The Power of Piaget

By James E. Plueddemann
Adapted from a chapter in Nurture That is Christian, James C. Wilhoit and John M. Detonni (eds) BridgePoint Books. 1995.

Growing up is both difficult and exciting, exhilarating and frustrating. The wonderful task of Christian education is to help people grow to become all God intends of them. Piaget does not tell us all there is to know about human development, but he does provide valuable insights for the Christian educator.
The pendulum of Christian education seems to swing between two unhealthy extremes: mindless learning of Bible facts and an emotion-filled philosophy that neglects the authoritative Word of God. Healthy Christian education is both true to the Word of God and relevant to the needs of the person and the world. Emotionalists claim “If it feels so good, it must be true.” On the other hand, rationalists assume that if people know the truth intellectually they will automatically be good people. Insights from Piaget bring balance to Christian education.
One of Piaget’s most important contributions was to provide a philosophical and empirical connection between external and internal knowledge. How does objective knowledge from outside the individual relate to the subjective meaning-making activity of the individual? How does Bible knowledge relate to being a godly person? How does one avoid cramming raw facts down the throats of children, or at the other extreme, merely using the Bible as a tool for feeling good about oneself?

The Practical Problem
Insights from Piagetian theory might suggest a rethinking of the theory and practice of Christian. But is such a radical rethinking really needed?
The church around the world is growing rapidly. The ratio of Christians to non-Christians is higher than it has ever been since the first coming of Christ. Both the percentage of Christians and the number of Christians in the world is higher than ever in history. Christianity is growing rapidly in Africa, South America, Asia, and Eastern Europe.
Bible-believing Christian education professors and publishers are increasingly aware of developmental psychology and at the same time are able to integrate psychology with historic orthodox theology. This is an encouraging trend.
But families are falling apart and seminaries seem to be less and less relevant to the needs of the church. Ethnocentric and racial hatred is sweeping the world. Bible teaching in the Sunday school often seems strangely unrelated to the frustrations of life. Economic and ecological prophets of doom are sounding more persuasive, while prophets of the Lord are often ignored. Hundreds of thousands of new Christians are not growing in their faith. While the number of Christians in the world is higher than ever in history, the number of non-Christians is also higher than ever before because of rapid population growth.
Though there are encouraging trends in the field of Christian education, the overall picture provides many hints of a discouraging state of affairs. Bible-believing Christian educators must not relax, but must work and pray for a quiet revolution in the field. We can’t go on like we are! Christian education is in need of a gracious, Bible-based revolution. Piaget suggests a theory and practice of Christian education that might be a beginning.

The Influence of Piaget
Piagetian theory does not have answers for all of the problems of Christian education, nor are these theories complete or adequate to fully explain human development. Piaget suggested a general skeleton for thinking about knowledge and that general structure is being modified and fleshed out by modern researchers. Piaget himself would have been disappointed if fresh thinking about his theory ceased when he died. While he was alive Piaget encouraged his students to go into new directions, to use the basic insights from his theory to understand new problems ( Shulman, Restiano-Baumann & Butler. 1985, p. xi). Piaget’s theory was dynamic and changing while he was alive, and fresh thinking about his theory needs to continue.
Robert Kegan a neo-Piagetian, believes that “in Piaget we discover a genius who exceeded himself and found more than he was looking for” (1982, p. 26). Kegan has enlarged Piaget’s theory to include personality development, with implications for clinical psychology.
While Piaget’s theory is incomplete and developing, his insights about thinking and growing may be some of the most important of the century. Several scholars have lauded the impact of Piaget and conclude, “Assessing the impact of Piaget’s work on developmental psychology is a little bit like assessing the impact of the automobile on American society” (Dolezal p. 3), or “assessing the impact of Piaget on developmental psychology is like assessing the impact of Shakespeare on English literature or Aristotle on philosophy - impossible. The impact is too monumental to embrace and at the same time too omnipresent to detect.” (Beilin, 1992, p. 191).

Overview of Piaget’s Life (1896-1980)
Piaget was born in 1896 in the small Swiss university town of Neuchtel. “His father was a historian who specialized in medieval literature, and his mother was a dynamic, intelligent, and religious woman” (Gainsburg & Opper, p. 1). Piaget was a brilliant child. He published his first academic paper at age 10. By the time he was 21 he had earned a doctorate in natural sciences from the University of Neuchtel, had published twenty-five professional papers and was considered one of the world’s experts on mollusks. By the time he was thirty Piaget held a job in the Rousseau Institute in Geneva and had a world-wide reputation (Gardner, 1981, p. 56). Piaget was a disciplined person who organized his thinking on long walks and wrote down his ideas the next day. During the summer months he would retreat to a hideaway in the Alps, take long walks, write, and come down in the fall with another book. For Piaget, writing was the way he organized his thoughts. When traveling he would sometimes go to the airport several hours early so he could have uninterrupted time to write (Gardner, 1981, p 57). By the time he died Piaget had written or co-authored about 50 books and hundreds of articles.
Piaget discovered that the shape of mollusks would change when put in a changed environment and concluded that mollusks could assimilate changes because of the need to adapt to the environment.
After finishing his doctorate, Piaget shifted his interests to psychology and began to work in a laboratory with Binet to standardize intelligence tests. Piaget was intrigued with incorrect answers children gave to questions on tests. (Wadsworth, 1974, p. 3). For example many older children would be able to distinguish between the right and left hand of a picture of a boy standing on his head, whereas children a year younger would almost always be confused by the question. He observed that the process of adaptation in children had common elements to adaptation in mollusks.
Piaget spent many hours observing his own children, watching them learn to perceive the world in radically different ways every few months.
He worked in Geneva for the rest of his life. His theories have continued to generate much interest and research.
Piaget argued that in order to understand an idea, a person in one sense has to invent that idea. Invention of ways in which the world works is a challenging task with many pitfalls. Piaget’s theories went counter to Freudian psychoanalytic theories that encouraged parents to avoid frustrating the developing child in any way. He felt such theories led to an excess of unsupervised liberty (Piaget, 1973, p. 6). Piaget felt that children do not learn unless there is an optimum level of dissonance.
He also disagreed with the ideas of Skinner and of programmed instruction. “Programmed instruction is indeed conducive to learning, but by no means to inventing. . . unless the child is made to do the programming himself” (1973, p. 7). Piaget would also disagree with Mager-type behavioral objectives. He would likely prefer problem-posing educational objectives.

Overview of Piaget’s Theory
The Process of Growth
Piaget is best known for exploring the mechanism and the stages of cognitive development from birth to adulthood.
Piaget has generated important studies on the factors that promote development. Two important factors are social interaction and the process of exploring tensions, or “disequilibration.” People tend to grow and develop as they struggle with problems in a social setting.
Interestingly, people tend to make the most progress in learning when things don’t make sense! For example, a small child may have one single mental category for animals - the family dog. Everything with four legs, a tail, and a wet nose is a dog. When the child sees the neighbor’s cat, which has four legs, a kind of tail, and sort-of a wet nose, the child labels the animal a dog. The process continues until the child sees a cow, or any animal that doesn’t fit the "dog" category. The cow has some of the characteristics of a dog, yet is very different. The cow doesn’t fit the child's mental category. This causes “disequilibration.” The problem prompts the child to construct a broader mental category for animals and produces cognitive development.
Adults also grow as they explore tensions and create new categories. This process is enhanced through interaction with other adults. This means that small groups can provide an ideal setting for healthy growth. For example, when a Presbyterian and a Pentecostal think together over a passage in the book of Acts, it's very possible that interesting "disequilibration" will take place. As they explore the tensions of their differences in interpretation, both will see things they never saw before in that passage. Interaction with people who have different perspectives can be a powerful stimulus to growth.
Ultimately, growth toward Christlikeness is a gift of God. Each Christian has spiritual gifts, so the group itself can become a means of grace. Though groups can facilitate growth, godly development is a result of God’s grace.
Piaget has described the strategies used by children to make sense of their world. The mind at birth is not a passive blank slate, but has built-in structures or schemata for organizing information. The child takes in information from the surrounding environment and puts that information in a mental file folder. Piaget calls this process assimilation. Children transform or re-write the information to fit existing mental categories. But not all the information a child receives seems to fit the existing file folders. When young children hear the story of Pontius Pilate, they put him in the mental file folder labeled “pilot.” Maybe this is why one child drew a picture of the flight to Egypt of Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus in an airplane, with Pontius as the pilot. Such a picture makes sense given the child’s limited number of mental file folders. But eventually the child begins to figure out that there may be two kinds of pilots, and such an understanding results in confusion or disequilibration in a puzzling situation (LeBar & Plueddemann p. 212). The child realizes the need for accommodation, or the need to add more file folders to accommodate the new category. So the child has one category for airplane pilots and creates another category for a person named Pilate. Learning as defined by Piaget is not solely an inner or outer process, but is the interaction of the inner thinking of the child with the outer world.

Stages of Growth
Piaget spent many hours observing his own children in natural settings and found that growth takes place in spurts or stages. These stages are “great leaps” followed by times of calm and integration. He described four major stages. Many researchers have confirmed these general patterns of developmental stages in people from many cultures.
1. Sensorimotor stage (ages 0-2). The sensorimotor infant makes sense of the world primarily through physical observations - by seeing, hearing, and touching. If a baby is playing with a rattle and the rattle should fall from sight, the baby will not look for it. For babies, objects seem to cease to exist when they are out of sight.
In some ways, the sensorimotor age is the most complex of the developmental stages. Piaget discovered at least six sub-stages in infants. At birth children react entirely with their reflexes, and by the time children reach two years of age they have begun mastery of language and have discovered how to perform scientific experiments with concrete objects. For young children each day produces dozens of miracles both for the child and the parent.
2. Preoperational stage (approximately ages 2-7). At this stage there is the new capacity to make sense of the world through language and fantasy. Preschoolers learn through intuition rather than through systematic logic, and they have a creative imagination.
In some ways preoperational or intuitive thinking is the most interesting and creative stage. Children may have difficulty seeing the perspective of a parent or another child, and thus have difficulty with cooperative play. But preoperational children have a most creative way of thinking about the world. Since they are not burdened with abstract logic, cars can fly, dreams can hide under the bed, and the moon follows them as they go for a night walk. Elkind (1979) calls children at this stage “cognitive aliens.” Children speak a different language and make up words such as “mouth brow” for mustache. A three-year-old neighbor told her mom I was “lawning” when I was mowing the lawn. “We cannot take anything for granted insofar as the child’s knowledge or understanding is concerned” (p. 147). But children are logical thinkers. Their rules of logic are just based on different ways of knowing the world.
While preoperational children are “cognitive aliens,” Elkind (p. 151) calls them “emotional countrymen.” Children are least like adults in their thinking and most like adults in their feelings. Children aren’t little “thinking machines” when they read. Thinking and feeling are always tied together. Adults must treat children with love and respect.
3. Concrete operational stage (approximately ages 7-11). The elementary school-age child has the new capacity to use mental logic but is limited to situations that are real and observable. Ten-year-olds in my Sunday school class assume that “tent-making” missionaries, unless people live in tents. Children at this stage learn facts easily, are very literal, and see social issues in terms of black and white, right and wrong. They love the Guinness Book of World Records and have numerous collections of rocks, stamps, and sports cards.
4. Formal operations stage (often 12 and up). In adolescence and adulthood an important way of making sense of the world is through abstract thinking. Now there is the ability to solve hypothetical problems with logical thinking. Many principles of Scripture cannot be fully understood from the perspective of concrete operational thinking. But complex concepts such as the atonement take on deeper understanding when adults are able to see the abstract conflict between justice and mercy.
In one important sense people can have a mature faith at any level of cognitive development, but for a more adequate understanding of Scripture formal operational thinking is probably needed.
Piaget found that growth is promoted thorough interaction with other children and with parents. And progress in stage development is motivated or enhanced as the child encounters perplexing situation.
The theories of Piaget provide valuable insights for teaching children about God and the Bible. He would suggest that we encourage young people to struggle with problems rather than give them easy answers. He would also suggest we give children plenty of opportunity to explore for themselves and to interact with other children.

Growth in Perspectivism
According to Piaget, the process of growth is like the widening ripples caused by a stone falling into a pond (Plueddemann & Plueddemann, 1990). Each stage of human development leads to wider horizons and broader perspectives. The more mature person can appreciate a point of view from a greater number of perspectives, making it possible for empathetic and caring relationships with people of different perspectives. As people grow in the ability to see problems from the perspective of the other person, they can better "rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep." Perspectivism makes discussion possible as people listen and interact with each other's views. Missionaries who can present their message from the perspective of a person in another culture are more likely to be effective.
Parents know that small children are egocentric, seeing the world from their own limited perspective. A wise parent knows it does no good to tell a hungry baby to wait sixty seconds for milk. God didn’t create screaming babies with the mental capacity to contemplate the future.
As children grow older, their awareness of the points of view of other people increases, but the depth of their interaction with others is rather shallow. This is why young children tend to interact in what is called “parallel play.” They are aware of other children playing near them, but they "play alone together" (Selman, 1976). Minimal interaction for children begins to take place about the age of seven. They can now discuss concrete situations with each other and begin to take the perspective of other children. But they are still not able to discuss abstract concepts such as “sharing.” For the seven-year-old, sharing means letting another person use one particular object. So a child may remember to share an umbrella, but not a jump rope. Sharing in the abstract is a difficult concept for children.
From about the age of twelve, perspectivism grows rapidly. Teens experience a revolution of world-view when they are able to see themselves as others see them. Such perspectivism is a strong motivation for boys to begin combing their hair and for girls to pay special attention to what they wear. Teens are growing in their ability to participate in group discussions because they are better able to analyze and reflect on comments from others in the group. Teens often question the religious up-bringing of their home because they are able to reflect on what life might be if they were raised in a Muslim home. Perspectivism can lead to doubt or to a stronger personally-owned faith.
Many adults are capable of genuine perspectivism, but some adults have difficulty “wrestling” with new ideas from different perspectives. Adult Sunday school classes often end in an argumentative discussion with one person not really hearing the point of the other adult. Class comments are often a string of unrelated observations from different members of the group. At times overly simple answers are dogmatically given to complex questions. Piaget never assumed that all adults would reach formal operational thought, so genuine dialogue among adults is not something to be taken for granted.

Moral Reasoning
Why do people do what they do? The level of cognitive development is reflected in why people do or do not obey rules.
Piaget observed children playing marbles and wondered about their attitudes toward rules. Children seldom learned rules for playing marbles in a formal setting with rewards and punishment set by adults (Duska & Whelan, p. 9). Piaget wanted to know how children thought about rules, how rules could be changed, and if children actually followed the rules.
Before the age of two children play marbles without rules, but practice many of the skills of playing the game of marbles.
After the age of two, children learn from older children that there are rules to the game, and they imitate those rules. Piaget would call these children egocentric because they assume their rules are followed by all people in the world. They believe that their particular rules are sacred and should not be changed. “They believe that the rules of marbles have been handed down from adults, and some even believe that God may have originally formulated them. Any alteration in the rules is considered a transgression” (Duska & Whelan, p. 10). Children feel an obligation to play by the rules, but often play with little cooperation with other children, or according to the rules.
At about seven years of age, the child begins to play marbles according to rules set by the group, but becomes legalistic in enforcing obedience to the rules. Piaget would call this heteronomous obedience to rules. Rules can be made by the children if they all agree to a particular set of rules.
Twelve-year-olds often develop ability for abstract reasoning, and the making of rules becomes a most important task in playing a game. Rule-making becomes a social activity, rather than blind obedience to external rules. There may be a serious desire to cooperate, so children actually abide by the rules to which they mutually agree. Piaget calls this autonomous reasoning.
Younger children understand doing good as doing what one should do, obeying the rules of adults. Younger children seldom consider the intentions of people as to why they do what they do. For example if a child because of clumsiness or by accident breaks fifteen tea cups, that child is considered a worse offender than a child who out of anger intentionally breaks only one tea cup. Older children pay more attention to the intentions of the child.
Piaget’s understanding of the moral thinking of children supports the idea that children don’t merely absorb character traits from adults, but are actively involved in making sense out of moral behavior from their developmental perspective.
Piaget’s work on the moral reasoning of children stimulated much of the thinking of Lawrence Kohlberg and James Fowler in the fields of moral reasoning and faith development.

Religious Thinking in Children
David Elkind (1979b) built on understandings of Piaget when he conducted research about how children think about religious issues. He was not interested in what children were taught in formal education, but what they really thought about religious ideas in a spontaneous setting. He investigated children’s conceptions of prayer, God and religion. His method was to ask questions. “The only requirement in formulating questions is that they be so absurd, to the adult way of thought, that one can be reasonably certain children have not been trained one way or the other regarding them” (1979, p. 259).
He asked questions such as: Can God be president of the United States? Can God talk French? How did God get his name? Does God have a first name? Along a similar line he would ask a Baptist child: Can a dog be a Baptist? How can you tell a person is Baptist? Can you be an American and a Baptist at the same time?
Elkind found stages similar to those of Piaget. He found young children to be undifferentiated in their thinking (Baptists have blond hair), older children to be concretely differentiated (They don’t allow dogs in our Baptist Church so a dog could not be a Baptist), and young teens to be abstractly differentiated (Yes one can be both American and Baptist).

An understanding of Piaget can be helpful in understanding the broad task of religious education. People grow as they interact with people, with the physical world around them. and with knowledge. People are not merely empty sponges to be filled with knowledge but are active in the process of growth. Education is not something one gives to another such as teachers giving an education to a student. True education is the reflective interaction between the student and the environment.

Implications for Ministry across Cultures
The Church around the world is in serious need of Christian education that is related to the world-view and needs of culture and at the same time is under the absolute authority of the Word of God. Good teaching in another culture is most challenging.
Piaget would argue that most cultural differences are variations on a set of common themes. There may be thousands of different ways of looking at life, but Piaget would contend that such differences build on similar deep structures in the person.
Traditional IQ tests are thought to be culturally biased, but Piaget redefined intelligence. Piaget claimed that the foundational structures of intelligence are genetic, and thus are potentially available for every human being in every corner of the earth. Piaget did not promote an elitist or Western definition of intelligence. The rate of development may be slowed or optimized by cultural influences, but highest levels of intelligence are possible for every culture ( Ashton, 1975. Dasen, 1977. Price-Williams, 1981). The doctrine of Creation affirms that every person is made in God’s image with all the potential implied by that creation.
Since the fundamental components of teaching and learning are the same in every culture there are basic principles of teaching that are appropriate in every culture.

Implications of Piaget for Christian Education
Piaget’s theories need to be evaluated and modified in light of the authoritative Word of God and must be empowered by the Holy Spirit for effectiveness in Christian education. While Piaget made no claim of being a follower of Christ, his insights can remind the Christian educator of basic biblical principles.
* Piaget helps us to see that the purpose of education is development. The ultimate goal of human development is for people to glorify God by becoming like Christ in every aspect of life. The task of the Christian educator is to foster the development of people so they will become like Christ - people who more fully love, know and glorify God. Too often Christian educators become sidetracked with idolatrous purposes such as building bigger programs or merely transmitting knowledge. Church growth and program development must always be means toward the bigger goal of Christ-likeness or they become idols.
* Piaget helps us see that learning is a social activity. Christians should not need to be reminded that good education must involve the body of believers, the Church. People develop as they interact with other people. People don’t learn the most important things in life by sitting in a pew taking notes from one-way communication. Good lectures and powerful preaching may be a stimulus for significant education, but Piaget reminds us that people must interact with each other in order to grow. Education that merely fosters passive reception of information will seldom develop people.
* Piaget helps us to see that learning is a disequilibrating and re-equilibrating process. We grow as we wrestle with the problems of life in light of the Word of God. Life is filled with frustrations and challenges. We are influenced by sin at every stage of spiritual growth. There will always be tension between the way we live and the way we should live. The good news of the Gospel must always be the answer for the bad news of our human situation. The purpose of knowledge, even knowledge of the Bible, is that it be a tool for helping us to resolve the deepest dilemmas of being human.
Through the power of the Word of God and by the Spirit of God these three principles could spark renewal in the Church around the world. The purpose of Christian education is to promote the godly development of people. We must involve the whole Body of Christ in this process, using God’s Word as a means for resolving life’s tensions. If these principles are indeed revolutionary, let us be gracious and humble in implementing them, but let the revolution begin!


Bibliography

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Will the Real Leader Stand Up?

From forthcoming book by Jim Plueddemann - Leading Across Cultures (IVP).

There must be hundreds of definitions of leadership, each one reflecting philosophical, theological and cultural values. People from a goal-oriented culture might define leadership as accomplishing the task through other people. Leaders from a relationship-oriented society would prefer to define leadership as the ability to build alliances and friendships. Societies with a low tolerance for ambiguity insist on a precise definition, while those with a high tolerance for ambiguity would likely not bother with any definition.

Recently the U.S. News & World Report editors selected their choice of the best leaders. They defined a leader as a person who “motivates people to work collaboratively to accomplish great things.” [i] The selection committee used three criteria for the best leaders: they set direction, by “building a shared sense of purpose” [ii] they achieved results that had a positive social impact that exceeded expectations, and they cultivated a culture of growth by inspiring others to lead.[iii]

Since there is no divinely inspired definition of leadership I will show my theological and cultural bias with the following description:

Good leaders are fervent disciples of Jesus Christ, gifted by the Holy Spirit, with a passion to bring glory to God. They use their gift of leadership by taking initiative to focus, harmonize and enhance the gifts of others for the sake of developing people and cultivating the Kingdom of God.


[i] Amanda Ruggeri, “America’s Best Leaders: How They Were Picked.” U.S. News & World Report, December 8, 2008, p. 55.
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Ibid.

Are All Christians Missionaries?

(From forthcoming book, Leading Across Cultures by James E. Plueddemann, by IVP. Publication date October 2009)

The word missionary has mixed connotations. For some people, missionaries are heroes and spiritual giants, worthy to be put on a pedestal. At the other extreme, missionaries are thought to be religious fanatics who destroy cultures and stir up sectarian strife. Many times, they are stereotyped as being from the West and having white skin. More recently the idea has surfaced that all believers are missionaries. I remember a missions conference with the theme, “You are either a missionary or a mission field.” I recently visited a church that featured a large sign over the exit: “You are now entering the mission field.” Some Christian organizations define a missionary as anyone needing to raise support. A prayer letter from a Christian camp announced that the camp staff were all missionaries, meaning the camp didn’t pay them a salary. One of my American friends jokingly defines a missionary as anyone who receives a tax-deductable receipt for the cost of their travel.

Most missionaries are neither spiritual giants nor destroyers of culture. They go out from every country in the world, they have a unique calling, and they are not defined by whether they raise support or not.

A missionary is anyone, from any country, who leaves home in order to proclaim the gospel, usually in another culture. The term is derived from the concept of “apostle,” or “sent one,” so by definition, missionaries move beyond their home ministries.

In the Old Testament, priests had local responsibility for taking care of the temple, while prophets spoke the word of God both to Israel and to the nations. Jesus’ disciples were also called apostles or “sent ones.” They were called to leave home, family and occupations for the sake of Jesus and for the gospel (Mark 10:29). New Testament pastors, elders and deacons were responsible for local house churches, while “apostolic bands” left home to preach the gospel. During much of the history of the church, parish priests led local congregations while religious orders carried the gospel to distant places. Put simply, missionaries are people who leave home for the sake of the gospel. While differences between local and non-local ministries become fuzzy at times, the basic distinction helps to avoid confusion of roles.

The Holy Spirit gives many gifts. Local pastors, evangelists and teachers play a most important, God-given role in world missions, but they are not missionaries. Christians living or doing business in another country are not necessarily missionaries unless they intentionally seek opportunities to share the gospel. Church groups visiting missionaries in another country are most likely Christian tourists. In my definition, Christians doing relief work in Southern Sudan are not missionaries unless they also seek to talk about Jesus. Many people provide outstanding service to humanity by building houses, drilling wells, stimulating micro-enterprises and feeding the poor. But unless they also intentionally seek opportunities to communicate the gospel, I would not call them missionaries. I’m grateful for philanthropists such as Bill Gates and the Red Cross. They aren’t second-class citizens; I just don’t classify them as missionaries.

Yet, communicating the gospel is not the only thing that missionaries do. They do in fact hold verbal proclamation of the gospel together with meeting human need. Through the centuries missionaries have holistically proclaimed Christ as they healed the sick, built schools, provided clean water, initiated agricultural innovation and spoken out against injustice.

When an Indian family moves away from their own culture in south India to the Islamic North in order to do the work of evangelism and discipleship, they are missionaries. Chinese family members setting up a market stall in Afghanistan for the sake of taking the gospel westward are missionaries. An Australian English teacher in China who looks for informal opportunities to share the gospel is a missionary.

Should Women be Leaders?

My Disequilibrating Journey

I’m sorry to admit that I was 36 years old before I really thought seriously about the role of women in ministry. In 1979 I was being interviewed by a woman member of the Board of Regents for a teaching position at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Out of the blue she asked me if I thought women should teach men. Without thinking I quoted 1 Timothy that Paul did not permit a woman to teach or assume authority over a man. (1 Tim. 2:12) She didn’t say anything but gave me a slight smile. I then asked her if she taught Sunday School in her church and if there were men in the class. She nodded, yes. With an embarrassed look on my face I mumbled that I assumed that she was a good teacher and admitted that I hadn’t thought much about the issue. My disequilibration had begun.

If women shouldn’t teach men, how could many of my most influential teachers be women? If women aren’t to teach men because women, like Eve are more easily deceived (1 Tim. 2:14) then for sure women shouldn’t be allowed to teach children or even worse, other women. Should men read books or sing hymns written by women? It didn’t fit my theology or my experience. My mother’s teaching led me to accept Christ as savior. If women shouldn’t have authority over men, how could some of the most dynamic, visionary leaders in missions be women? Does God’s inerrant and fully inspired Bible contradict itself when it says women should keep silent in church, while on the other hand they should cover their heads when they prophesy? (1 Cor. 14:34 and 11:5) My naïf position didn’t make sense theologically or experientially. I began to reflect on my experience, and went to Scripture again with a fresh curiosity.

I grew up in a godly, fun-loving home with a strict German father and Scotch-Irish mother. Both parents were well educated, committed Christians and influential leaders in our local church. In the home my Dad was clearly in charge, but my Mother took most of the initiative in raising and punishing me when I deserved it. Because Mom taught Good News Clubs in our home, I learned most of the Bible stories in our living room filled with children and a flannel-graph board. Even today, when I hear the stories of creation, Abraham, Moses, Daniel, Jesus and Paul, I still picture my mom moving flannel-graph figures around the board with a room-full neighborhood children.

Many other women teachers had a strong impact on my life. My fourth grade teacher Mrs. Phillipson, gave me a sense of confidence and self-worth that changed my worldview. Once, in front of the whole class, she told me that I might be president of the United States some day. As a 12 year old I recommitted my life to Christ under the dynamic Sunday School teaching of Nettie Baird. At Wheaton College, the teachers who influenced me the most were Vivian Bloomquist and Mary and Lois LeBar. When I began dating Carol I quickly realized that she was a lot smarter than I and had gifts where I was sorely lacking. She began to tutor me in Spanish, and helped edit of my papers. Because of her, my grades dramatically improved under her teaching.

After we were married, Carol and I joined the Sudan Interior Mission (now Serving In Mission) and began working with the Christian education department of a dynamic church in Nigeria. I realized that Carol along with Ruth Cox and Mary Marbaugh were much more qualified than I, at teaching, through the means of curriculum development. Mary replaced me in the leadership team when we went of furlo and became the first woman to serve on the SIM West Africa Council. Later when I became the International Director of SIM, I realized that a couple of our field countries were stagnating for lack of visionary leadership. When I appointed Becky Welling as the SIM Director of Sudan, her love for the local pastors, fluency in Arabic along with her enthusiasm and possibility-thinking revitalized the ministry.

On our first vision consultation in India we sensed a deep ingrown discouragement. When I asked the director about his vision for the country, he answered, “the last person to go, turn out the lights.” After we replaced the depressed leader with a dynamic woman medical doctor, Aletta Bell, the field took off. Seldom have we seen such a dramatic turn-around. Aletta traveled to most of the SIM sending offices, exuberantly pounding the pulpit with fresh vision for the ministry in India. In our last visit to India as International Director, the SIMers were buzzing with excitement and enthusiasm about fresh possibilities for ministry. On the last evening of a vision consultation, we sat on the beach, sang praise hymns and watched the sun set over the Arabian Sea. One of the younger folks played music on a “boom-box,” and the whole team made up of members from Ethiopia, Japan, Korea, the United States, India, and many more, lit sparklers and began to dance on the beach. Carol and I watched in amazement. What a difference between our first discouraging visit and our last one with dancing on the beach. India was our fastest growing field. God used this powerfully-gifted, possibility-thinking woman to bring dynamic change.

Journey Toward Re-equilibration

I consider myself a conservative evangelical Christian holding firmly to the fundamentals of the historic faith. I gladly ascribe to the verbal, plenary and inerrant inspiration of Scripture. Was I on a theological slippery slope toward liberalism? Did I sin by appointing women missionaries to positions of authority over men?

I continued reflecting on my life. My professional career has been either as a missionary or a professor. For 24 years I’ve been a cross-cultural missionary, and for 19 years I’ve been a professor at Wheaton College or Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. I’ve lived, studied, written and taught in areas of leadership and cross-cultural studies. Both help me understand the dilemma of women in leadership.

The Bible is filled with universal moral ethical principles. Yet where Scripture seems to contradict itself—as in the command for women to be silent, and prophesy with covered head—the principle must not be universal but be intended for a specific or cultural situation. The church in Corinth well-known for specific tensions and squabbles. Many of the commands—such as the length of hair and wearing of hats in church—are generally thought to be culturally-specific. If the apostle Paul were writing to missionaries working in the Islamic world, he might say that it is not appropriate for a man to teach women. It would go against the morays of the culture. If the command is situationally cultural, then both men and women should be alert to times when it would be better for the other gender to do the teaching and leading.

My experiences and studies in cross-cultural leadership leads me to a rival hypothesis regarding the passage where Paul tells Timothy that he “does not permit a woman to teach or have authority over a man” (1 Tim. 2:11). In a many parts of the world a high power-distance leadership is the expected cultural value, where a domineering leadership style is assumed by both followers and leaders. Jesus consistently taught a counter-cultural low power-distance leadership value when he told the Jews not to call anyone Rabbi (Matt. 22:8), and his disciples to avoid the Gentile style of lording it over others (Matt. 20:25). Many of the translations of the 1 Timothy passage add the footnote with the alternate reading that Paul did not permit a women to teach man in a domineering way. Since leadership struggles were common in the New Testament church, Paul equally might have written, I do not permit a man to teach either men or women in a domineer way. Most likely a woman was giving Timothy problems by her domineering teaching style. The underlying principle probably refers to leadership styles of both men and women.

Resolution

The universal principle regarding the ministry role of men and women is that they are interdependent. “Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. For as woman came from man, so also man is born of woman. But everything comes from God” (1 Cor. 11:11). Men and women are different but interdependent, where the only hierarchical relationship is God. The position isn’t quite egalitarian or complementarian.

My understanding of the doctrine of progressive revelation helps me to respect both the continuity and discontinuity between the Old and New Testaments. I don’t find the term “ordination” in the New Testament. If folks ask me if I believe in the ordination of women, I tell them “no,” but neither do I believe in the ordination of men. (I enjoy being an iconoclast.) The whole idea of a priesthood limited to the males of one family of one of the tribes of Israel is done away in the New Testament. But if we give in to the cultural temptation to “ordain” people let’s not restrict it to the Old Testament doctrine of the limited priesthood. The laying on of hands seems to be a public indication of the giftedness of an individual and there is no indication that spiritual gifts are gender specific. Surely the doctrine of the priesthood of believers is not limited to males. Galatians lists barriers broken down in the New Testament, both men and women are one in Christ Jesus (Gal 2:28).

I don’t quite fit either the egalitarian or complementarian mold. Maybe I’m an interdependent, egalitarian-complementarian. I praise the Lord for the differences between men and women. Without these differences no one except Adam, Eve and Jesus could be born. I remember reading brain research that discovered a tendency for the left hemisphere to handle abstract functions while the right hemisphere helped with more intuitive ways of thinking. The disconcerting observation is that women usually have more connections between the two hemispheres. In order to make the best decisions it makes sense to have both men and women on governing boards, on leadership teams and highest positions of leadership.

I’m sorry it took me so long to become disequilibrated. From the perspective of a cross-cultural missionary I realize that there are times when, for the sake of the gospel, both men and women need to step back from leadership positions. I respect hierarchical complementarian men and women who, because of their high view of Scripture, struggle with the dilemma. Usually these folks do all they can to include women is as may leadership roles as they can. But as I look at a world in pain, a struggling and lukewarm church and billions of people around the world who don’t know Christ, I am passionate about the urgent need to employ the giftedness of the whole church.

We hurt ourselves when we limit the leadership gifts of at least half the Body of Christ.

Ascension Day - Pray For Revival

May 21, 2009 is Ascension Day! . . . May 31 is Pentecost Sunday

Ascension day may be the most important date on the Christian calendar that is totally ignored.

This is the day the disciples along with the women who followed Jesus returned to the upper room to pray. They watched as Jesus was taken up before their eyes and a cloud hid him from their sight. For ten days they studied the Bible and prayed. They probably meditated on the last words of Jesus. "You will be my witnesses . . . to the ends of the earth." They were told to wait for the Holy Spirit.

Ten days after Ascension Day is Pentecost! The day when God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven heard of Jesus in their own language. (Reread Acts 1 and 2)

Let us take these ten days and pray for a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

Ascension Day Hymn

Tune: Hyfrydol

Alleluia! Sing to Jesus,
His the scepter, His the throne;
Alleluia! His the triumph, His the victory alone.
Hark the songs of peaceful Zion
Thunder like a mighty flood.
Jesus, out of every nation,
Hath redeemed us by His blood.

Alleluia! not as orphans
Are we left in sorrow now;
Alleluia! He is near us,
Faith believes, nor questions how:
Though the cloud from sight received Him
When the forty days were o’er,
Shall our hearts forget His promise,
“I am with you evermore”?

Alleluia! Bread of Heaven,
Thou on earth our food and stay;
Alleluia! Here the sinful
Flee to Thee from day to day;
Intercessor, friend of sinners,
Earth’s Redeemer, plead for me,
Where the songs of all the sinless
Sweep across the crystal sea.

William C. Dix 1866

LOST

We were frantic. Our son Danny got lost at a Michigan State University football game. We had just come on home assignment from Nigeria and Danny was four years old. Was he kidnapped? Did he fall a couple of hundred feet over the back of the stadium? I peered over the edge of the stadium and half expected to see a crowd of people gathered around a small crumpled body on the sidewalk. Why didn’t we take better care of him? Why didn’t we teach him our phone number? Why didn’t we make sure he had some kind of identification? In a frenzy we searched through the mass of 40,000 football fans. You can imagine our exuberance when we later found Danny in a special room for lost children, eating candy in the arms of policeman. We were so glad that the University took special concern for lost children.

Lets pretend that in our panic a friendly policeman sent us to the University Committee on Lostness. I barged into the committee room shouting, “Help! Our son is lost!”

Members of the University Committee on Lostness wished to ask me some questions. I assumed that they wanted to know what Danny was wearing, where we saw him last, if he might have gone home with a friend or some other helpful question. But he asked, “What do you mean by lost?” “Is he really lost?” “Who do you think you are to impose your morality of lostness on a child?” “It’s all relative, maybe you are the one who is lost.” “How can you be so arrogant to proclaim your son is lost. You are making a value judgment on his lost state and assume have better judgment than your son?”

Weeping and pleading I shouted, “But my boy is lost, I love this boy more than I love my own life. He is in serious danger. Stop your scholarly debates on lostness and come help me find my boy!”

At this moment there are at least four billion people who are lost without Christ. About two billion lost people are out of reach of any search party. Their Heavenly Father loves these people more than he loved the life of his own Son. We sense the pain of lostness in God’s heart when we read that there is great joy in the presence of God’s angels when even one sinner repents. The father in Luke 15 celebrated with an exuberant party when his lost son was found.

Mission agencies are recruiting people to form search parties to go into dark and difficult and neglected places to find the lost. We desperately need volunteers and those who will support them? How can so many Bible-believing Christians be complacent when our loving Father is weeping for His lost children?