No Little Women

Equipping All Women in the Household of God

Aimee Byrd

• Publisher: P Publishing
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781629952567
• eBook ISBN:
  9781629952574
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Strengthening women in the church strengthens the whole church. So why are women left to fend for themselves? Aimee's vision for discerning women and engaged church leaders offers a solution.

PART ONE

Pinpointing a Real Problem

1

THE DANGER IN WOMEN’S MINISTRIES

Every now and then I get a disturbing email from a pastor or concerned woman about the women’s ministry in their church. The usual scenario involves a group of well-intentioned women studying a popular book that is marketed for women’s ministry groups, and it is full of bad doctrine. But the author is extremely likable, she has done many good deeds in the name of the Lord, and, frankly, the women in the group are now invested. They are offended that someone is questioning what they think has been an edifying study. So you can see how this email usually comes after significant damage has already been done.

Or has it? Why quibble over words when these women are bonding by studying a book that many other good churches are using? Because the truth of God’s Word is important, and the women in God’s church are important. What we study together in a side room of our church or in our living rooms shapes our own growth in holiness as well as the growth of those around us. Women are very influential both in God’s household and in their own. And there are many books marketed to Christian women that appear to be godly, while a closer look reveals that they are not in accord with Scripture. But the problem goes deeper than bad “Christian” books marketed to women.

There seems to be a pattern that has gone on from the beginning of time. We read in Genesis 3:1, “Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made.” And what is the very next line after we have been given this information? “He said to the woman, ‘Did God actually say . . . ?’”

In his malevolent shrewdness, Satan went for the woman. He went after Adam’s gift from God, his bride. That was indeed a clever way to get to Adam. So it isn’t surprising today that Satan goes after Christ’s bride, his church, with the same distortion of God’s word.

Are there any sections of Scripture that make you uncomfortable to read and especially to discuss with others? There’s one particular passage that gets to me, and it should be troubling to any pastor or elder in God’s church, to any husband who wants to love and care for his family, and to every woman who professes the name of Christ. That passage is 2 Timothy 3:6–7:

For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.

This is a jarring warning. It comes in the context of Paul warning Timothy about false teachers infecting the church. They have an appearance of godliness, he says, but discernment shows that they are rebelling against the true power of godliness in the Spirit (vv. 1–5). The assertion that they target weak women may seem insulting at first glance. Of course, Paul is not making a blanket statement about all women. Let’s look into the word usage, cultural context, and exposition of this passage in more depth.

False teachers are a serious threat to God’s church. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus warns, “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves” (Matt. 7:15). This is exactly what Paul is describing in detail to Timothy when he warns him about the difficult times we are in during this age of “the last days”:

For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. (2 Tim. 3:2–5)

And these are people in the church! They are deceptive. And they need to be avoided. Notice how these false teachers—we could even call them messengers of Satan—“creep” into households all stealth-like and target specific women. The language should make us think of a certain serpent.

We read Genesis from our point of view and cannot believe that Eve was so easily deceived. However, we are all susceptible if we are not adequately conditioned in the Word and if we do not look to God to supply us with all that is good. Think about this text for a minute. Paul is exhorting Timothy, the pastor of the church in Ephesus. This is a church known for its passion for the truth! If Timothy needs to watch out for deception and false teaching in his congregation, then so do pastors today. No matter how good the preaching is that we sit under, we are all vulnerable to false teaching.

One way that churches invest in their women and provide a setting for them to serve others is through a women’s ministry program. You would think that every church would want to have a strong women’s ministry. After all, women usually make up more than half of the church. And we want our women to be active members of the church body. But with all the opportunities for churches to have a thriving women’s ministry, this verse in 2 Timothy is extremely pertinent. In many cases, women’s ministry becomes a back door for bad doctrine to seep into the church. Why are there still so many gullible women? Have we made any progress in equipping our women to distinguish truth from error in what they are reading? Do the women in your church actually have the skills to lead a Bible study? Why is it that so many women sit under good preaching and have all the best intentions, yet fall prey to the latest book marketed to them that is full of poor theology? And why do so many women in the church fail to see that theology has any practical impact on their everyday lives?

There are several ways to look at this, but let’s start by looking at the idea of “women’s ministry” in the first place. Through the church’s good intentions to minister to every member, we have swung the pendulum too far over into “every-member ministry.” In doing this, we have lost our focus on the actual ministry itself. This book isn’t a call for churches to ditch their women’s ministry programs. Rather, I am asking both the officers and the women in the church to evaluate their women’s ministries according to Scripture and also to encourage biblical women’s initiatives in the church. I would love for this book to help build up the entire church, both brothers and sisters in God’s household.

How do I respond to those emails that make me so sad? I sure wish that women (and men) in leadership would have enough discernment to recognize bad theology. Many don’t. And we can all be sharpened. This is an opportunity for an elder to step in and teach these skills. Instead of just saying, “This book is dangerous because of A, B, and C, so therefore you must stop reading it,” step in and read it with them. Find out what is so appealing about the book, and get to know the women studying it. Come prepared for discussion, with good questions and Scripture, so that these women will walk away with some tools for discernment. Teach them how to look for what this author is saying about God, about man, and about God’s Word. People need to learn how to read a book.

Why We Are So Insulted

Perhaps when you read the words “weak women,” your shoulders go back, your eyebrows furrow, and your lips purse. Paul’s audacity here provokes a reaction. Such strong language does make some women defensive. This is indeed a jarring warning to read about a particular type of woman. Who would want to be one of those women? I don’t want that for anyone in my church. I wouldn’t want to hear that about any of God’s people.

This expression, “weak women” (or “gullible women”), insults us. It is meant to jar a particular type of woman. The phrase, literally translated “little women” or “small women,” was a term of contempt. Paul isn’t soft-pedaling the issue here. And he isn’t being chauvinistic. His writing in Scripture shows a high view of women and much appreciation for their service to God. I wish we could all be the kind of woman who is praised in his writing.

And Paul is not saying that men are never gullible. He is saying that a particular type of immature woman was being targeted by false teachers looking to manipulate and infect households. Why do you think they were targets? Let’s look at two reasons for going after women in general, and then two that make these particular “little women” even more of a target.

The Value of Women

The very first false teacher, Satan, deliberately went after the woman in the garden of Eden. Why didn’t he approach Adam? Was it because Eve was more susceptible to error? Scripture doesn’t tell us the reasoning behind his strategy, but we are told that he was “more crafty than any other beast of the field” (Gen. 3:1). Adam was the federal representative for mankind. His obedience would have earned blessing for us all, and his disobedience brought depravity and death to his whole posterity. So, make no mistake, Satan was going after Adam. He was going after Adam by going after his bride. He went for a target of value to bring about Adam’s fall.

Before God created Eve, he declared that it was “not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him” (Gen. 2:18). There has been plenty of discussion about this word helper in regard to a woman’s role, and even to her value. But we don’t really attach the same meaning today to this word, so maybe we lose some of its significance. The word helper can often bring up connotations of inferiority in our culture. Think of mommy’s little helper in the kitchen. Isn’t it cute that she wants to help mommy? Let’s give her a bowl with some ingredients to stir and have her fetch a few things from the fridge. But don’t let her near the stove or the sharp knives! She’s just the helper; she might hurt herself!

Of course, this is not what “helper” means in Genesis 2:18. In fact, the same word is used to describe God as a “helper” to Israel throughout the Old Testament.¹ And when we look at these verses, we see that this word communicates great strength. Psalm 89:17 is particularly interesting: “For you are the glory of their strength; by your favor our horn is exalted.” Here we have our word ezer, usually translated “helper,” translated instead as “strength.” These verses are also saturated in military language as they describe God as Israel’s ezer. The root for this word is used 128 times in Scripture, meaning “rescue” and “save.” It refers to God’s rescue in thirty cases, which we see mostly in the Psalms.²

Women derive value first and foremost from being made in the image of God (Gen. 1:27). But, as fellow image-bearers, we have a particular value in our relationship to men as well. John McKinley prefers to interpret ezer as “necessary ally,” asserting that God has given us this analogy between himself as ezer and woman as ezer to focus on their functional correspondence.³ This is certainly different from the way we use the word helper today:

The issue in ezer is neither equality nor subordination, but distinction and relatedness. She is to be for the man as an ally to benefit him in the work they were given to do. Just as ezer tells of God’s relatedness to Israel as the necessary support for survival and military perils, the woman is the ally to the man, without which he cannot succeed or survive. Unlike helper, that could seem optional, and allow the man to think he’s otherwise adequate for his task without the women, the distinction of ally marks the man’s dependence upon her contribution. This dependence is plain when we consider Israel’s need for God’s contribution as her ally. . . .

What sort of ally is the woman to the man? She is a necessary ally, the sort without which he cannot fulfill humanity’s mission. Certainly the woman as a necessary ally fits for the mission of family building. The pairing of the two terms ezer and kenegdo brings a meaning that is larger than gender complementarity and union for building a family. Necessary ally brings into view the joint mission for which the male and female are created to rule God’s earthly kingdom.⁴

Ezer is the word first used to describe a woman’s function. This helps us to understand why the crafty Serpent spoke to Eve. Immediately following a description of the Serpent as “more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made,” we learn that “he said to the woman . . .” (Gen. 3:1). To get to Adam, Satan went after a target of value to him. It is no surprise, then, that he is still relentless in trying to deceive Christ’s bride, the church, through false teachers, ill-placed priorities, felt needs, fear tactics, and coping mechanisms, to divert them from resting in Christ and in God’s wisdom, provision, and sovereignty.

The Influence Women Have in a Household

Women are influential, both in their personal households and in the household of God. Research shows that men open up and have deeper conversation when a woman is involved.⁵ God has given us a gift of being relational. But this can also be used in a sinful way. Our propensity for intimate conversation helps us to be persuasive. This is especially true with our husbands. Before the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding popularized it, Spurgeon gave this witty advice to a bride in a wedding ceremony he was officiating: “According to the teaching of the apostle, ‘The husband is the head of the wife.’ Don’t you try to be the head; but you be the neck, then you can turn the head whichever way you like.”⁶ It’s funny because it’s kind of true. We don’t have to be the head to have power. But let’s not have weak necks!

The saying “Happy wife, happy life” is popular for a reason. And so we see Paul exhorting Titus to invest in the women of the household of God so that they may be instructed with a healthy doctrine that bears fruit in their personal households. Why does Paul say that he wants the older women to teach the younger women about personal holiness and relational care in the home (Titus 2:3–5)? Well, he tells us why: “that the word of God may not be reviled” (v. 5). We see that this teaching that the older women are responsible to hand down must be handled with great maturity, because they are dealing with the truth of God’s Word and applying it to people’s lives, where it will bear fruit. And people are watching! Sisters, neighbors, wives, and mothers tend to be the cultivators in household relationships. We are gifted with a tenderness to loosen hardened egos, as well as a firm strength to destroy the weeds that may infect our families. Women have a way of multitasking these relation...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part One: Pinpointing a Real Problem
• Part Two: Examining Our Context
• Part Three: Working toward a Solution
• Part Four: Honing Our Skills