5. Avoiding difficult conversations. Moore says every complementarian church needs to ask and answer the question: What do we do with parachurch structures? For instance, can women be deacons? The temptation here is to leave the question unasked to avoid any kind of criticism. For instance, in some churches, you will not see women reading Scripture, taking up an offering or giving announcements even though the church may not have any reason from Scripture to adhere to these principles, but rather do not want to do the “hard work” of explaining to outsiders why they have come to the conclusions they have about women filling these particular roles.
In a true, biblical complementarian church, Moore says the men should be asking how they can give away their authority in every way that is biblically allowed in order to empower others. Again referring to the unique role he believes men fill, Moore says they have a “unique responsibility to see that the vulnerable are cared for and justice is done.”
Moving forward, Moore says that in complementarian churches especially there should be “not one hint of the tolerance of the abuse, mistreatment, trivialization of women.”
These churches need to be asking themselves how they can be equipping and empowering the women in their congregations to build up the body of Christ and to use their gifts—not just for their own sake, but for the sake of the church.
