Venture Unfiltered Episode #5: Women in Ministry

Venture Church. Oh my goodness, episode five. Here we are Pastor Brandon.

Welcome back. We didn't get canceled. We haven't gotten canceled. Just

real quickly, have you seen any of the analytics of our podcast? How

many likes and listens it's been getting recently? I am not privy to that

information. It is booming. Wow, we are for a startup podcast.

I don't want to say the exact number because that's just weird. Let's just

say we have really healthy numbers right now. Tons of people are downloading this

podcast, which is awesome. We need a sponsor, that's what that means.

Yeah, who can sponsor us? Today? We're pretty much sponsored by

Venture Church, Venture Church, Invisible Coffee. We sponsor them. We give

them a lot of money. Well, welcome back from your trip. How

did it go? It was great. Traveled around Europe with a group of

pastors from large churches and Christian business people, and I really have no complaints.

One of my highlights is obviously an organization that I believe in, Convoy

of Hope, get a support them in great ways. But the thing that

I enjoy the most is being able to network with pastors whose life experiences is

similar to ours, as we know, the very small percentage of churches or

as large as venture and so it's enjoyable to be able to talk to different

men and women who have the same challenges, the same joys that we have

here, and then in addition, connect with Christian businessmen and women who passionately

love Jesus and want their wealth to be used for something that outlasts them and

really want to leave a legacy, and be able to act with people that

honestly have the absolute gift of generosity. So that's always challenging. That's awesome

merging. Did you eat any good food in Italy? Some spaghetti, some

pizza, sandwich? Yeah? Actually the best meal I had was in Corfu

Grease. Oh and it was pizza better than Italian pizza. I it was.

It was my favorite meal. I know, come on, Grease.

It might have been because by the way, that was mine and my wife's

thirty first anniversary. Oh congrats, and only die would think that. Hey,

a great way for us to spend our twenty or thirty first anniversary in

Grease a magical play. One of the most romantic places around is to do

a twenty mile mountain bike ride up and down a mountain, so it was

after five hours of riding twenty bike. Maybe dog food would have tasted good,

but I'm telling you that pizza was incredible. That makes sense, Okay,

Pettigree, If you're hearing sponsor usum, well, hey, did you

listen to the episode of Pastor Nicole and I last week? I did.

She dropped bars. She was brilliant, she was excellent. The only issue

that I had with it was you misrepresented my secret Twitter. So, first

off, are you acknowledging you do have a secret Twitter? I have a

secret Twitter that I used to troll sports teams. Give them, give them

the button right now? There it is, okay, please inform us a

little more on this. First off, you got it wrong because you said

I talked about liking the Huskies and the Vegas Nights. No I don't.

I thought you do. No, that's not my regular Twitter. My trolling

twitter has a picture of Kenny Easley and I claimed to be the Sonic Synic.

Now, you probably never heard of the Sonic syn Back in like the

early nineties, back when KJR first went to sports radio, there was this

caller that would call in and he would do a poem always about how terrible

the Sonics were going to be. Lord Bless the Sonics and rip the Sonics.

But he would make fun of them, and he would do it over

and over again and became very famous as the Sonic Cynic. So on my

secret Twitter, I'm claiming that I am the Sonic Twitter, the Sonic Synic.

No one will know if it's true or not, though, well,

well, if people want to follow it, they can't at not telling anyone

what they handle is at not fight pastor. And it was Morgan Butcher who

accidentally discovered it because I am my secret Twitter is not a fan of Jerry

Depoto, the general manager of the Mariners, and Morgan is the ultimate Mariner

apologist. He approves of everything they do. Everything. Morgan is the only

person it liked Jack Zornzi for example. Jackie Ze is hot, garbage,

a human. Morgan loves anything that the Mariners do. So I was trolling

the Mariners and Morgan started arguing with me. I realized it was Morgan,

so I started bantering with him, and then Morgan realized it was me and

threatened publicly to expose who He never did no, because I told him I'm

his boss and he can't do that. That's off the clock. M we're

just coming off. Sorry to switch gears here, just real quick before we

dive in today's topics. Pretty hot, hot topic, Judo, we need

to make that button U VBS four hundred kids, over one hundred volunteers,

one hundred volunteers, completely free, completely free. I that was unbelievable.

I had a vision for a kid's ministry that I talked to Kaylee about in

last fall, and I said, I want to do VBS for free.

She panicked that I was going to require that she raised the money. But

due to Partner, which is our new method of giving over and above your

tithe to missions and outreach related events, I said, through Partner, we

will fund a free VBS. And I said, can you get three hundred

kids signed up for VBS? Well, Kaylee is the ultimate overachiever. So

Kaylee blows past three hundred and gets to four hundred, and we have all

concluded we cannot have one more child in VBS next year until we expand this

bill. We have to, we have to expand the building. But in

all fairness, I am super proud of Kaylee. Kaylee, it was so

well organized, so proud of our church, tons of volunteers every single day.

It was just a great event. Kayley told me right as I walked

into film this that seventeen kids got baptized, eighty children made commitments to Christ.

And that's why we do this. Beyond anything, venture is all about

mission and we exist. As we talked about in previous episodes, we want

to make Jesus famous. We're not here to make ourselves famous. We want

him to be the hero. And in the end, Jesus was the hero

of the BBS Adventure to twenty twenty three. We're pomped. I can't wait.

Man, not a dry eye in the room when kids said yes to

Jesus today. My only negative feedback from VBS. They gave me seventh and

eighth graders this year, and the kids kept calling me mister Clean, so

that became my name. At VBS, four hundred kids come up to me

and asked to rub my head and call me mister clean. Did you let

him rub your No, I didn't let him rub my head. Maybe rubbing

your head is good luck. I'm not the Buddha. All right, Hey,

let's dive into today's topic. You're back from vacation. So we're not

going to ease. We're not gonna go pretty easy. Let's dive into a

topic that's very hot in the local church. Probably people outside the church could

care less about this. Maybe they might have opinion. Who knows. Let's

talk about women in ministry before we get super controversial and throw me into the

deep end. Immediately, I thought you were going to ask me about movies

that I like. Oh, yes, do you want to do that?

Okay, yeah, it'll take I will do it really quick. Okay,

most people don't know this about you, but you have. Let's just see

a unique taste in film. I think I have great taste in movies.

You would think that, and I agree. What are your top five favorite

movies all time? Well, I don't want to answer it that way.

Let me just share it really quickly. Five movies that I like. Okay,

might not be my favorite, sure that people will be surprised to find

out that I like. Okay, here we go. Number one. I

love the movie pitch Perfect. Hold on a pitch Perfect is my go to

movie whenever I fly. If I have a two hour flight to Vegas,

I'm putting on Pitch Perfect. And watching it. It is the one thing

Nicole Butcher and I have in common that pitch Perfect is her favorite movie.

Another irony about the movie pitch Perfect is when I was interviewing Cole Hasty for

the role here at the Church several years ago, Cole shared with me that

his favorite movie is also pitch Perfect, and that is ultimately what caused me

to hire Cole is pitch Perfect. So pitch Perfect number two. I love

the movie Battleship. It has everything na is it Rihanna in that movie?

Brandon, oh she is? Oh Lord, yeah, Judah, there's okay?

Is there a button for that? Jeez? Louise, thank you?

All right, there we go. We're still working on all of our production

here, folks. No. Battleship is great. It's filmed in Hawaii,

it's about aliens, and it stars Uh Riggins from Friday Night Lights. It's

Riggins. You can't beat it? Okay. Another movie that I really like

that, I mean, I probably have to turn in my man card immediately.

You don't think that happened? Sorry? Continue, yep. I like

the Devil Worse Product. Oh gosh, this is getting worse. I'm sorry.

If you're listening right now you're driving home. Please keep both hands on

the steering wheel. Don't crash your car. Oh, invite me over to

your house. I'll watch Product. Okay, Devil War Probut I was number

three? What's number four? Uh? This one probably isn't a surprise,

but I love It's one of my five favorite movies of all time. I

love the movie Get Out Jordan Peel, scary movie. I didn't watch that

stellar style. Highly recommend it. What's incredible? Uh. The last movie

that I'll mention that I like that other people will be surprised about is I

love the movie. It's called The Intern. It stars Robert de Niro and

Anne Hathaway. You can tell by the Devil Worst Product that I'm an Anne

Hathaway fan. But it's this really cheesy movie where she started a clothing company,

becomes rich and famous, and starts an outreach to senior citizens where that's

how Robert de Niro ends up becoming her intern because he's a senior that doesn't

want to stay at home and so he interns at her company. So I'm

sorry. The films you like Pastor Brandon Okay, So Battleship has thirty three

percent run tomatoes. The Intern has fifty nine percent. There it goes fifty

nine, so over half of America likes it, half of whoever watched it.

Okay, let's get controversial, all right, so we're gonna talk women

that noe, let's talk women ministry. And the reason why I want to

bring this up is there's been some controversy recently with the SBC. If you

don't know who they are, that is the Southern Baptist Convention. They are

the world's largest Baptist denomination and the largest Protestant the and they're the second largest

Christian denomination in the US. Did you know that? Yes? I thought

I thought these summis that God are bigger than them. We are bigger around

the world. Yes. The reason why there is a lot of controversial controversy

with them is they recently kicked out several of their churches who have women as

pastors on staff and they just don't believe women have that role or that that

and they have you know, they use scripture to back it up. The

biggest church that they recently kicked out was Saddleback from California, pastor by Rick

Warren. So if you've ever read the purpose driven life, and he is

I mean he's retired now, but he is fighting them tooth and nail.

If you go on to social media, he is arguing with them. He

had a massive public repentance of his view on women in ministry for the last

forty years. He apologized. He said he had it wrong that women should

be in ministry, they should be allowed to be called pastor have the office

of pastor. There is a lot going on. You want to kind of

I would love to hear your thoughts or what you're thinking about all that.

Well, there are two things we have this class. We do adventure.

It's called Discovery, and it's where people do dinner with Di and I and

we talk about the history of the church, and we talk about the values

of the church, and we answer questions. And I tell everybody upfront in

Discover that there are two issues that I refuse to argue with people about that

these are they're close handed issues. Adventure we talk about we have things that

are open handed, that are open for difference of opinion, and there are

close handed issues. Now, we are willing to people that are legitimate seekers.

We're willing to have open, honest conversations about Jesus being the Messiah,

him being the son of God, the things that Jesus claimed that he was,

because people that ask questions on the divinity of Jesus are people that are

legitimate seekers, so it would sound strange that we wouldn't say that it's a

close handed thing. No, we want honest discussions about that. The two

issues are we don't argue tithing at Venture because the only people that argue about

tithing are people that come from another church lost when they come to Venture,

they're not surprised when we suggest that people give not at all and encourage people

to be generous. Many of them are already generous. So that is an

issue that we don't argue about. And the other one that we don't argue

about is the issue of women in leadership. Again solely an issue that gets

brought up by people that come from mainline traditional denominations. You've never had anyone

with no church experience that shows up in a meeting and wants to argue about

women being in leadership because as far as they were concerned, that was pretty

much taken care of when women were given the right to vote. And they

don't argue about that so those are right away issues that we are very dogmatic

about. We believe in women in leadership. So of course I have many

friends that pastorate SPC churches and many many friends that come from reformed tradition that

have a different view of women in leadership than I do. And to some

degree, I say to each their own and they can believe what they want.

Part of this for me is that I'm logical. So when you're when

churches across America are already having a difficult time finding people that can serve and

high level roles of leadership, that's pretty much a national crisis is finding people

to serve. So when you immediately cut out fifty percent of those people as

an option, that just lacks a lot of wisdom. Yea. I will

say this that the SBC pretty much looked the other way with saddle back Again.

One of the churches that was disfellowshipped had been led I think it was

in Georgia, had been led by a woman for almost thirty years. Unbelievable,

So thirty years after the fact, they're now disfellowshipping that church. My

personal opinion is, if you're listening to this and I don't know why you

would. But if you have come from an SBC tradition and you're a woman,

and you feel rejected, you feel minimized, you feel like there is

not a place for you and a role for you, please come to venture.

Yeah, we would love to have you come serve be a leader.

If God has called you, and if He has gifted you, we would

love to help raise you up and lease you into everything that God has called

you to do. I think this is a shame where what I would say

is that the SBC has been leaking people like crazy. They had the big

scandal with some of their losters that, yeah, the sexual assault issues,

and they've been dealing with that. I think I read somewhere that over the

last five years they've lost three million members. So when you are losing people,

Yeah, how you're going to stop and plug the holes from the league

is you double down on one of your most hyper hyper conservative stances on women

and accents. Yeah, that is. This is going to cost them for

a long time. I just I just theologically disagree with their stance, and

I think so many people obviously they want to argue scripture they refer to when

Paul suggest that women remain quiet in their gatherings, which we could, we

could chat on that, but I think for what I wish people would recognize

and remember the first person to ever witness that Christ was resurrected was not a

man. It was Mary Magdalen. She was the first carrier of the gospel.

She runs to inform the believers of Jesus who are in a home he

has risen. Well. The irony of all of this is throughout the Old

and New Testament there are women that were in key roles of leadership. Miriam

was a prophet, Deborah was a prophet and a judge. Hold was a

prophet. Phoebe was a deaconist, you know, Chloe nymph Ay. They

all led house churches. In Romans sixteen, Paul talks about four women that

work really hard. He talks about it, and if you actually look up

the phrase work hard in the original Greek, it's the same phrase that's used

to refer to people that are serving in ministry. So here's Paul in Romans

is affirming the work of ministry and how hard these four women work. Priscilla

was a church planner. We read about her in another fascinating thing. We

just finished this series on Acts, and I think it was back when I

taught on It's around sixteen, seventeen eighteen, something like that. I know

I taught on it. Yeah, and I talked about this man Apollos,

who was a Jewish theologian, a Jewish teacher that had been baptized into John's

Baptism and he had just found out about Jesus. He didn't know about Jesus

baptism, and he didn't know about the Holy Spirit baptism. But the Bible

talks about him being full of faith and full of zeal and it was Priscilla

that was instrumental in leading him to Christ. So here's somebody who is a

teacher, a Jewish leader, and he is discussing and being taught issues of

theology by Priscilla. Obviously, there's examples of Tabitha led the Benevolence Ministry.

Phillips four daughters were listed as prophets and Acts twenty one. It's really a

bummer that they're holding so tightly to moving backwards that I think that really it's

two verses and two verses that have been debated for fifty years, and there's

great Exejesus done on both of those verses, on both sides. In the

end, you have to contextualize everything. And we need we need women leaders

as much as we need men leaders. We do. And I think what

people arguing first Corinthians fourteen, they arguable a possible to old woman to be

silent. Okay, gotta remember the context here. This has written to the

Church of corinth There were many different Greek words you use, but he doesn't

use any of the words that mean utter silence. He chose the word le

leo, which can mean speaking something important. The reason being is Paul's telling

woman to stop the chattering during what had become very unruly gatherings of worship,

So he's not telling women to just literally be silent. If you go to

Peter's sermon Filled the Holy Spirit, what does he say. He quotes the

prophet Joel. In the Last Days, God says, I'll pour out my

spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy your young MENI will

see visions, your old menial dream dreams, even all my servants, both

men and women. I will pour out my spirit in those days, and

they will prophesy. The interesting thing about the passage in Corinthians is we did

a series on First Corinthians. We called it a beautiful mess. The vast

majority of the Book of Corinthians is there was this small church that was meeting

there. Now it was a church and it was growing, and Paul oversaw

it. But there were so many things they were struggling with that Paul.

That whole book is Paul correcting them and trying to refocus them. And that

whole statement about women being silent in the church. Most scholars that I respect

believe that that was in reference to people were just acting out in the church

service. They were interrupting, they were being disruptive, and so he makes

this statement, he is addressing it. And I think if Paul was sitting

here right now on this podcast, he would say never, in his wildest

dreams would that statement be carried over to mean forever in perpetuity women are to

be silent in the church. And I think, and I mean, just

going back to it, Pastor Brandon, like, I just don't get it.

There are some things we do hold very close handed, and like you

said, tithing, women ministry, but like for an entire denomination to now

all argue each other, get all of its ordained ministers to argue each other.

What a waste of time. I just think it's it's it's not understanding

the state of the world. It's out of out of how difficult it is

to be a follower of Jesus in America right now. That is what you

want to focus on. On all the issues that we are dealing with and

facing as church, big sea across our country. You want to focus on

that. It just seems very deaf to what's going on in culture. And

just in a fair statement, we have women pastors on our staff, we

have women campus pastors. And I've said this before. You're awesome. Greenie's

here filming, He's great. Judah's here as our program director, and you

guys are amazing. But I'm telling you, the ladies on my staff work

the guys. I think the ground Diabiel's outpreaches most men in America. Yeah,

there's a controversial statement. Well, my wife, she is an extraordinary

communicator, like world class. You heard Nicole last week on this podcast Nicole

one of the most downloaded episodes already. Nicole could be if she wanted to

a high level yes COO for a corporation. She is super smart, work,

super hard, a perfectionist who got Beth backus at the table. Claire

is a dynamic leader. I mean, we have the best young adults ministry

in the whole region. And Pastor Kayley our kids. Pastor just put on

a phobs of four hundred kids. Yeah. I have friends that are talking

about their vbs is right now and they had like forty kids and sixty kids.

You know. Here's Kaylee oh Man so kind of interesting. I did

some research while you're gone for this. So the four Square denomination founded by

a woman, Amy Simple mcfairfair sent here's a cool fact about the Assemblies of

God. The AG ordains a record number of women. The AG has ordained

on average more than five women per week for the last fourteen years. I

think I read recently that forty three percent of the credential ministers in our movement

are now female. Yep tent and which brings it to right now in America,

ten thousand, three hundred eighty three female ministers. That is brilliant.

And I would say every every movement has their challenges, so that the SBC

has had some of the largest churches, some of the most influential churches in

America. It's a shame that their most influential church is no longer a part

of them. Saddle Back. But we all have the issues that we get

hung up on, and I just think this is the one they've chosen to

double down and fight against. And I don't completely understand it, but it's

what they're doing. I would say our movement places too much of an emphasis

on the abstaining from alcohol. Yeah issue. I don't drink. I don't

have any interest in drinking, but I don't understand why that has become something

that we're so hung up on. So I think every movement does. But

I would much rather we were hung up on the alcohol issue versus the women

in leadership issue. Yeah, I'm really thankful for that, and I think

I would encourage anyone who's listening, especially a woman. Man, if you

feel a call of God on your life to do anything. If God has

said it, you confirm it, it's in your spirit, you need to

go for it, and you need to trust to the Holy Spirit's guiding you

and leading you, and not worry or be nervous with someone's thinking or telling

you else to do. And I'm just thankful for you PB. I was

doing some research and please no, I'm not trying to knock anyone. I

just looked at some churches in our area on another website. It's a lot

of them post you know, their staff, and a handful of them that

were of this denomination. All the staff old white male females or male white

males. The females were only ever given the role as director directors. And

I just, man, I'm thankful for you. Even their elder board,

even their elder boards, just old old white dudes. And we are you

come in on a Sunday right now, adventure. We have diversity, We

have female speakers, we have female elders, female deacons. I just I

agree with you. This is close hand for us. Hey, if God

has called you, if he's gifted and anointed you, we want to release

you in the ministry. Yeah, we are trying to win our city,

We're trying to win our nation, win our region, and we need everyone

to help. And so this is a place where we very proudly endorse,

support, promote women leaders. And I think a lot of that has happened

because again I think my wife has really paved the way with that. But

the women that serve as Pastor's adventure don't have like a chip on their shoulder.

They're not expecting she's just going to talk about that somebody to give them

an opportunity that they don't earn. And I do hear that in some setting.

I was just going to say, Pastor Die has never never ever been

like, well, you know, it's just tougher for me because I'm a

woman. She just does. She just goes about her day. Pastor's people,

leads, the lead, helps lead to the church. She's never lamented

or and I'm sure there probably have been maybe not a venture outside of venture

opportunities where people maybe haven't invited her or whatnot, because she is a woman.

She's never lamented about something like that. She's never vented or been frustrated.

She just does ministry and that's it. There's no chip on her shoulder

about it. And she's not braggy about it whatsoever. And I'm proud of

her. She's she's my role model. Yeah. I always tell Die that

Die isn't just a great woman leader. She's a great leader. That's It's

not just a great female speaker. She's a great communicator. Yes, And

I think fortunately for us, and I've really had two bosses in my ministry,

I had Rob Carlson at BCA and Glen Bertow and Modesto, and both

of them fully endorsed dies leadership and gave her opportunities. So for us,

again not being raised in church, finding out that churches hold on held onto

this stance, this what I would call very archaic stance, is a little

bit surprising to us. It is not our experience. We've had great experiences,

and I just think it's I think it's a shame that this is still

something that in twenty twenty three the church world is still talking about. And

I think, and I think, kind of just to kind of help land

the plane of today's podcast, there are, like you said, bigger issues

happening in our country and happening in the world that as men and women of

faith, we need to be speaking up and being involved in and helping bring

light to those scenarios and situations. Arguing each other over can a woman hold

a mic and be someone's pastor? That is archaic thinking you said it so

well, anything else you want to say about this topic, I feel like

we just we said, get out of our way. Topic. We're gonna

nail you down. Yeah. I hope I didn't offend anyone, Okay,

And if you did, offense is a bit of satan. They were probably

offended because I liked the movie pitch Perfect. That was more. That was

more offensive to me. Rick Warren, if you're listening, we believe in

you, Bro. Send us some books. Also, you have a beautiful

church. Have you ever been to his church? Saddle Back? I have

his facility. They spent over one hundred million dollars on it. Not as

kids, his youth facility. His kid's facility looks like Disneyland. Oh man,

Hey, thank you so much everyone for listening today. Thank you for

liking, subscribing, sharing, the amount of people that pull me aside in

the lobby on a Sunday text me, call me. I've listened. This

blessed me. Thank you. Honestly, those words mean a lot to Passer,

Brandon and I. It helps us know that, Hey, this is

this is working, and we're thankful for you. Um. Next week I'm

gone for a month, you're here, which is so weird. Ye.

I want to talk about rest and sabbatical and why you even get a vacation,

Why why even get a vacation, and why I'm even getting one.

Sure I'm not to lead a guy. I'm excited. Let's do that.

Let's do that. We love you, guys. We'll see you next week. Audio Smuchachos