“Connecting People”: Nokia or Spiritual Gifts?
Reflection Roundup reports from conversations couched in relationships. Here, readers will find boots-on-the-ground and “live from the field” activities of people intent on increasing their understanding of what it means to live like Christ in the world. As always, listening broadly draws together differing perspectives from which we can learn but with which we may not concur. Several connections this past month surprised me: Jeremiah’s prophecy, a well-acted play, and a newly published book by a first-time author. Together, all of this garners quite a response to Jeremiah’s organic metaphor.
We really do need each other.
Why does that sound like an ad slogan? I’d swear it is, or maybe it’s just something I’ve heard often in church. Maybe this is where the statement is most true, anyway. We really do need each other. Why? Three recent elements converge to reinforce what Christians already know and have known for centuries. The first evidence is in scripture, the second in a brilliantly performed play, and the third in a brand new book.
Scripture.
One Sunday in February many, including myself, preached from the lectionary text, Jeremiah 17:5-10. Here, the Lord is vying once more for the trust of the people, and Jeremiah grasps contextual metaphors for application that will resonate with the hearts of the hearers. He basically asks people to consider whether they want to have the life of a scrubby shrub or a strong tree. He asks them to consider uninhabited salt land contrasted with being planted by water, and basically asks, “Where do you think you can grow?” Take your trust there, Jeremiah challenges.
In a practical way, people can ask themselves where they go for support when it is most needed. People can trust the Spirit of God to fill them and lead them from within. While this is true, there are times when it can be difficult for an individual to discern among many tugging forces, both internal and external. God patiently reminds individuals that they are not the only ones who house and hear the Spirit’s tugs. From within each other, people can hear the supportive voice of God.
A brilliant performance.
Also in February, Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House was performed on the campus of Abilene Christian University. While I have learned that taking notes at an in-the-round performance does not a courteous audience member make, the performers’ adroitness with complex characters had me hanging on their every word as I wondered where the story, written in another century and country, would take our contemporary minds. Ibsen’s script, adapted by Frank McGuinness, directed by Dawne Swearingen-Meeks and embodied by the students in the theatre department, demonstrated growth and expansion on all fronts. While several themes flow concurrently, Ibsen, a man living in Norway in the nineteenth century, demonstrates that women are more than “dolls” to be displayed prettily within the houses which they occupy their time beautifying. Nora Helmer, a character performed by Layla Leveret with capability beyond her years as an actor, had a life that was tragic in many ways, but it opened to the possibility that there could be more for her. This is a question many of the young women in our churches are asking today.
A brand new book.
One of the tragedies of Nora’s life consists of the limits placed around her. In the fall of 2024, Baker Academic published a book by Anna R. Morgan, Growing Women in Ministry: Seven Aspects of Leadership Development. In this work, Morgan clearly shows her readers how females often have specific pathways and needs in tandem with the full application of their spiritual gifts, especially in relation to leadership and the more outwardly-focused gifts that Paul mentions in Ephesians 4. This pathway and these needs are different from those of their male counterparts, yet the women are often treated the same, even in egalitarian contexts. Morgan has created an insightful tool for many Christians interested in contexts within churches in which all people are called upon and empowered to use the gifts—the gifts with which God has adorned them for the purpose of linking God’s ministry to the world.
We really do need each other. The gifted women and men in our churches need space to express their gifts. If this is not found in the church, they will either share their equipping outside the church, or they will go undiscovered and unrefined. In both scenarios, the body of Christ misses out.
Morgan explains that the “spiritual journey of a woman whose primary gifts are in leadership or teaching is unique.”[1] She also nods to the fact that many women hear a call to ministry at a surprisingly young age. While this may not be unique to females, it is important to note that women need a place to take the question this raises within them—questions about their identity and usefulness in the kingdom of God—which translate concretely to their usefulness to the church in their specific giftings. Many do not understand that these roles are available to them because they have not historically had this modeled for them by people of their same gender in our churches. They have often poured their God-given talents into another career until much later in life.
Again, we need each other.
Morgan shares the truth, “God does not put limits on female leadership, but culture does.”[2] The author poses a scenario for redeeming this cultural reality that may be surprising. Following Paul’s paradox in 2 Corinthians 12:9, “my power is made perfect in weakness,” she suggests that submission to the divinely delegated authorities in women’s lives is the path to spiritual authority. In this model, the Christ Hymn from Philippians 2 comes into view. Christ submits to God and is lifted up by God, at which point Christ glorifies God and the cycle continues. Christ desires that God’s people be one as Christ is one with God (Jn 17:21). This mutual submission is one pathway to this unity, and one that looks very different from the culture of the world. By this the world will come to know Christ (Jn 13:31-5).
This grows within churches often at an organic pace, like trees.
Jeremiah’s metaphor of the shrub and the strong tree even works in West Texas. Here, we have mountain cedar afflicting our allergies while we gaze southward toward the bald cypress of the south Texas riverbanks. Strangely, both have shallow roots as well as a deep-drinking tap root, which speaks for itself. The difference between those trees growing by the living stream display is their interconnectedness. Growing as shrubs, cedars bend into permanently wind-blown shapes when life blows. Cypresses, on the other hand, grip each other so firmly near the surface that even when the river erodes the soil surrounding their roots, they still soar. To bless the world with life, they need each other for foundation, for direction.
“...and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands” (Is 55:12).
Admittedly this article comes up short in conveying some additional important aspects of Morgan’s work. A student and I are working together to craft a full review which will be available early summer.
1. Anna R. Morgan, Growing Women in Ministry : Seven Aspects of Leadership Development, January 1, 2024, https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=e7e8c146-9401-3d77-9124-3b, 41.
2. Morgan, 49.
