Six gifts women bring to the church
by Nancy R. Heisey
The pastor asked me, "Mama, why do we have women's groups?" I said, "We have women's groups to build up the church. Could you as a pastor deal with all those problems alone?" — Congolese Mennonite woman
Nestled among the well-known stories in the book of Genesis of the patriarch and matriarch of the people of Israel, Abraham and Sarah, is another epic story that is too often overlooked. It even has a fascinating parallel to the account of the sacrificing
of Isaac that has caused many of us to shiver in our reading.
This is the story of Sarah's slave, an Egyptian woman named Hagar, who was first ordered by her mistress to bear a child to Abraham then thrown out of the household because her son, Ishmael, threatened Isaac's inheritance (Genesis 16:1-15, 21:9-21). Not once but twice, when Hagar is at the end of her possibilities in the desert, God calls to her and provides what she needs. In fact, Hagar's response of praise to God states an understanding very much like Abraham's: "You are God who sees," she exclaims (Genesis 16:13). Abraham
later says, "The Lord will see" (Genesis 22:14).
Hagar is an important biblical model for women in the church. Yet for too long we have lightly brushed past the reality that Hagar's encounters with Sarah illustrate the conflicts women have always struggled with among themselves.
Hagar, so easy to miss in the biblical story, represents ordinary women who have often been ignored, sometimes scorned and rejected. Yet she is a shining witness to God's true nature. The God of Hagar is one who reaches out to include outsiders, foreigners, the "no-accounts" of the world.
As with the stories of many other biblical women and churchwomen throughout the centuries, in Hagar we
get a glimpse of some of the gifts that women have to offer to the church and to the world.
1. The gift of an understanding of suffering. A first gift women offer the church is their understanding that God suffers with them yet does not will their suffering. Throughout history, women have borne the greater burden of the suffering human beings have inflicted upon each other. In patriarchal societies around the globe, women have been physically abused, deprived of property and other means of economic survival, and sometimes deprived of their children. Women have been raped, tortured, and killed for protesting injustices and for standing firm in faithfulness to God. Women have sacrificed their own sleep, food, and even their lives to preserve life for their families.
At times women have seemed to bear silently this suffering, meekly accepting it as their lot. But women have also testified to their experience that God is with them, and that, especially through the death of Jesus, God suffers when they suffer. Because the powers of evil still lay claim to the world, their pain cannot often be escaped. Yet women have over and over witnessed to the God who sees them, hears their cries, bears them up, and shares their pain.
2. The gift of love and care. Women also offer gifts as providers of love and care in all human societies. American philosopher Martha Nussbaum points out that these two capabilities, defined by both ancient and modern philosophers as central to the common good of humanity, have always been expressions of women's lives. Women give birth and nurse infants; provide the bulk of the care for children; and cultivate, harvest, and prepare most of the food for their extended families. Women care for sick and elderly parents, husbands, and siblings.
These capabilities of love and care have always been part of the life of the community of believers, extending gifts beyond the family into the community of sisters and brothers in Christ. The Book of Acts offers us a snapshot of the disciple Dorcas, who made tunics for poor widows and their children (Acts 9:36-42). In the third century after Christ, a terrible plague afflicted the city of Alexandria in Egypt. While other citizens were fleeing for their lives, Christians went out to care for the sick and dying. According to a report from the bishop, alongside priests and deacons who courageously cared for plague victims were "some laypersons of great worth," without doubt women sharing their capabilities of love and care. In India in the past century, Christian women have provided a far greater proportion of the country's nurses than the tiny percentage Christians represent within the Indian population.
3. The gift of a rich witness to Jesus Christ. Christian women use their gifts of love and care to reach out actively beyond the Christian community with a rich witness to Jesus Christ. From the beginning of the church, when faithful women were the first witnesses to Jesus' empty tomb, women have been proclaiming Christ's love. Because women have often not been formally empowered to preach and evangelize, they have taken advantage of daily contacts with friends and neighbors, as well as strangers, to share the good news.
Elizabeth, a Dutch Anabaptist arrested in 1549, was accused by her captors of being a "teacheress." In Tanzania, Miriamu Kisigoro, a Mennonite woman suffering from a bone disease, said, "I am an evangelist for God. I like to spread the gospel and show others Jesus' goodness, even though I can't walk much to visit people."
4. The gift of claiming God's liberation. Yet another gift that women offer to the church is a claim to liberation as God's will for them and for all people. Jesus himself was confronted by two women who took the initiative to ask him for what they needed. The woman with the hemorrhage stepped over the boundaries of her culture's purity regulations to receive the benefit of Jesus'
healing power (Mark 5:24-34). The Syrophoenician woman challenged Jesus to include her daughter in his healing community, pushing him to
stretch the boundaries of his ministry beyond his own people (Mark 7:24-30).
Women throughout the centuries have recognized that the gospel is for them and that this good news means
they should be free to use all the gifts God has given them. Indeed, the acknowledgment of freedom in Christ may be the most miraculous of all the gifts women have to offer the church, for they have persisted in their claims of full personhood despite continuing barriers of biblical interpretation and church order thrown up to limit them.
Mennonite and Brethren in Christ women in Japan and the Congo, in Canada and Colombia, have knocked
on the door to church leadership and have bravely walked through. This despite opposition that has come when the door has been opened.
5. The gift of filling in the gaps. At times women have exercised leadership in a way that reflects still another gift, filling in the gaps. Women are quick to see what needs to be done, and they quietly take up the task when others do not step forward.
Juana Garcia, a Brethren in Christ woman in Cuba, led the church in that country through the hardest years of
the Cuban Communist regime and kept it alive while young leaders were being chosen and trained. In India, one Mennonite community leaned on its young women theological students for preaching because no men expressed an interest in the job.
But women do not only fill gaps in leadership. They fill the gaps in many aspects of church life. Many women go completely unrecognized while, over their kitchen sinks or hoeing their fields or from their wheelchairs, they hold up before God the needs of the church and the world. Women are the ones who bring flowers to decorate the meeting places, teach the children's Sunday school, and attend services regularly. Women often contribute most faithfully to church offerings.
6. The gift of demonstrating community. Women offer the church and the world a gift by demonstrating the power of the community to carry out the work of the church. According to the gospels, Jesus called a group of men to be his disciples. But Luke records that several women came together, apparently on their own, to travel with Jesus and to provide for him from their
resources (Luke 8:1-3). This understanding was made visible in the early years of the church as monastic women banded together to live a life of poverty and obedience, some as part of their local congregations and some withdrawn from society.
Working together continues to be women's way, from the mothers of the "disappeared" in Argentina who gathered in the plaza every week in silent protest against a repressive regime; to the women's groups from Dhaka to Denver whose Ten Thousand Villages products enhance the incomes of their families; to two women students at Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg, Va., where I teach, who organized a drive to collect 1000 blankets for refugees from the war in Afghanistan.
This gift of community can offer the church a model for working together and getting things done that is not
based on power and command but on cooperation and mutual respect.
Of course these gifts are not exclusive to women. They can and indeed should be learned and practiced by all members of the believing community. Likewise, women can also offer gifts that are often thought of as belonging to men, such as doing theology and leading church institutions.
As we learn from one another and share with each other, we must always give thanks for the ways that women's less acknowledged gifts have built up the church and kept it true to its calling to follow Christ faithfully.
Writer Nancy R. Heisey is president-elect of Mennonite World Conference. She will become president after Africa 2003. Nancy teaches biblical
studies and church history at Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg, Va.
Congolese Mennonite women theologians' gathering
calls on church to accelerate ordination of women
Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) — At the end of the first-ever Congolese Mennonite women's theology conference, held here November 8-10, 2001, participants established an Association of Congolese Mennonite Women Theologians. They also chose a six-member committee with Pasteur Mama Kadi Hayalume of Kinshasa as the first president.
The three days of Bible study, presentations, and workshops — under the theme, "Women, Witnesses
of Jesus Christ" — brought together 30 Congolese Mennonite women trained in seminaries and Bible institutes. It was the first of three
regional African conferences under Mennonite World Conference Global Gift Sharing sponsorship. Additional conferences will be held in 2002 in Zimbabwe and in East Africa.
During the conference, the women reflected on their role as witnesses to Jesus Christ, working for the harmonious development of church and society.
In conference presentations, Madam Charlotte Djimbo and Pastor Kakhenda said Mennonite women in the Congo are not adequately involved in the development of their communites. Women can be better involved by developing their leadership capacities and by living out ethical values in daily life.
At the end of the conference participants agreed:
- to strengthen awareness among women and girls regarding their participation in integrated development;
- to publish a journal for Mennonite women theologians;
- to increase the number of Mennonite and ecumenical gatherings for women theologians at national and international levels;
- to create an Internet site to facilitate communications;
- to enhance Mennonite / Anabaptist values through projects to help churches be more self supporting;
- to demonstrate positive feminine leadership styles.
Participants also listed more than a dozen requests to their churches, which include: sending out more
women as missionaries; accelerating the official processes to ordain and place women in pastoral ministries; making clear assignments for each person when calling couples where both parties have theological training; engaging the church in social and political issues and giving an example to government based on the ethics of love, nonviolence and honesty; providing scholarships for women students and developing good relations with religious leaders and chaplains at universities to encourage women students; and creating centres for affordable health care for women students.
"The meeting marked a step forward in the history of the Mennonite communities in the DRC and will play a
shaping role in the future of those communities," said Pasteur Mama Fabienne Ngombe Kidinda, co-initiator of the gathering. Women have received an extraordinary mission — to be agents of reconciliation between God and humanity.
Mama Kidinda said no reason exists why women theologians, trained in the same programs as men, should not take up the same responsibilities with the same benefits. It is unjust and a distortion of reality that, of 60 Mennonite and Brethren in Christ (BIC) women theologians in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Tanzania, and the DRC, only one of them is ordained. She is Pasteur Mama Charly Lukala of the
Congo (currently living in France).
In addition to support from MWC's Global Gift Sharing program, the Congolese consultation was made possible by Mennonite Central Committee, Mennonite Brethren Missions / Services, and the National Inter-Mennonite Committee (CONIM).
Two additional women's conferences have been scheduled for 2002. One will be held in Zimbabwe. The other
is scheduled for East Africa. Following these conferences, a continental committee will synthesize the findings and bring a report to Africa 2003, MWC's Assembly in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe in August 2003.
