Once again, NNPCW is at the forefront of the technological bandwagon—Presbyterian Women now has a blog, too, for their Global Exchange to Brazil. You can check it out here. I’m very excited that we’ve started a blogging trend in Women’s Ministries. And I just found out that we’ve received the unparalleded cyber-honor of a feature on the PC(USA)’s homepage (I’m hoping they’ll include a blue ribbon with that). So welcome, all ye curious, to Network Notes.

An older, but great, article about women’s leadership in the church recently crossed my desk from PW staff person Unzu Lee. Scholar (and graduate of Louisville’s Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) Linda McKinnish Bridges wrote the piece for the Baptist theological journal Review and Expositor in summer 1998. Bridges holds that the spread of Christianity always begins with a “Lydia Phase,” in which women are major players in teaching, preaching, and leading the emerging church. As the movement becomes more institutionalized and culturally acceptable, however, it almost always conforms to the patriarchal attitudes of the surrounding culture and excludes women’s leadership. I would encourage you to read the article if you’re interested.

What intrigued me, though, was her thesis on the role of women in the 21st century church. She argues that many women played major roles in the first-century church in part because they were small, decentralized house churches. This made it possible for women, with little public experience but with a source of authority within the home, to be comfortable with leadership roles in the church “family.”

Much later in the article, Bridges contends that the pendulum is swinging back toward that direction in the modern church. As she comments:

“The people who supported the growth of organized religion are dying. In their place are equally hungry faith seekers, although not as institutionally focused. … They are interested less in form and more in essence. They are casual. And casual faith seekers do not search for powerful centers of religious expression but for immediate, authentic places of spiritual growth” (13-14).

In light of this shift, I’m becoming increasingly convinced that the NNPCW model has validity for the entire church. In many ways, we have the small, decentralized characteristics of early house churches—students meet together in a chapel basement, in a dorm room, or in a student lounge, where we create communities that pray, study Scripture, and act on behalf of justice. We promote an empowering decision-making structure, where the entire community comes together to consent to what is best for the group. We share a common Christian faith, but focus on different goals and objectives.

Perhaps we can make this transformational moment in the church a permanent “Lydia Phase”—one where women, such as those of you involved with NNPCW, can spark the growth of this changing church and then maintain leadership roles of significance. We know that the church as it stands seems unappealing to many in our generation. Maybe it is time for us to take the vibrant faith communities we know as NNPCW and share them with others. Like our foremothers, it is our turn to heed God’s call to shape the emerging church.

“A certain woman named Lydia, a worshipper of God, was listening to us; she was from the city of Thyatira and a dealer in purple cloth. The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul.” --Acts 16:14

Kelsey