Women’s contribution to the mission of the church is not just “important” or “vital” or “critical.” Women are “essential and indispensable” to the church’s mission and ministry. So says speaker and writer Jen Wilkin of The Village Church in Flower Mound, Texas.
I don’t know anyone who denies this. But when I heard her say it, it struck me. Why haven’t I heard it put this way? Why haven’t I said it? With the complementarian emphasis on elders, have we failed to recognize the essential and indispensable role men and women both play in fulfilling the great commission through our churches.
I don’t agree with everything Wilkin says about women and the church, but she’s spot-on right here. The Bible tells us so. It does not treat women’s work—Wilkin again—as “nice, but not necessary.” Rather, the Bible says women are essential and indispensable to fulfilling the Cultural Mandate’s command to multiply and fill, to subdue and rule. And it says they’re essential and indispensable to fulfilling the Great Commission’s call to make disciples.
THE ESSENTIAL & INDISPENSABLE MINISTRY OF WOMEN IN THE OLD TESTAMENT
Under the Old Covenant, women’s ministry—to risk an anachronism—was tied to motherhood generally as well as
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