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Women’s ministry boost at Moore

8:49am Tuesday, 8th February 2011

Sydney’s Moore College has launched the Priscilla and Aquila Centre to support women’s ministry. It has a special focus on encouraging women into post-graduate study and fostering women writers at both academic and more popular levels.

“We can do a lot more serious thinking and creative thinking about the application end of complementarianism”, Jane Tooher the Director of the Pricilla and Aquila Centre told a couple of hundred at the launch on February 7.

“Complementarian” churches like Sydney’s Anglicans believe the Bible does not allow women to lead congregations, or (generally) to preach to men. The Priscilla and Aquila Centre is an attempt by Moore to move beyond the women’s ordination debates of the past and more actively promote women’s ministry within the bounds of their theological framework.

Tooher reported that Moore College has experimented with team teaching with men and women and plans to experiment with College chapel.

College principal John Woodhouse described the new centre as approaching the issues of women’s ministry “in a less defensive way than has been necessary in the past”. He placed the controversy in the light of the 1960’s feminist and sexual revolutions. “ Undoubtedly there were some ways in which women were treated unfairly. So in many ways we would not wish to go back to life before the revolution.”

Woodhouse was still for being critical of the changes: “But as a society we are more confused about life marriage and relationship”.

He called on Christians on either side of the women’s ministry issue to “recognise the true and right motives of those who differ from us”

Those who believe that women have different ministries to men should “be slow to assume others who disagree with you do not care about God’s word.”

Those who believe all ministries are open to women should “be slow to assume that only you and those who agree with you care for justice.”

Another local Christian group that adopts a complementarian approach, the Presbyterian Church of Australia, is also examining women’s ministry. A National conference called “Flourish” has been established to promote women’s ministry in the PCA. Senior Presbyterians have told Eternity a proposal to work out how the church can encourage women’s ministry is being worked on at the national level.