Complementarianism
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Benjamin Kreps:
Hey everyone. And welcome to the Mark Prater podcast, where our aim is to connect our global family of churches with our Executive Director. Mark, as you well know, we are a denomination with shared theological convictions, our seven values. One of them that is roundly criticized—from both without and within evangelicalism it seems—is our conviction for complementarian leadership in the church and home. What are some thoughts about where things are when it comes to this complementarian issue?
Mark Prater:
It's a timely question. First of all, because as we continue to advance the gospel together as a family of churches, complementarianism is so important in how we build churches and how we practice and do our gospel life together. We just believe it's God's glorious design that he created men and women equal with dignity and value before him. And yet, at the same time, assigning differing roles that play out in the church and in the home, in particular. And that's an important doctrine for us that we want to continue to strengthen and need to vigorously protect. And, for some reason, right now complementarianism is a little bit under assault, if you can say it that way. I think it was last week or the week before, there was some social media banter about it being a man-made doctrine.
Benjamin Kreps:
Right.
Mark Prater:
It was sort of a critique of complementarianism. And if our listeners haven't read this yet, please read Denny Burke's article. That's posted on the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood website. It’s titled, “Is Complementarianism a Man-made Doctrine?” I read that last week, I believe. And what I appreciated about it is, obviously, it's biblically solid in content. So he answers that question. Yes, this is a biblical doctrine. But I really appreciated his tone, as well, in the way that he wrote the article. So, if you haven't read that, please read that. Also, we were talking before the podcast, Kevin DeYoung has a new book out, which I haven't had a chance to read yet, Men and Women in the Church. But I did listen to a podcast that he did with Justin Taylor and Colin Hanson just two days ago where they really discussed that book and complementarianism, in particular. That's a good podcast to listen to. I think it's Like Books and Doctrine or something like that. Isn't that right?
Benjamin Kreps:
Life books and Everything.
Mark Prater:
Yeah, that's right. That's right. And you were telling me you were listening to the radio this morning and NPR was talking about this.
Benjamin Kreps:
It's ubiquitous. Yeah. I just happened to have NPR on the radio as I was running an errand this morning. And I thought, “What am I listening to?” It was another author with another book attacking complementarianism, even framing it in terms of a recent creation alongside of the recent invention of inerrancy of Scripture. So just seems more and more there is hostility towards this doctrine we hold dear and precious because God has designed men and women in this way. You and the Leadership Team had been thinking about this because you want to help ensure that we stand fast upon our convictions happily. So to that end, you're making a contribution to help us out. Isn't that right?
Mark Prater:
Yeah, that's right. And for us, it falls into the bigger picture. Something I mentioned in my State of the Union last November when we had to do it via live stream. One of the ways that we want to continue to grow as a family of churches is to build biblically faithful churches that endure and to be biblically faithful, we've got to be faithful to our complementarian conviction. And so, we're just trying to find how can we strengthen our pastors. How can we equip them as they lead their churches to celebrate and practice complementarian values? So, we made the decision to purchase a gift subscription for every Sovereign Grace Church of the journal that CBMW publishes semi-annually. It's called Eikon, a journal for biblical anthropology.
And I've been receiving this. It's so well done. It will not only strengthen complementarian convictions, but, as you well know, when you talk about biblical anthropology, they talk about issues of sexuality, of gender, of marriage. Even though I don't think that they speak to race at all, but that issue does spring from having a good grasp and an accurate grasp of biblical anthropology. So that journal will be sent to you digitally, by the way. You'll be receiving an email, if you haven't already, by the time you listen to this podcast. If you're already getting this journal as a pastor, please think about if there is a bi-vocational pastor on your team that could benefit from it. If not, think about a leader in the church that could benefit from it. But that's a gift from us because we want to find ways to serve you and in doing so, we hope this just strengthens complementarianism, the value that we share. And I want to continue to contend for it and build our churches with that value.
Benjamin Kreps:
That's wonderful. Very kind of you guys to do that and thank you to the Leadership Team for caring for us in thinking through these kinds of things and looking for ways to serve us. And thanks, Mark, for your thoughts. And thank you everyone for watching. We'll be back here next week, Lord willing, and we'll see you then. Bye.