of friends to greet?*

In Romans 16, the Apostle Paul concludes his letter to the church at Rome with the names of those he considers his “coworkers in Christ Jesus.” Despite the years and miles, he loves them deeply. They have worked shoulder-to-shoulder with him, suffering and sacrificing along the way. He considers them his equals and in some cases, maybe even his betters.  They are rich and poor, Greek and Jew, young and old, and perhaps most significantly to this conversation, men and women.

If we’re honest, ministry partnerships within American evangelicalism rarely reflect this vision. Besides the obvious racial, educational, and socioeconomic divides, there is too often a gap between men and women, with each quarantined off from the other.  And when you add a strict separation between clergy and laity, this divide can increase exponentially in spaces where women do not hold formal leadership.

For some, this distance is a question of equality. After all, “separate but equal” spheres are rarely that.  For others, the divide represents no problem at all, especially if both men and women are active and busy in the church in their own ways. Why does it matter whether they’re partnering together so long as both are working for the kingdom?

For me, though, ministry divides between men and women signal a larger misunderstanding about how God created the world and how he intends his church to exist in it. 

From its very first pages, Scripture reveals the interdependent nature of men and women. When God makes humankind, he makes them “male and female in his image” so that without the other they are unable to fulfill their shared calling.  To “be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it,” men and women must collaborate—they must become co-laborers who work with each other to establish healthy, flourishing human community.

Later in Genesis 3, we see how sin affects men and women’s ability to work together, both in how it limits the fruitfulness of their shared labor and by the division that comes between them.  The result is isolation, fragmentation, suffering, and futility.
 
Given this, we should not be surprised that when the second Adam comes, he intentionally draws both men and women into his circle of ministry. Jesus defends women from men who criticize their worship. He invites them to learn beside his male disciples. He sends them to their brothers with the news of the Resurrection. Jesus is actively and intentionally healing the division between men and women, uniting them in himself (Colossians 1:19-20).

“Jesus is actively and intentionally healing the division between men and women, uniting them in himself.”

And just before he ascends to heaven, he gathers his disciples together and commissions them as the heirs of this restored humanity. He tells them to reproduce his likeness in people all around the world—to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you (Matthew 28:19-20).”

But just as the first man and the first woman could not be fruitful without each other, we cannot minister the gospel without true partnership between men and women.  This is why the New Testament imagines the church as the “household of God.” The new humanity found in Jesus Christ is reproduced and nurtured through spiritual mothers and fathers. We are family, not of blood, but of spirit. And as members of this household, we must all be working together to bring life to the world.

Even though we may disagree about how to best assign jobs in the family of God, the core principles are clear: God made us interdependent as men and women. His vision for his church is that we would partner together. We are mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, called to steward the good news of Jesus Christ.

Men and women working together is more than a question of justice or equity. We cannot ignore its absence or settle for less than true partnership. This is the shape of the world God has made.

And so the relevant question we must ask is not who gets to do what, when, where, and how, but rather are we cultivating healthy partnership between men and women? How have our churches and ministries suffered because men and women operate in isolation? And perhaps even closer to home, when we perpetuate these divides, are we resisting God’s intention for his church? Are we resisting reality itself?

And if we are, what can be done about it?

*I am indebted to my co-laborer Andrew Wilson for first suggesting this thought experiment to me in the summer of 2021.