In the debate over women's roles in the church the terms complementarian and egalitarian have been utilized to describe the different views. Roughly speaking, and as applied to the sphere of the church, the complementarian view is the more traditional one, with men being the only ones allowed to hold positions of leadership in the church and the egalitarian is the opposing view, that women can also hold leadership positions in the church. A recent comment on a blog post stated:
I don't know, but I think that this really misses what Christian leadership is supposed to be. Jesus tells us this about his idea of leadership:The essential difference between complementarians and egalitarians is the distribution of power. Yes, egalitarians want the same (equal) power. Yes, complementarians believe men should have more power, which is different. But that does not mean that egalitarians believe men and women are the same in every way. Maybe some do (I haven’t read any that do) but I don’t.
He demonstrated this attitude with his life:And Jesus called them to him and said to them, You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. (Mark 10:42-45)
"Servant", "obedient", "slave" - these don't sound like "power" or even "equality." This sounds like "leadership" in the church isn't about "power" at all but rather about the inversion of what a worldly culture thinks about power. I would go so far as to say that if "power" is what you seek in the church then you should never be a leader of the church, man or woman. I would go so far as to say that anyone who seeks power disqualifies themselves from Christian leadership by definition. They may hold the post of a leader if they have managed to "lord it over" the people and they may "exercise authority" over the church, but to God they are not "great" and they are not leaders.Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:5-8)
