Every summer you can always find me at the nearest Target a little more than usual. It's not that I get a sudden urge to shop there when the temperature rises, it is simply that my summers lately have been filled with weddings and wedding showers for friends. At the dawn of the first day of summer the wedding invitations begin pouring in, and our weekends are quickly booked with all of the festivities of our friends and loved one's happy nuptials.

As women, many of us have been planning our wedding since we were five years old, down to the color of the flowers and the number of attendants that we have already chosen. All we're really missing is the groom, and we are pretty certain that he will come soon to sweep us off of our feet and carry us off to wedded bliss. This is not wrong. In fact, we should desire marriage and look forward to that day, should God choose to give us that. But the end result of our wanting to be married should be a hope in a marriage as the corporate Bride to a very different man-the God man, Jesus Christ.

Marriage exists to point people to the Gospel, and it's really easy to lose sight of that when we desperately desire marriage here on earth. We often have a Hollywood understanding of marriage, thinking that our life will be complete when that "perfect man" comes to our doorstep and promises us love and happiness forever. The perfect man did come, and will come again to redeem His Bride, the Church.

For many of us, our days are spent dreaming of a marriage here on earth, even to the extent that with the first "hello" from an eligible bachelor we are planning the big event before we even know his name. And for others, we can probably confess that we are all too guilty of confusing a phone call with a marriage proposal. Are we content with our only marriage being the final marriage where we are eternally joined to our Bridegroom, Christ? Carolyn McCulley says that if Jesus came back tomorrow and you are disappointed because you aren't married yet, you are idolizing an earthly husband, and desiring the wrong marriage. I think she's right.

The marriage we should long for is the final marriage that all marriages should point to, Christ and the Church (Ephesians 5:32). Jesus is not our own personal boyfriend/fiancé/husband. The marriage supper of the Lamb is not an individualized marriage. We will not each be personally walking down the aisle to Jesus in the last day, despite what some women's Bible studies and worship songs express. He is the Bridegroom of the Church collectively, of which we are a part if we are in Christ. In our preparation to meet our Groom, our lives should reflect less of an American, individualistic ideology, and more of the reality of the Christian community found in the book of Acts, where our brothers and sisters laid down their lives for the building up of the local church. This might mean that we should spend more time changing diapers in the nursery and sitting in the pews under the Word of God, than picking out our wedding songs and drooling over designer dresses.

We muddy the Gospel when we bank all of our happiness on a marriage here on earth. Instead, let us cry out with the whole earth "come quickly, Lord Jesus!" All of our right, earthly desires for a husband are here to give us a temporary picture of an eternal reality-the Gospel.

I am all for marriage here on earth, and I love going to weddings where God is glorified in the joining of two Christians declaring a covenant before God and His people. As Calvin said, our hearts are idol factories, and every good and biblical desire always has the potential to replace God as our object of worship. Whenever I am struggling with whether or not a desire is an idol, a question I always ask myself is "if God chose to never fulfill this desire in my life, would I still love Him? Would I still desire to serve Him?" Those are hard questions to ask, because more often than not, I find myself chaffing at the idea of not getting what I want. But as we seek to honor God with our desires, let us keep an eternal perspective. Resolve today, dear Christian, to love and serve your local congregation, members of the Church. And dream of the greatest wedding party of all, where thoughts of the Vera Wang dress will fade away in the face of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

"Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out, ‘Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready."-Revelation 19:6-7

Hats off to Popular Mechanics for starting a profitable line of discussion in their October issue: the 25 Skills Every Man Should Know. They have done an outstanding job of trying to combine time-tested skills ("Build a campfire", "Get a car unstuck", and "Paint a room") with more modern requirements ("Back up data", "Hook up an HDTV"). I partly question the ongoing relevance of some of the skills ("Bleed brakes", or even "Filet a fish"). I will be the first to admit that I personally fall short of a being a 25-skilled guy according to Popular Mechanics.

Unfortunately, I think that I fall short on a larger list of greater importance. Specifically, this PM list lacks any hint of essential spiritual skills that a man should know. "Explain the glory of God's greatness to a four-year old", "Plan a date night", "Lead in confession of sins", "Prepare for and pursue courtship", "Entrust the gospel to younger men" are notable omissions. I am confident that there are many more, and believe that it would be profitable to compile a better list.

Therefore, with all deference to the editors at Popular Mechanics for starting this dialogue, we at CBMW would appreciate your input on compiling the top 25 skills for every Christian male. Please use the feedback link below to send your input on what skills should added to the list and what skills could be dropped. We will compile and post the revised list in the near future.

By the way, here is the Popular Mechanics list:

1. Patch a radiator hose
2. Protect your computer
3. Rescue a boater who has capsized
4. Frame a wall
5. Retouch digital photos
6. Back up a trailer
7. Build a campfire
8. Fix a dead outlet
9. Navigate with a map and compass
10. Use a torque wrench
11. Sharpen a knife
12. Perform CPR
13. Filet a fish
14. Maneuver a car out of a skid
15. Get a car unstuck
16. Back up data
17. Paint a room
18. Mix concrete
19. Clean a bolt-action rifle
20. Change oil and filter
21. Hook up an HDTV
22. Bleed brakes
23. Paddle a canoe
24. Fix a bike flat
25. Extend your wireless network

We appreciate all of the new visitors who have stopped by to read Gender Blog and we are eager to hear from you. Your comments, questions, and critiques are important to us at CBMW, and eventually will be part of this website. The construction process is still ongoing behind the scenes, however, so it will be a few more weeks until the traditional (if anything about blogging can already be called traditional) comment section is online.

Until then, we have added a link below each blog post called "feedback."  Clicking this link will allow you to send your comments to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .  For your benefit, comments will be moderated to stay on gender issues and we will try to post as many as we can as soon as we can.  Thanks for your patience.

"The Gospel -- Christ's love for and salvation of His church -- is falsely portrayed when the traditional family is not respected" explained Russell Moore, because "the relationship between a man and his wife is a picture of Christ's relationship with His bride, the church."  Dr. Moore, Dean of the School of Theology at SBTS, spoke at a recent conference on with the theme, "The Family: Reclaiming a Biblical View of the Family, Womanhood and Manhood."  

Moore noted, for example, that the lifelong commitment of a husband and wife demonstrates the doctrine of eternal security. But when a child sees his parents ripped apart by divorce, he is presented with a false view of Christ's relationship to His bride. Similarly, men cannot know what it means to love their wives as Christ loved the church unless they see the value of the church, Moore said during the Sept. 13-14 conference at Southwestern's Fort Worth, Texas, campus.

Dr. Moore also spoke on a similar theme at the 2007 CBMW Different by Design conference.  The MP3 recording of that talk is available with other conference audio on this site.

After a 40 year process of gradual steps toward egalitarianism, delegates to the annual Christian Reformed Church synod recently approved the ordination of women. In addition, the 1,000 congregations of the CRC will be allowed to send women as delegates to subsequent synods starting next June.

As a result of these gradual changes, Pastor Jaclyn Busch has been called to the McBain Christian Reformed Church and describes herself as a “poster child” for the church as a symbol of the whole denomination moving forward. “If McBain can do it,” she suggested to a reporter of the Cadillac News, “maybe other churches can do it.” The news account went on to describe Jaclyn’s reception by the church:

There’s a festive tent on the lawn. There’s cake and coffee. And then to the tune of “I Am Woman,” church members belt out a song for their “Pastor in a Dress.”

“Yes, we are Dutch and we love our church so much,
We will make a change even when it’s strange.
God has shown us He can do anything.
We are strong (strong)
We are flexible
With a Woman!!!”

Genderblog of CBMW has been reporting on these trends, and WORLD magazine recently published a summary of where denominations stand on ordaining women, performing same-sex marriages, and other key issues of the summer denominational meetings. Nevertheless, how long this trend will continue in the church depends on the faithful choices of individual believers prompted by the Spirit of God. Turning from this slide toward egalitarianism will require complementarians to speak up and take a biblical stand at critical denominational and local church meetings.

As R. Albert Mohler Jr. wrote in the JBMW, "For too long, those who hold to the biblical pattern of gender distinctions have allowed themselves to be silenced, marginalized, and embarrassed when confronted by new gender theorists. Now is the time to recapture the momentum, force the questions, and show this generation God's design in the biblical concept of manhood and womanhood. God's glory is shown to the world in the complementarity of men and women. This crucial challenge is a summons to Christian boldness in the present hour."