Month: December 2012

Women and the Church – Part III

by Jordan Gadsby December 21, 2012 No Comments

I am sure that these three simple blog posts (Part I & Part II) haven’t closed this issue forever. It has, after all, been a contentious one for quite sometime. I do hope that it will make you think about this issue for yourself and maybe do some further studying of your own. The conclusion that I have come to is that God created man and woman equally in his image. He has a definite plan for each in his creation. Both are loved and valued equally by God, the creator of the universe. By our disobedience to God, the relationship between men and women has fallen incredibly short of what God intended it to be. The Good news is that it doesn’t have to be that way. God sent his son, Jesus Christ, to die in order to restore our relationship with him to what it was meant to be at creation. This restoration, from the words of Jesus and the apostles, can also restore our relationship to one another.

Ministry , Relationships

Women and the Church – Part II

by Jordan Gadsby December 21, 2012 No Comments

When studying anything, it is often useful to start at the beginning. People are introduced in God’s creation in the book of Genesis in chapter one verses 26 and 27 when “…God said, let us make Adam in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. God created Adam in his own image; in the image of God he created him. Male and female he created them.” It is important to note here that there is no generic term for humanity in Old Testament Hebrew other than “Adam”. It is also important that the verbs to rule (kabash) and to dominate (radah) suggest the taking of the land and its stewardship. This stewardship is given to humanity as “male and female” in God’s command for “them” to “rule over” creation.

Ministry , Relationships

Women and the Church – Part I

by Jordan Gadsby December 7, 2012 1 Comment

This post, looking briefly at women in the history of the church, is part one of a three part series.
Many people often think that women have been excluded in the history of the church. I have found many things in the history of Christianity that I am not proud of, and that I don’t think God would have wanted done in His name. I’m glad, however, that when looking at the role of women in Christianity we can find many examples of women who were leaders, visionaries, missionaries, reformers and martyrs. Sometimes this also meant that they were rebels against the “institution of the church”. The story of women in the Christian church is no different from