Most of y’all know my wife leads a women’s ministry at our church (“Women’s Life”), while I facilitate a parachurch men’s gathering (“Dude Group.”) Crystal deserves her flowers for how she intentionally pursues the hearts of women and sacrificially helps meet their spiritual, relational, and physical needs.
But this picture from Ian & Kate’s beautiful wedding illustrates what Paul Harvey used to call “the rest of the story.” See, she has at different times spiritually invested in all of the dudes in this picture—myself included. She even got the privilege to baptize the groom. In a world that tries to relegate XX chromosomes to subsidiary roles in the kingdom and especially the American church, she knows that spiritual gifts aren’t determined by gender and aren’t dependent on the age or sex of the recipient.
If Crystal had been in the first-century network of house churches, she’d have been on the list of women Paul shouted out in his letters as fantastic ministry partners and local assembly leaders.
I grew up in a faith system that oddly required testicles to hold titles and jobs in faith spaces. I married a woman with more [courage] than I’ll ever have who didn’t care what she was allowed to do or what label was on the church website under her name. She just showed up for people, held space, spoke challenging words, and convinced people of Jesus’ affection through her own.
For the past two and a half decades, I’ve lived with a shepherd of souls. And in this highland cattle pasture, I was wowed yet again by the fruit of my wife’s pastoral labor.
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