How the Local Church can Engage Women in Worship

And welcome back to ClearCast. I'm your host, Tim Dukeman, here with Pastor Dave, our producer, Martin, and Timothy Deaton. And today we're going to talk about how to engage women in the church. And we've discussed in recent episodes how to engage men and how to build a little bit more of a family culture within a church and what it looks like for the church to be a family. So, Pastor Dave, I know you've had some conversation around some of these episodes. Give us a little bit of the backstory for today's episode podcast. Sure. So, a few weeks ago, my wife and I were having dinner with a woman from our church, and she was talking about the podcast and the things she'd enjoyed and appreciated. And one of the questions that she asked was, you guys did an episode on men in the church and how to engage them and what they should aspire to become and what their role or their involvement looked like. And she just asked, are you going to do one of those for women? And I thought, well, yeah, that sounds like a good idea. I actually wasn't planning on doing it until then. But it made sense. So, Pastor Dave does take requests sometimes. Yeah, I do take requests sometimes. I don't promise that we will do what you ask, but recommendations are welcome.

I think there's another reason as I've thought about it to why it's helpful to talk about women's involvement or engagement in the church. And that reason is because I think that the church is, I don't know if afraid is the right word. And when I say the church, I'm just meaning sort of the American evangelical church. I'm not meaning clear note church particularly, or some other church that I don't have a particular church in mind, but I just mean to say, like, I think the church at large in America is, reticent or afraid of giving women instruction, telling them what's expected of them. When we talked in one of the men's episodes earlier, we talked about how the church was focused on women's sensibilities and was prioritizing affirmation, that we're going to affirm people, that's how we're going to get them, we're going to keep them, and that that's something that women tend to appreciate. My goal here is not to take back what we said in

those episodes about men, but to say, well, what's the compliment for a woman? How do you engage her? What should she want to become? If men should want to become leaders, if they should pour themselves out in worship and in singing and in prayer and be growing in their faith through repentance and zeal and knowledge of God's Word, what's that mean for women? Well, obviously, there's a lot of overlap. between men and women. It's not like they have a different prerogative entirely. But how do you engage women in a way that's not sort of the standard fare in most churches today? It doesn't mean that affirmation is wrong or encouragement is bad or anything like that, but it is possible to not expect anything of women, really not to expect them. I think the danger is that We don't expect people to grow or to change. We expect them to be affirmed in where they are and what they are right now. But the scripture is clear in saying that we need to grow up in all aspects into him who is the head, even Jesus Christ, our Lord. I think it's partially downstream of the fact that our society has a very strong stigma against victim blaming, which is –

in theory, good, but in practice, it reduces to women are the victim class because of the patriarchy and therefore expecting women to improve is blaming the victim. And that's how these things are conceptualized in our culture. And that I think can bleed into some of the conversations when like a pastor is just trying to help a woman grow, that framework can be applied. Yeah, there's a number of things that we should talk about in terms of engaging women in the church. One of the phrases I said in our last episode that I think is worth picking back up and talking about for just a second, and this phrase is not original to me. I was taught this concept from a pastor whose dad actually said it to him. So at this point, we're going on 60, 70 years old. And what we said was, if you go for the men, the women will follow.

That that was sort of a good approach to ministry and priority in the life of the church. That you're preaching, that your ministries, that your tone, that your priorities should attract the men and should address the men. I think we said in that episode as well that it's much easier for women to exist in a male-oriented environment than it is for men to exist in a female-oriented environment. And I just wanted to reiterate that and say that that is true, but it's true as a framework. That's not to say that women aren't important, that there shouldn't be any ministry to women. There are churches that would say everything needs to be, all of the ministry is to the family or to the husband, and that there's really no access to the women or to the children except through the Father in sort of hyper-patriarchal, covenantal places. And that's not what we are, and that's not...

what we think. So there's a bit of a dance. There's a bit of a tension. How do you go for the men and yet not ignore the women? There are women in our church and in other churches who aren't married or who are adults and don't have their dads. They're not minors. They're not little girls. How do you minister to them? Where do they fit in? Where's their place in the family? That's really the question we're trying to address today. And so There really are some hurdles that women can face in getting involved in a church, especially one that prioritizes men or where the male principle isn't seen as toxic. And so I want to talk a little bit about some of those hurdles and how to get past them. I think the first thing that's got to be true of...

This is true of both men and women. It was implicitly true in those other episodes, but I want to say it explicitly here with regard to women because it's true for both sexes, is that they have to be willing to change. They have to be willing to grow. Like a woman, it's going to be very hard for her to get engaged in a church community meaningfully. She can make a lot of friends. They can do a lot of social things. But if a woman were to come into our church, I think she or a man is pretty soon going to be confronted with the question of, are you willing to change to become more like Jesus? And that's contrary to the affirmational model that says, no, we're not here to call you to change. We're here to say you're good enough. And those two things, they're mutually exclusive. And not just are you willing to change, but are you willing to change in ways that are painful?

Well, yeah, they can be painful. I don't know that I'd market it as, are you willing to change? Even the military doesn't get recruits by saying, come because it's the hardest, most miserable thing you'll ever do in your life. But becoming like Jesus, the way he describes that process is taking up your cross, denying yourself, suffering for my sake. So are you willing to change in those ways? Are you willing to change in your perspective of yourself so that you can have better self-esteem? Those are really two different messages. And one of them is a gospel message and one of them is not a gospel message. And I think we need to acknowledge at the beginning that not all women are willing to change. In the same way that, you know, in our episode about men, I said, you know, it occurs to me that there are men who don't want the things we're talking about.

We were just like, oh, well, men want to be pushed, and men want to be discipleship, and men want to be told no. And all the while in my head, I'm like, that's not true of all men. Some men are like, no, I don't want that. And that's true of women, too. There are women who don't want to be pushed and told no and have the things that are, particularly the things that are sensitive to their sex or to their lives, their weaknesses. They don't want those. They're not comfortable having those things addressed. The truth is, none of us like having those things addressed, whether we're a man or a woman or we're young or we're old. We don't like to have our weaknesses pointed out, but they need to be pointed out. We need to grow in those areas in the context of a family that loves us and that loves God and that we're all pursuing him together. So what kinds of things, one of the things as I was preparing for this, I was thinking, okay, so if a woman has to be willing to change, what kinds of things

might need to change. This is not an exhaustive list. But the first one on my list was her commitment to independence or sort of the outworking of feminism, that she's going to be autonomous. That's something that's a really big deal in our society. And I think it just sort of goes without saying that women are taught and are expected to be autonomous. They're to not need anybody. If they get married, it's not because they lack something. They have a career. They have a trajectory. They have a life that's complete. And then they can get married. Well, that's not God's approach to marriage. When he said in Genesis, I'm going to make a woman suitable for you. It's not good for a man to be alone. It's also true it's not good for a woman to be alone. And I think we need to be able to say that.

that may need to change. That your self-reliance, your can-do attitude, your I don't want to rely on somebody, that actually, that perspective is going to have to change. And then those priorities in your life are going to have to change. Life by myself, life with my girlfriends, life in the work world with marriage and maybe children as a as an afterthought, that actually is going to have to change. When Vanessa was, my wife was, when she showed up to graduate school in Bloomington, Indiana, she'd gone to a Christian undergrad program, school down in California. And she had to take a class that was just for women. And I can't remember the title of it. She could tell us. But I remember her telling me that the professor, It was a professor's wife who taught the class. I don't know if she was a professor herself. But she said at one point, she asked the class, each of the women, she said, would you like to have family first and then a career? Or would you like to have career first and then a family? And the question wasn't actually aimed at this is the right answer and this is the wrong answer. The point of the question, or at least what Vanessa took away from it was, you can't do both of those things at the same time well.

You're going to have to prioritize one. So I'm just asking, which one are you planning on prioritizing? And that was sort of Vanessa's first real interaction with that, this issue as an adult. And so it was a thought. It was a seed planted. So then, you know, a couple of years later, she's moved to Bloomington to pursue graduate work. And she's gotten involved in the church down there. And I would not have described Vanessa as a hard line. I don't think she would have. I don't even know if she would have said, yeah, I'm a feminist and I don't think women should depend on men and they should have their own. She wanted to be a wife. She wanted to have kids. None of those things were, that wasn't trained out of her. But she was also going to get her master's. And I think there is this sort of soft, at least at that time, this soft peddling of feminism, which is like, well, you just need a plan B in case this other thing, or until that.

Until marriage comes along, you've got to do something with yourself. So, why don't you do school? Well, that's fine to a point. I mean, we're getting a master's degree now. This is pretty serious in terms of commitment and time and energy and whatnot. Anyway, so she's going to the music school down in Bloomington and she's going to this church. And I remember her saying that one of her observations when she first went was that the women were very different in that church than she had previously experienced. A number of them were stay-at-home moms. I don't know that she'd ever been in a big group as an adult where she was surrounded by women who were stay-at-home moms whose priority was their husbands and their children. But as she got to know those women, one of the things she realized was these women aren't stay-at-home moms because they couldn't have done something else. They're stay-at-home moms by choice. They could have made it in the work world or whatever.

whatever their interests were, whatever their disciplines were, they conscientiously set those things down so that they could get married, so that they could have children. And that was really a big deal to Vanessa in her processing of like, oh, there's other people in the world who do things differently than I'm doing. I'm here for a master's degree because I would like to teach kids to play violin. These women who could have done well in their fields of study, they're not doing that. Huh. I wonder what that's about. And they seem really happy was one of the other things she noticed. They seem beautiful to me. Like there, there's a light in their eye and they seem happy. They're not miserable. And so then Vanessa was processing her in her own life. What do I, what am I about for the first time? This is all a big explanation of the, the sort of consideration that a woman would have to come under. And so at the time,

This is interesting. And it doesn't make any sense in the world, but this is how it went for Vanessa, just as a data point. We were broken up at the time. We were not dating. There were no prospects of marriage. It'd be one thing if we were about to get married. But before we ever got back together, she decided right at the beginning, maybe a month or two into her first semester. of her second year of her master's. So she'd gone a full year. She was starting her second year. This was probably a three-year program, of course, a study for her. She had decided she wanted to quit. And she didn't have any prospect of getting married at that time. She was like, I'm going to quit. I'm single. I don't want to go into debt. And I don't really enjoy this as much as I thought. These people I'm around, there's these two worlds. She had her foot in two worlds.

Jacob School of Music down in Bloomington. And she's around women who are really excellent musicians who have kids, but she's also seeing the condition of their kids. There's a really funny story about one of the kids, the professor's kids, laying on the ground, throwing a fit in the middle of a passing period. And all of the kids are walking around and stepping over this five-year-old who's just having a meltdown on the floor. Now, her mom was a great musician and a great teacher. But Vanessa was looking, and she's like, I don't want that. I don't want my kids to be like that. And so she's kind of putting the pieces together, like, okay, well, if I prioritize something, I need to be aware that I might get what I prioritize. So I need to be aware of what I put at the top of the list. Anyway, so she decided, I'm going to quit school. And we actually got back together a few weeks after she had made that decision.

Because I remember going with her when she went to go tell her professor or guidance counselor, whatever they're called, that she was going to quit. But she had no prospect of like, I'm going to get married. I'm going to do this. There was not actually a competing other thing. She just said, this isn't what I want to do with my life. And she did that without anyone putting a bunch of pressure on her or really any pressure. I think the only pressure she – probably the most significant pressure she received was – to come to small group on Sundays and not practice. That's probably the biggest pressure she received as a woman. Like, you should come be with the people of God on Sundays. You can practice the other six days of the week. And it took real faith for her to make that transition over time. But for her, I don't know if even if she would have described it as repentance at that time, but I think she would describe it as repentance now. So all that's to say, she was willing to change. She was willing to become something that she wasn't.

And for a woman to get engaged in a church and to grow in godliness, that's the type of thing that has to be true of her. She has to be willing to give up things in favor of pursuing godliness. And I could tell a number of other stories of women who've done that type of thing as well. But I just want to say that's not as uncommon as you might think. You might think, well, that's a unicorn story. And I'm like, I don't think it's a unicorn story. Yeah, we're kind of seeing that in a less good way, but the fact that all of these trad wives – it's like a thing now that women are seeing the value of domesticity on social media, even if it's not always done in the best way and not all of those relationships or lifestyles are healthy or realistic.

But, there is something, there's something to be said for if you can cast a vision for what godly womanhood looks like, it's appealing to people. You don't actually have to force women into being a wife and a mother. It's not oppressive. Right. Yeah. And so, the way that Vanessa was engaged in that church was by being invited and then by being loved on. Being treated like a daughter, even before her life was in conformity with all of the – I mean, our lives are never in conformity with all of the right stuff. But the people of the church loved her and accepted her. And so I think that's one thing that has to be true about the church is you've got to say, okay, we're willing – we have the faith to love women and to see them change and to not – without being political or – pound the table aggressive about marriage and children, you've got to be willing to say what the scripture says about marriage and children as regards women, that they should desire these things, they should want these things, and you have to say it realizing they were not trained, most likely, to be a wife or a mother. And that's going to be a really, really scary thing.

I've spent my whole life pursuing these things and I've become kind of good at them or at least comfortable with them. And now you're telling me I have to become and should want to be something else that I've never prioritized and I don't know how to do it. And so there's going to be a lot of peace, a lot of care for and patience and mercy and instruction about those things. So that's one thing that may need to change. And I think to varying degrees, That's going to have to change in all women. And the same, you know, when we say, oh, well, some men need to grow in leadership. We'd be like, no, I think all men need to like step up their game in this area. And I think this is the corollary with women is that this idea of marriage and children and serving God in the home is a new, it's not a new thing. It's a very old thing, but it's so old, it's new.

Um, so that's one thing that's going to need to, that's probably going to need to change. Um, along with that, the independence of that sort of baked into our society, that's another thing that's going to have to change. If you guys think that Pastor Dave is just spouting off his opinion, let me read you this verse from 1 Corinthians 11. It says, however, in the Lord, neither is woman independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. There is actually biblical teaching of. This interdependence between the sexes that we need each other. Yeah. And that it's good. We need each other and it's good. And the other thing I'll say related to that is not only does a woman need a husband, she needs other women. She needs other women. And that is another area where there's not, where dependence is shunned. It's bad. It's looked down upon. No, you should be able to take care of yourself. You shouldn't need a man.

You also shouldn't need other women. And so women have this, it's sad to me that they're just left so alone to figure it all out, to screw it up, to clean up the mess. And I think it's a shame. Women do need other women. And they need the women in the church. They do not need the Instagram mom or the Instagram wife or the Instagram cook. the how do you keep your house clean woman, they need real flesh and blood women from their church involved in their life that they can talk with and pray with and cry with and laugh with and just do life with. And so one of the things I've heard from women that are opposed to this idea is that, well, I just get along with men better than I get along with women. And it's not an uncommon thing for women to feel like they're uncomfortable with other women. And what I think is that That's because they feel like they're in a competition with other women for male attention. And it makes every other woman a threat or an adversary. And that's true whether they're married or whether they're single. It doesn't go away with plenty of married women who are very insecure and do not want any other women around.

of their own past because of their parents' marriage or whatever. They do not want any women around them because they're afraid their husband will be unfaithful. And so my point in saying that is it doesn't stop when they get married. There is this abiding temptation to not want women around your life or you because you're afraid if you get close that they will introduce a threat and that you won't measure up to them. your husband's eyes or in someone else's eyes, and that you'll get kicked to the curb. I believe women need other women involved in their lives, and they need to not see them as a threat. So what else do we need to be fostering in women to help engage them in the church besides, like we've mentioned, like addressing helping them want to grow. We've talked about the independent streak that our society seeks to build in women that in some ways needs to be.

dealt with as well. And then we've talked about having community with other women. What else is there that you think is crucial to engaging women? Well, one, I think you do have to engage them directly about their sins. But really what I think is one of the areas that's lacking in churches is Titus 2 women. It's sort of a phrase we use around here. I don't know how common it is out in the world, but this idea that older women would read Titus 2 and would take the his instructions there to heart, that the older women are to teach the younger women all kinds of things, teach them what is good, they're to encourage them to love their husbands and their children, to keep house, to do all of these sorts of things, that if you want women engaged in your church, what you need are other women engaging them, not the pastors and the elders necessarily.

or on a daily, regular basis. They need to be cultivating relationships with other women, and the church needs older women to take up that work. As much as you might want younger women to come ask for that help, it's not as likely to happen. They don't even know what they're missing or what they need. They need older women to come alongside them and love them, mother them, sister them, care for them in those ways. And so from the beginning of our church, we've I mean, we have pastors and we have elders and we have deacons. We also have older women. They're not ordained. It's not an office. There's not a list somewhere that says, and these are the older women, and you didn't make the cut. But there is this expectation that all of the women will be involved in one another's lives, but that the older women would take a proactive, motherly...

or grandmotherly role in actually teaching the younger women, which means saying to them, yes and no, and this is good, or you need to do that, or why weren't you here on, why didn't you make the women's Bible study this week, or what's going on, or hey, your house is a mess, or whatever. These are actually the things that do happen in the church. The younger women need to know how to... be instructed in these things. I mean, as soon as I said, like, your house is a mess and you need to clean it, I'm like, well, that'll ruffle some feathers. But what is one of the things that Titus says that older women are to teach younger women? Well, to be keepers at home. So what we're tempted to do, and I don't think it's a bad application of it, is to say, well, then women need to be in the home. Sure, good. And now what are they supposed to do there? Has it ever occurred to you that the reason that the woman doesn't want to be in the home is because she has no idea what to do there?

So your work's not done when you say, well, you need to be at home. Now we have to tell her what she's supposed to do at home. Because probably no one ever taught her how to take care of a house, to be a homemaker. And so there's a lot of instruction that needs to go on. If I can jump in here, I think a lot of what you're getting at, one of the key aspects is being proactive. there are a ton of younger women who would be willing to receive help, but are also terrified to ever ask for it. Yeah. Well, yeah. Well, to ask someone in real life, I mean, they will, they'll spend hours asking on Instagram. Right. Listening to some woman, tell them how to, to someone they don't know. Cause they didn't have to actually ask one particular person. Right. Right. And they didn't have to admit their, their insecurity or their weakness or their lack to anyone they know. Yeah. So there's a couple of things that,

I think are really important. We could talk about this a long time. I just kind of want to boil it down to two things that I think are really important for engaging women in church, and then also a few hindrances. There's a word to the husbands. The first thing is, I'd say what's important for engaging women in church is service. This was actually something we said to the men. It's true of women, too. They need to have some work to do. if you want women to love the church, if you want women to grow in godliness, there's nowhere in scripture where you see people show up, do nothing, to not offer any of themselves, and then go away. I suppose when Jesus is teaching, the people come and they listen. But in the organic life of the church, it's clear that they were in each other's homes, they were eating each other's food, they were doing all of their life together. And so, in your church life,

The women, each woman needs to be engaged in some way. She needs to have work to do. She needs to be depended upon. I remember seeing one time this big spreadsheet. It was in color. It was done very nicely. And it had all of the women of our church listed. This is something our Women's Ministry Committee maintains and updates. They keep track. They have a list of all of the women in the church and then all of the tasks. Those women are responsible for and they're doing so that the work gets done. I mean, that's one thing. Well, they do all that's just administrative so that they make sure that all of the needs get met. Well, that's true, but that's not really the reason they do it. Because you could have consolidated a lot of that work into less people and it'd probably be done a lot more efficiently. They look at that list and the reason they look at that list is to see who's not involved. We need to get them involved.

What can they do? What are their gifts? What would they be good at? And they'll give them a task. An example would be, I know that one of the things that goes on is you have to buy animal crackers for the nursery or whatever the kid's eating there. And it seems like a silly thing. It's a little thing. Somebody just grabs it, the nursery worker or whatever. But there's someone who's in charge of checking in on that, making sure that we have animal crackers. It's a really small task, but it's someone's task and it's what they contribute. And that's actually important to them being able to enter into and engage in the life of the church. In my home, there's no kids other than my baby who's six months old. There's nobody who's not expected to do something, even if it's small and menial and more of a hassle. And you'd ask the two-year-old to go throw the diaper away.

There's probably a quicker way to do it. We're not really teaching throw the diaper away. We're teaching be a part of the family and help the family. And that same thing is true in the church. And so I think service is really important. And it's especially helpful when it's work they get to do, the woman gets to do with other women of the church. Some things you do by yourself. If you're going to buy animal crackers for the nursery, you probably don't have a committee for that. If we're planning a woman's event, if they're going to have an event here at the church, that's not one woman that's doing that. There's a handful of women that are going to work together on that and they're going to talk about food and they're going to talk about the craft or they're going to talk about the outing or they're going to talk about the child care pertaining to it or whatever. There's different areas of that. And it's like, yes, all the logistics need to be done. But what's really sweet is when all those women get together and work on that.

You know, you guys, I mean, no one, if you're not in our church, you wouldn't know. But like, if you go into our nursery rooms, they have these ribbons painted all over the walls and ceilings. And in one of the rooms, there's this rug or a play mat that was on the floor. And it was, it's like a road and it's got all these, you know, kind of caricature houses, you know, cartoony looking houses on it with all these bright colors. Kids like it, play on it, drive the cars on it. It's fun. Some of the women in the church decided that they would grab a couple of those houses off of there and paint them on the wall, like floor to ceiling.

I don't know if you've noticed that, but those houses that are on the wall are actually from that map. Oh, wow. Because they're like, this would be really cool. And so I remember coming in to work and there's this handful of women that are here and some of them are watching the kids and other ones are painting this part and other ones are drawing it on the wall with a pencil. And there's this big project they just decided to do together. That's really sweet. It's really encouraging. I think it's delightful every time I go in there and see because there was relationships being built. There was time spent. There was love.

for the church, love for one another, love for the children. It was just very sweet. And so, one of the things that needs to happen is service. They need to have work to do. And it doesn't just need to be, did you get the task done? But did you, we're going to give you an opportunity to love the people that are here and to be appreciated by them. And so, that's one thing. Service leads to investment among the people who do it. The second thing is, that I think is important for women's engagement in the church is community, fellowship, that they actually spend time together. We talked a little bit ago about some women aren't really comfortable amongst other women. I've often jokingly said about women's Bible studies that the point of women's Bible study is to get together and for the women to be able to share and to cry. And I don't mean that to be demeaning or disrespectful at all.

I mean to say women and men are different and the way they relate and the way they build community is by sharing their burdens. And so, I would much rather have a context and a place where women can get together and bear their heart and get help and support and love than for them to have a top-notch, shiny Bible study on the Gospel of John or something. I mean, I'm happy. I'm actually very happy for them to do that if that's the occasion. For getting together and having small group prayer time where they're able to actually relate. I think it's far more important than the instruction. And I don't know if that's controversial or not, but I really think it's important for women. In a way that it doesn't occupy the same space in the life of a man. Men's group is not where we all get together and talk about our burdens and our trials. We do. We ask for prayer and for help, but it's not the most important thing.

There's a difference between men and women. There needs to be downtime, so to speak, for women where they're not working. My wife, before she gets up in the morning, there's work accumulating and work that needs to be done. And I get up and then I go to work. And then I come home and my wife works the whole time. And then I come home and my wife keeps working. And then dinner's over and then we have to put the kids to bed and my wife keeps working. And then there's a baby who may or may not feel like sleeping. through the night or, you know, maybe teething or maybe sick or whatever. And my wife keeps working all night, all day and all night and all day and all night and all day and all night. And it just keeps going on. She needs a place where she's not working. She needs, because it's very difficult to build relationships when you're having to work at that pace. It wasn't always that way. When our family was younger and smaller, there was easier for her to have some downtime during the day.

But now, I mean, we've got 11 kids. There's not a lot of downtime anywhere. And so one of the things that the church can provide for weary mothers and wives who have been working really hard, loving their families, is a place where they can come and not have to work for a little while and do something fun or enjoyable. I think outings that are just a fun outing are really important. I think the women have gone and I was trying to remember what some of the things they've done. They went and made candles a year or two ago. I think they've come in and done some crafty stuff. They've gone and done just let's go. I don't think they've gone to a spa per se. They had like a spa day, didn't they? Yeah, I think they did. They were at the church where they came in and took care and did something pretty, something enjoyable. I think those things are really important for churches. Service.

They need to serve in the church, but they also need to be served and have some time with the women of the church where there's not an agenda. The women and the men actually do the same things when they go on overnight retreats. When our men's retreat and our women's retreat were overnight, what always happens on men's retreats and women's retreats? Well, the other question is, what doesn't happen? Sleep. Sleep. Sleep does not happen. the hours of relating happens and they're exhausted and they, and they come back filled up and completely empty, emotionally filled up and completely exhausted. You know, those things are really important. I think for women, one thing I will say, you know, as we kind of, kind of wrap up is there's two things. One, when you put women together, there will be conflict and tension. It's inevitable.

They will get upset at each other. They can be very sensitive and very aware of the subtext. And they might be right about the subtext. They might be wrong about the subtext. It doesn't really matter if they're right or wrong. It will happen. Every husband whose wife has gone to one of these events, I can make it sound, oh, it's so great and it's so wonderful. And they come home and it's just delightful. A lot of times they come home and they're just like. well, this woman said this thing and I didn't know what, and I think she might be upset at me or I think that, or she was nasty to me or she was rude to me. Like that is such a normal occurrence. And what I want to say is that's a, that's, that's not a bad thing. That is the, that is part of relationships in a fallen world. And the danger for both the woman and her husband is to withdraw from those things because they don't want the tension. And that's the wrong answer.

It's the wrong answer. You realize those things happen. And husbands, if you're listening to this, your job is not to get on your wife's bandwagon about her frustrations about some woman, but to love her and help her process through those things and to stay engaged with those women. You should be watching the kids so she can go to these things and you should be helping her process her feelings and her fears. her sorrows and whatever else, her joys, after the fact and keep encouraging her to go. And if at all possible, she should be going without her kids. And if she's got a baby, she has to nurse and the event's long enough that she needs to take the baby with her, then that's fine. Otherwise, men, you need to take care of your kids so your wives can go. I don't know how else other to say it. Wives, if you're listening and your husband's not, Your husband needs to watch the kids so you can go to this stuff. You need to trust him to watch the kids. Maybe he needs to learn how to take care of the kids or put them to bed or change their diapers or whatever. That's just part of fatherhood. And husbandry is facilitating your wife being able to do this stuff. It needs to be a priority in the home. And the tensions that arise from going and spending time with other Christians, it just can't become an excuse not to go.

If there is a conflict, if there was sin, if there really was malice or something, then that needs to be dealt with and addressed. But if the response is, well, we're just going to withdraw, that doesn't honor God. You read the New Testament and you see the kind of problems that happened in the churches amongst the people there. And never is Paul like, well, I think it's time to go find a new church or you should just stop coming to those potlucks. He's always like, Jesus came and lived and died and was raised again so that... We can have unity and fellowship between us. You Jews and you Gentiles, we need to stop. He tore down the dividing wall. The widows that were fighting in Acts are complaining about not being fed. Like, oh, well, we'll just not worry about those women anymore. No, we have to live together. And we have to work through the tension and the conflict. We have to confess our sins. We have to repent. So I think those are some ideas about how the church should be facilitating.

women's engagement in the church. Well, hopefully this has been helpful. And next time we'll be talking about what it looks like to engage children in the church and what children's membership looks like. So tune back in a couple weeks for another episode of ClearCast.