Good afternoon, everyone. This is Dave McManus, Marian Baptist Church, Fayetteville, North Carolina. It is December 4th. It is 1.23 p.m. and I'm coming to you with a news and focus podcast this afternoon. An article I came across on ChristianPost.com. The title of the article is CRU. CRU is a shortened acronym for, it's not even an acronym, a shortened title for Campus Crusade for Christ, what was formerly known as Campus Crusade for Christ, crew leader demoted over refusal to let females teach Bible study, written by Catherine T. Fan, posted on December 3rd. So there's our issue. Females want to teach in a mixed gender setting. Male and females. and he refuses to allow that to happen. As first reported by World Magazine, Daniel Harmon was stripped of his title as missional team leader of the Louisville Chapter of Crew, formerly known as Campus Crusade for Christ, when he disagreed to fully carry out the ministry's policy that male and female staff share in leadership duties, including teaching the Bible. Since assuming the position as a campus leader of Louisville in 2009, Harmon has allowed women to speak on ministry-related topics to mixed-gender audiences, but has stopped short of letting women on the staff teach the Bible to men. Harmon, who is currently studying for his Master of Divinity degree at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, believes scripture doesn't permit women to teach men. When one of the women on this staff asked Harmon if women could teach the Bible at crew meetings before both men and women, according to the World Report, Harmon replied that they could not. Crew regional officials were made aware of Harmon's position and they urged him to accept the organization's policy of men and women leading together. Doesn't that sound nice and happy? They said that unless Harmon changed his position after a three-week period, he could no longer serve as missional team leader. When Harmon decided that he could not follow the policy, Crewe demoted him. Telephone and email requests for comment by the Christian Post to Harmon, who remains on staff at Crewe where he has served for 11 years, were not returned. Harmon's case is an example of how the egalitarian versus complementarian debate, which continues to be a contentious issue, is now playing out in campus ministry. To justify why they believe women should not teach the Bible to men or hold ministry leadership positions, complementarians often point to a passage in 1 Timothy 2, 11, and 12 in which Apostle Paul says, A spokesman for Crewe contended to World that Harmon's demotion was about the inability to follow policy, not theology. We'll come back to that. A spokesman for Crewe contended to World that Harmon's demotion was about the inability to follow policy, not theology. A local campus leader for Crewe in Kentucky was asked to relinquish his current leadership position not because of a theological disagreement, but rather because of a failure to abide by the terms for holding a position of leadership within Crewe. However, Danny Burke, associate professor of Boyce College, the undergraduate arm of Harmon Southern Baptist School, disagrees. Crewe's policy represents an egalitarian view of ministry roles, and that stance is irreducibly theological. And I absolutely agree with him. Daniel was demoted because of theological conviction, not because of an arcane dispute about Crewe's bureaucracy. Certainly, Crewe has the right to set their own policies. I hope their constituency knows that it excludes consistent complementarians, Burke wrote in a December 1 blog post. In Burke's opinion, parachurch groups like CRU should not adopt ministry practices that undermine the teaching of churches. For that reason, the complementarian, egalitarian issue cannot be skirted by groups like CRU. The Christian Post was not able to reach CRU for comment by press time. A statement by CRU to World Magazine referred to the matter of women's role in ministry leadership as a secondary issue. Crewe is passionate about connecting men and women to Jesus Christ, the Crewe statement read, while believers understandably have different beliefs on a wide variety of theological issues, Crewe has chosen not to allow secondary issues to become primary passions and divert us from proclaiming Christ to the world. Meanwhile, the leadership page on the Crewe website lists only names of men leaders, while the international leadership page lists some names of women leaders. Only two of the eight board of directors are women, including Vonette Bright, who co-founded the ministry in 1951 with her late husband, Bill. Christian Post had also contacted the female staff of the Louisville chapter of Crewe for comment. One declined comment, while another said she had to talk to Crewe regional officials before providing comment. Alright, so... I was never a part of Campus Crusade for Christ. I came to Christ after college. I have spoken at a Crusade event before on a university campus, and all my experiences with them have been positive. Let me say that first. Second, I was disappointed when this came down a couple years ago when they kind of rebranded their organization, and went from being Campus Crusade for Christ to being Cru. They claim that that wasn't a change in any kind of direction or policy, and I don't know that it was as far as what was written down and what was stood by, but I was a little disappointed that we dropped Christ from the name. It smelled of, let's make ourselves a little bit more marketable in the secular world, if that makes sense. That's kind of what I thought. to the issue at hand. We have a man who, by attending Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, headed up by Dr. Al Mohler, we reference him a lot around here, a very well-respected guy, and of course he would hold to a complementarian point of view in that setting, as would a great number of of people in this arena. Even within the crew arena, I would think. Especially based on what we see with their board of directors and that sort of thing. Versus the egalitarian point of view where anyone can teach anyone. Man, woman, doesn't really matter. Well, I think this has a few things that reek of our society. It's our society creeping in to these organizations. And the idea here is that everything must be equal. I think it's probably a global phenomenon, but I think it is very prevalent here in America. Everything must be equal. Male, female, everybody has to get the same thing. It drives our economy now. It drives everything we can think of in society. It has to be quote-unquote fair. Well, the fact of the matter is, it's not fair in that sense. It's not that everybody is equal and everybody gets to do the same thing. The fact of the matter is, is that we all have different gifts. And we're not all equal in that sense. Are we equal in God's eyes? Absolutely we are. Are we equal in Christ? If we are covered in the blood of Christ, are we equal? Absolutely we're equal. That's not the issue here. The issue is, what are the gifts that God has given us, and how should we use those gifts to serve the body of Christ? Roles are different. Roles are different, and when roles are usurped, bad things happen. If we're talking about a church, when roles are usurped, when leadership roles are usurped, bad things follow. In a marriage, when leadership roles are usurped, bad things happen. God lays this out for us for a reason. He has a structure for a reason. He lays out responsibilities for a reason. See, we love the idea of this equality, but the fact of the matter is that we can't help but acknowledge that men and women are extremely different. We are different emotionally. We are different physically. For example, we could have an average man and an average woman And we could set them to weight training. And they could both train an equal amount per day. And they could do the same number of reps. They could do the same system. And if they continued on that path, identical diets, identical workout plans, the male would inevitably be bigger. he would be bigger. Now the woman would be very strong. She would be in great shape. Pound for pound she would be very strong, but she would not hold the same amount of strength as the man did. Is that unfair? That's how God made us. Men were built bigger physically. We are able to take on more muscle mass. And so for a woman to say, oh, it's unfair that you get to have more muscle mass, we would think that's kind of silly. We would think that's ridiculous, but when we apply it to societal things, when we apply it to the way God structures his church, well now all of a sudden it's not fair. Complementarian does not mean subservient. And no matter how much people have abused this idea that have kept women underneath the thumb of sinful men at times in the name of the church, we know, Bible believers, that that is not what the Bible says. It doesn't say that a woman is any less than Christ. It doesn't say that a woman is any less important. We are just talking about roles. And if you read all your liberal scholars and you read the mainstream, well, we've got Paul the misogynist here. It was referenced there, 1 Timothy 2. that women are to be quiet and not teach over a man. Okay, I would say there's a local application to that verse and a general larger application to that verse. Obviously that must have been a problem that he was addressing to Timothy in that letter, and I think it's a rule that he establishes everywhere else. Why do I think that that's a rule he establishes everywhere else? Well, if we go to some of his other writings, if we go to Titus chapter 2, And read verses 1-5, he says, Paul, that's the same Paul, misogynistic Paul, that women are to be teachers of good things. How are they supposed to be teachers of good things? Verse 4, that they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blaspheming. So Paul does not say women can't teach. Paul says women have a role to teach. They have a responsibility to teach. They are to teach. Women in Christ are to teach. They're to teach women younger than them. They're supposed to teach children. They're supposed to teach their peers. They're supposed to hold up an example for Christ. Same misogynistic Paul. Same one that says that a woman is not permitted to teach a man. not because of misogynistic stuff, not because of sexist stuff, because of roles in the church. 2 Timothy 2, verse 2, Paul says this, And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also. That's Paul telling Timothy, you need to find men. When we go to 1 Timothy 3, and we get bishops and deacons, He talks about men. When we go to Titus 2, and he talks about elders, he talks about men. And in this society, we just want to run to the fact that the church is a sexist organization, and they hate women, and they want to hold them down, and this is a patriarchal society, and it's unfair. But the fact of the matter is, that's not the case at all. We're talking about women being absolutely as valuable in Christ's eyes as a man and absolutely as valuable in the work of the church, especially among the female population. The very reason that I have women on my youth staff is because they are able to speak to young girls where I would not be able to. They are able to serve the body of Christ in that sense where a man would find it very difficult and very uncomfortable and in a lot of cases very unproductive. We have these roles laid out in scripture and God makes it very clear. And so here we have a man standing on a principle, and I want to praise Daniel Harmon for standing on the principle of scripture, even to the point of demotion. I would hope that he is fighting the good fight with this, and if he cannot bring Campus Crusade for Christ to see or crew to see the error of their ways, then maybe it would be time for that man to move on, because the ministry seems to be moving in a different direction. A lot of things were a little bit troubling there. The idea of men and women leading together. Absolutely we should lead together, but that's such a generic statement. That's such a happy, fuzzy kind of feeling. And that's not what we're looking for. As much as we want that happy feeling, we're going to compromise and compromise and compromise and compromise until everybody's happy. Well, what happens to the Word of God when we've compromised and compromised and compromised? It ceases to hold the authority that it has in our eyes and in our minds. And that's exactly why we're in the situation today where we have the Word of God being questioned, we have the Word of God being brought down to a level that we can mold it into anything that we want it to be. And the fact of the matter is that Mr. Harmon is standing on scripture, and I laud him for that. And hopefully we get more examination of this from Cruz's perspective. I just thought that was worth talking about today. If you have any comments, please post them directly to this recording on sermonaudio.com, or you can send me an email, dmcmanus.bbc.gmail.com.