Do away with ordination?
by John W. Eby, Dillsburg, Pa.
I am disappointed that Lancaster (Pa.) Mennonite Conference, where I am a member, decided to maintain an unbiblical pattern of discrimination in church leadership based on gender. Unfortunately, that will deprive Lancaster Conference of the ministry of gifted women and will discourage young women from following God’s call to ministry. It has already led some people not to join congregations in the conference. Perhaps some individuals and congregations will leave.
In addition, this decision reflects a pattern of biblical interpretation that is dangerous and maintains ordination as a status symbol. It is troubling that one-third of Lancaster Conference’s credentialed leadership who voted interprets the Bible in a way that supports this policy. They seem to take a few statements limiting the role of women literally while ignoring other statements, the practice of the early church and the broader teaching of the New Testament, which support women in leadership. They do not consider the context of statements seeming to limit the roles of women and pick and choose what they want to do by ignoring clear statements in the same passages. For example, we do not prohibit “braiding hair.” If women “must be silent,” what would happen to congregational singing? Could single women be saved if we took literally the statement that “women will be saved through childbearing”? Our schools, church agencies and mission programs would disintegrate if women were not allowed to “teach or have authority over a man” (1 Timothy 2:12).
It is ironic that ordination becomes the place to draw the line when ordination is never mentioned in the New Testament in the way it is practiced in Lancaster Conference. Maybe to be more biblical, there should be no ordination at all. Perhaps currently ordained men should relinquish their ordination.
Associated Issue: A landscape of change - Feb. 16, 2007
Associated Article: Recommendation to ordain women fails
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