Hey Noel, that's a great question, thanks for asking! The issue of gender and roles is a tough one, one that I am still learning about. At 1.21 Church, we totally welcome people with opposing ideas to ours. We love dialogue, and we love wrestling the hard questions about life and Jesus. In fact, in January, we're starting a new hang out time called "Theology on Tap" at Foothills, where we'll talk about whatever hard questions people have, while drinking a pint.

So yes, gays, lesbians, and feminists and any others are all welcome at 1.21 Church. Like we say on our website, unlike many churches, we don't require people to believe what we believe before they can belong to our church family. But we are a church built on strong theological positions, and we try to be clear from the start what those positions are, and how they're backed by Scripture.


It's hard to answer your question both quickly and thoroughly, so I'll shoot for thoroughness. There are many passages in Scripture that support this belief, but I've just mentioned one or two for each, to keep it shorter!

1.21 Church believes in a "complimentarian" position of men and women. This means that men and women 1) are equal in personhood and importance, and 2) differ in role and authority.

Genesis 1:27 says "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." We are all equally in God's image, and therefore equally important to him and equally valuable to him.

Within the church and within marriages, Scripture explains that men and women have different roles and different authority. In our culture, we often consider people with greater authority to be people of greater worth... this leads to confusion on this issue. Scripture does not make this connection. The Trinity (God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit) reflects how this works. All three have equal importance, personhood, and deity, yet different authority and roles (the Father spoke creation into being, the Son is obedient to the Father and died for our sins, and the Spirit equips and empowers the church).

So in marriage, women and men have different roles and authority. The Apostle Paul wrote in Colossians 3:18, "Wives, be subject to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them." (and later, in Ephesians 5:22, "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.&quot In this, and many other passages, we see that a wife should be subject to her husband's leadership, and a husband should love his wife to the point of giving up his life for her.

Scripture also makes it clear in many passages that there is a strong relationship between the family and the church. In 1 Timothy 3:5, Paul says, "If a man does not know how to manage his own household, how can he care for God's church?" Earlier, Paul writes (in 1 Timothy 2:12), "I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men." This, with the list of the qualifications for elders (which assumes elders are men only) found in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1:5, is what we base our position of men only as elders upon. Women serve in every other position at 1.21 Church, except the role of elder (pastor).


The cool thing about all this is that even if you or your friend and we disagree on this issue, we can still be friends, belong to 1.21 Church, and worship Jesus together.

What do you believe about this issue?

Thanks again,
dc


(Also, I would like, with your permission, to post your question and my answer on our wesbite 1.21 Ask, which is a forum for asking theological questions. Only your first name and city would appear to people. Let me know if that'd be cool with you!)