Executive Director's Column: Exposition of the Danvers Statement: Affirmations 8, 9, and 10

Affirmation 8

In both men and women a heartfelt sense of call to ministry should never be used to set aside biblical criteria for particular ministries (1 Tim 2:11-15, 3:1-13; Tit 1:5-9). Rather, biblical teaching should remain the authority for testing our subjective discernment of God's will.

On many occasions, there are those who object to the complementarian position on the basis of their own "call" to ministry. Their contention is that complementarians cannot tell men and women how God has directed their life and that if they feel called to a particular ministry, then that should be the end of the discussion. Affirmation 8 recognizes the sincerity of many of those in this particular category but at the same time, places Scripture as the final authority over and above one's experience. Regardless of a sincere, heartfelt sense of a particular call, one should never do anything that is prohibited by Scripture.

In the local church, each body of believers should ensure that men and women have the opportunity to exercise their spiritual gifts for the edification of the body, including teaching and leadership gifts. However, all things must be done inside the parameters that God's Word establishes for his people. We must submit to the authority of Scripture as we minister to one another. For those who claim that this limits the involvement of women, it should be noted that many opportunities and needs exist for women to teach and lead other women, which would be a faithful application of Titus 2:3-5:

Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled. (ESV)

Affirmation 9

With half the world's population outside the reach of indigenous evangelism; with countless other lost people in those societies that have heard the gospel; with the stresses and miseries of sickness, malnutrition, homelessness, illiteracy, ignorance, aging, addiction, crime, incarceration, neuroses, and loneliness, no man or woman who feels a passion from God to make His grace known in word and deed need ever live without a fulfilling ministry for the glory of Christ and the good of this fallen world (1 Cor 12:7-21).

Affirmation 9 is a positive statement of immeasurable opportunity for those who genuinely want to serve the Lord. We are all aware of the many afflictions of mankind (certainly not limited to those on this list) and we should be motivated to action by the fact that God has a place of service for all believers. First Corinthians 12:7-21 teaches that there is diversity of gifts in the body of Christ by design. This diversity brings about a certain unity, since each member of the body is set there by God "as He pleased" (12:18). The complementarian position is not preoccupied with restriction, but concerns itself with the participation in the body of Christ of all members, within the confines set out by God himself in his Word. While teaching and having authority over men (1 Tim 2:12) is a responsibility given to men only, this affirmation makes it clear that there are many ministries that do not require this function. No man or woman should feel excluded from ministry since there are so many genuine needs.

Affirmation 10

We are convinced that a denial or neglect of these principles will lead to increasingly destructive consequences in our families, our churches, and the culture at large.

This final affirmation finds elaboration in the rationale for the existence of the ministry of CBMW. The establishment of this ministry centered on confusion in marriages, ambivalence regarding the values of motherhood, the growing claims of legitimacy for illicit and perverse sexual relationships, the upsurge of physical and emotional abuse in the family, and the breakdown in the structure of the local church. It is our contention that a denial or neglect of the affirmations in the Danvers Statement will lead to an increase in these and many other problems in our homes, churches, and society at large. It is our prayer that believers around the world will embrace the beauty of God's good design and live out and teach the biblical view of men and women, equal in the image of God, different in role and function.