The Class That Changed My Life

In August of 2018, I started my first college class in 35 years. My daughter, who had received her undergraduate degree in Christian education in 2013 and a master’s in Christian formation and ministry in 2017, both from Wheaton College, was a brand-new mother. She had an adorable baby girl whom I was going to watch for one and a half days a week while she was working full-time. I made 15 trips up to Wheaton and back that fall semester. I would watch that newborn baby for a day and a half, then attend my class and drive back to Cincinnati.

That class changed my life.

I was on staff with a major parachurch organization and was doing athletic ministry at a university in Cincinnati. When I had come on staff with this organization in 1984, I was required to take a program of summer classes called the Institute of Biblical Studies (IBS) from professors teaching basics like New Testament Survey. Single women and all the men had to take 3 years of IBS classes within their first ten years on staff. In return, they received an IBS Certificate. Because I was newly married when I came on staff, I was only required to take two years, and one of my classes was replaced by “Christian Marriage.” Around 2014, our organization started approving a ministers’ housing allowance to staff that completed all three years of IBS. I had three classes left to qualify.

I took two online classes with IBS, but I wanted to take the last one, “Bible Study Methods,” in person from Wheaton College. I had seen firsthand how Wheaton had taught my daughter to teach Scripture, so I asked her which class she thought would teach me how to teach the Bible. She recommended the graduate class “Bible in Ministry.” I sent the syllabus to IBS, and they approved this Wheaton class to fulfill my Bible Study Methods requirement.

Upon entering the classroom for the first time, it was clear that I could literally be the age of the other students’ mothers! The professor and I were closer in age. He had been a minister of a Presbyterian church and did not just have knowledge and education; he had ministry experience.

One of the first sessions—the one that set my life on a different course—my professor explained how important it was to take the Bible in context. We had been looking up different passages when we came to Ephesians 5. He asked us for a volunteer to read the section relating to marriage and family. I read, starting in verse 22, “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.” Then he asked the class if anyone else had a different start to their section. A young man read, “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.”

My head swung around and looked at him, “What? I don’t see that.” The professor pointed out that some Bible translations start that section in verse 22, and other translations start in verse 21. All the students and the professor could see I was alarmed. My professor said, “They do this on purpose, too, to frame the rest of the passage in light of wives submitting to their husbands. They put the mutual submission verse at the end of the section before it. And of course, the headings were not in the original text.”

I slammed my Bible down on my desk and hung my head, thinking, “I trusted these people.” My mind went back through everyone who had framed this passage in light of a wife’s submission: our organization’s marriage ministry’s Bible Studies and marriage enrichment retreats, my first year IBS class on marriage, the Southern Baptist Church my husband and I had attended through our dating, engagement, and early marriage. They all taught that wives submit to their husbands. I do not remember them mentioning mutual submission. They never pointed out that some translations include the mutual submission verse at the beginning of that section.

A female student behind me said, “The Greek word for ‘submit’ isn’t even in verse 22.”

“What?!” I asked with huge eyes.

The students explained that verse 22 borrows the word for submit from verse 21. So those two verses are tied together linguistically. They should not be separated by a heading.

“Crud,” I thought. “This changes everything.”

This started me on my path of trying to figure out what Scripture really said about women. My professor, during a visit to his office hours, started answering my questions. He told me about the CBE International website and the Priscilla Papers journal. I poured over everything I could find in there.

Another week, after finishing my class at Wheaton, I was scheduled to fly to Phoenix instead of going back to Cincinnati. I decided to take the train to Midway airport, so I was waiting at the Wheaton train station when a friendly man came up to me and started a conversation. (Looking back, I think he was trying to share Christ with me.) It was another Wheaton professor. He was on his way to downtown Chicago for a meeting of an “Inklings” fan group or at least that is how I remember it. He was an authority on C.S. Lewis and was meeting some friends downtown. He was also good at evangelism, so he came to me.

As soon as I found out who he was, I told him that what was really bothering me was this whole issue about women in ministry. As you can imagine, it had not taken long before my “discovery” about mutual submission had led to me questioning what I had been told about women being unable to lead in ministry—especially the teaching that women cannot have authority over men in ministry. This kind professor sat by me on that Chicago Metro train, opened his leather satchel at his feet, and pulled out his Bible. He started teaching me about Huldah, whom I had never heard of. He told me about Junia; again, I had never heard of her. He explained 1 Timothy 2:11–15, asking me, “Which is worse: to be deceived, or know something is wrong and do it anyway?” He asked me questions and explained ideas to me that I had never been exposed to before. I felt like I was the Ethiopian Eunuch and this professor was Philip.

It turned out that he had been involved with my own organization’s athletic ministry when he was in high school, back when our headquarters were in Southern California. He knew and understood what I had experienced. Our organization clearly taught, and still teaches, that women are to submit to their husband’s leadership in marriage. Back when the Danvers Statement came out in Christianity Today in 1987, the founders of our parachurch organization signed it. When I came on staff, there was no doubt where they stood about women in leadership.

Today, our leadership says that they do not have a statement on women in leadership; they have a practice. That practice is “shared leadership,” that is, women and men leading together. They want to be “big tent” so that both complementarians and egalitarians will be comfortable on staff. The marriage class is no longer a part of the required IBS curriculum for married staff. But our organization still promotes complementarianism through their marriage ministry, whose Principle #3 on their website states:

A husband is to love, lead, respect and serve his wife, sacrificially laying down his life and considering the needs of his wife as more important than his own (Eph. 5:25–33a). Likewise, a wife is to love, serve, respect, and submit herself to her husband’s godly leadership (Eph. 5:22–24, 33b).

Starting from when this organization was founded in the 1950’s until the policy changed in 2012, both spouses in a couple were required to be on staff; many of these staff couples remain. Women who are married can thus sometimes be invisible, hidden behind their husband’s leadership.

In 2018, I found out that the athletic division of the ministry wanted shared leadership at the regional level in their campus ministry. They had ten regions with ten regional directors, all men. So I decided to apply to become a regional director. I thought they would say “no” to me. But I have been on staff for 35 years; 8 years of that was in South Africa. I played Division I golf in college, and I still compete. I am actively involved with campus ministry. It would be hard for them to say “no.” Even if they did so anyway, maybe I would make it easier for the next woman that applied.

My regional director would not fill out my “leadership questionnaire” because he said he did not know me well enough. (He had been my regional director for ten years.) So, I asked my Wheaton professor to be a reference for me, along others that I had worked with over my 35 years of ministry.

In the end, they said, “yes.”

I shared the role with a man.

As one of my sons said cleverly, “Forty-five years after Title IX was passed, your athletic ministry gets their first female regional director.”

It was a bit of a pressure-cooker being the first female regional director—there were national Zoom meetings where I was the only woman on the screen—but I think my golf background helped me to be more confident in majority-male spaces. Someone had to be the first, and I am pleased to say that after I was selected, other women started applying and became regional directors too. I am so pleased that our ministry is growing in wanting to have women as leaders. It is my hope that all women will be able to use their gifts, talents, education, and experiences to the fullest for the glory of God and for the sake of the Great Commission.

Photo by Kampus Production.