As a part of the human community, the Christian community is bound to be shaped by the changes that take place in that larger community. A glance at the history of Christianity gives us enough evidence to show that the Christian community does not slavishly follow whatever changes take place in the human community. It applies its own judgement based on its interpretations of the Bible, traditions, dogmas, doctrines, ecclesiastical practices and so on. Such encounters also vary since the practice of Christian communities is not homogenous throughout the world or even within regional and national situations.

In the last few decades the place and role of women has been discussed in all countries, and communities within each country. Today in most international forums, institutions and organizations, the equal participation of women is no longer debated. Rather, the issue has become that of implementing equal participation. The United Nations has already dedicated a year to the equal participation of women in all the areas of life. The use of inclusive language in UN documents is yet another sign of justice to the cause of women.

Religious communities including Christians have responded to this social revolution in different ways. Some Christian communities and churches have joined the revolution as critical partners. Others have resisted the influence of such a social revolution. It is our hope that this study by the WARC will contribute to a greater participation of women in all aspects of the life of Christian communities and churches, including in the ordained ministry.

The groaning of the theological world

We are living in a time of great search for theological articulation in each context. Theology has been a fortress long closed except to those who followed the strict theological methodology dictated by the custodians of "classical theology" (traditional theology). In the last few decades, this fortress has been under severe attack. The attack is intended not to destroy but to liberate the people who have shut themselves in the fortress, away from the rich life that exists outside. Women theologians have been important partners in this liberating struggle.

Today Black, Liberation, Feminist, Minjung (Korea), Dalit (India), Coconut (Pacific), Homeland (Taiwan) theologies are familiar to us. The Ecumenical Association of Third World theologians has done great service in bringing theologians from diverse regions to share with one another and pursue the task of theologizing today.

It is interesting that in all the new expressions of theology, the participation and place of women is an important ingredient, even though such participation does not yet provide full justice to women. This only shows how theologies, even while attempting to proceed in the path of liberation, are captive to the dominant cultural and traditional values. The plea for "self-theologizing" by women and others needs to be respected and encouraged if we are to be faithful to the Gospel of Jesus Christ today. If theology is an expression of the experience of the ultimate reality, the experiences of one group cannot dominate without causing damage to varied expressions of Christian theologies. In order to facilitate this, traditional theologies must grapple with several emerging challenges.

In Christian communities, including Reformed communities, there are persons who cite only sections of the Bible which deny equal participation of women in the ministry of the church. Such citations may include: reference to a particular version of the creation account; the incarnation of the second person of Godhead as male Jesus; and the selection of twelve male disciples by Jesus. The problem one faces here is a partial reading of the Scripture which fails to do justice to the core witness of the Bible. That core affirms the inauguration of a new human community where differences, such as sex, race and colour, found in God's creation are seen as complimentary rather than divisive. In its practice, the church, understood as the foretaste of such a new community, can not but uphold this complementary nature of human beings. This calls for reassessing our church practices and the theological assumptions behind these practices.

The theological doctrines associated with ministry and ordination and the concept of the church itself need to be reworked and updated in order to face the challenges of the present, especially regarding the proper understanding of the ministry in the church. In the rest of the paper, I will deal briefly with the doctrine of the church and ministry which was the focus of our consultation.

Church and ministry

One of the great contributions of the Protestant Reformers was to redefine the doctrine of the church. The "priesthood of all believers" and "the community of believers" were commonly used images for the church among the Protestant Reformers. For example for John Wycliffe (1324-1384) and for John Huss (1369-1415) "the true Catholic Church on earth was the whole body of Christ's faithful saints militant." (On the Church) To Martin Luther (1483-1546) "the world ecclesia properly means an assembly." (Larger Catechism) According to Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531) "the visible church is not the Roman Pontiff and others who bear the mitre, but all who make profession of faith in Christ the whole world over." (An Exposition of the Faith) John Calvin (1509-1564) believed that the church is the communion of saints (this phrase was used by Martin Luther also), stating "this clause, though generally omitted by the ancients, ought not to be overlooked, for, it expresses very well what the church is." (Institutes of the Christian Religion) For Heinrich Bullinger (1504-1575) the church was "a congregation, communion, or assembly, or people called together to hear matters of the common good." (Of the Holy Catholic Church) Menno Simons (1496-1561) believed the church "is an assembly of the pious and a community of the saints".

Such new images for the church also led to a new understanding of ministry in the church. Even though this office is instituted by Jesus Christ, the Protestant Reformers were of the opinion that specific authority to individuals is derived from the community he/she is a part of. The ordination is an affirmation of the calling for public ministry. The community can withdraw the authorization for public exercise of ministry for reasons which may threaten the well being of the community. With such a new understanding of ministry, the spiritual hierarchy which was associated with ministry was given up and ordination for ministry was viewed differently than in the Roman Catholic Church. Since equipping Christian community spiritually and theologically is an important function of the minister, the Reformers put great emphasis on formal theological education as an important step towards ordination. Ordination also ceased to be understood as a sacrament, as there was no specific commandment to observe it from Jesus Christ like for baptism and the Lord's Supper.

Despite the emphasis the Reformers placed on the church as community and the understanding of the ordained ministry within the framework of priesthood of all believers, in the institutional practice the hierarchal model remained in Protestant church communities. Women were denied ordination, thereby failing to uphold the theological insight of the church as a community of believers in practice.

This necessitates, once again, a renewed understanding of the church, ministry and ordination. In the Reformed understanding is ordained ministry an office or a function? How is the authority and power confirmed through ordination used? Who is eligible for ordination and how one is prepared for it?

As far as the chief affirmation of the early Reformed ecclesiology is concerned, I quote here from the recent Reformed/Roman Catholic International dialogue:

"- The unity and universality of the one true Church, to which those belong whom God has called or will call in Jesus Christ,

"- The authority of Jesus Christ governing the Church through the Word in the power of his spirit,

"- The identification of an authentic "visible Church" by reference to the true preaching of the Word and the right administration of the two dominical sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper,

"- The importance of a proper Church order, central to which was the office of the ministry of Word and Sacraments, and, alongside it, the oversight exercised by elders sharing with the ministers of the Word in governing the affairs of the Church."¹

These affirmations have historical binding on the Reformed family and its self-understanding. Yet as it tries to be faithful in response to new challenges, the Reformed family must redefine and reinterpret these affirmations. In the same report of the Reformed/Roman Catholic dialogue, under the section "The Mutual Challenge", the Reformed participants affirmed their commitment to the ordination of women:

"- One further difference concerning the ordained ministry cannot be ignored, especially today. In the Reformed churches as in many other Protestant communions it has become increasingly common in recent decades to ordain women without restriction to the ministry of Word and Sacrament."²

Sometimes, in churches, (specially the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox churches), which are not theologically convinced about the ordination of women, there is a tendency to believe that Christians belonging to the Protestant tradition are carried away by the functional aspect of the ministry and ordain women without first resolving the issue of ecclesiology. Since ministry is closely related to ecclesiology, they feel that there is a lack of theological vigour on the Protestant side regarding ordination of women to ministry. In my opinion, such criticism does not hold ground in the light of numerous theological discourses which have been produced, as well as official church studies. This is partly possible because Protestants in general have different approaches to the tradition of the church and as such can exercise some flexibility. Of course, theologically one could argue that ecclesiology is based on Christology and today there is a wealth of literature available providing argument based on how Jesus related to women and accepted them as disciples like the traditional twelve disciples, and on women's faithfulness in propagating the Gospel through the centuries.

To take this discussion a little further, it is a well accepted fact that there is not one universal concept of the church. Dr. Avery Dulles, in his book Models of Church, identifies the following five paradigms of the church: institution, mystical communion, sacrament, servant and herald.³ Even these five models are not final. Theologians keep coming up with new definitions like "Church as a liberation Community" (Rosemary Ruether), "Church as the congregation of believers convoked by the risen Christ" (Hans Küng), and "Church as community of disciples" (Acts 6:2/Avery Dulles).

New definitions of the church open up the possibility of redefining ministry and facilitating the Christian community to move forward toward inclusive ministry, ordained and otherwise. Such attempts at redefinition should not be limited to theological writings. They also belong in preaching and Christian education in order to stimulate necessary organizational and structural changes.

Max Weber argued that religion, although charismatic in nature in it's origin, after a period of time will become institutionalized. In such circumstances, our search should not just seek for some flexibility in the ecclesiastical institution but should attempt to recapture the charismatic root of the church on the basis of re-reading and reinterpreting the Bible. Whether this might ever be achieved is certainly a valid question to ask in such a search.

Conclusion

Today, the ordination of women and their equal participation in ministry is of significance especially in the self-understanding of the churches in the context of a religiously and culturally pluralistic world. We claim that the church is the bearer of the Good News and a foretaste of the reign of God. We will not be able to convince our own sisters and brothers, who, in increasing numbers, are distancing themselves from institutional churches, by arguing that some of our ecclesiastical practices are divinely ordained even though the cultural underpinning can be clearly demonstrated. Such hurdles will be even greater in our dialogue with people of other faiths since considering God as male is an issue predominately within in Christianity and Judaism. Therefore the role and place of women in Christian ministry is not possible without challenging the philosophical and theological presuppositions behind the institutional practices of the church.

In conclusion I would like to place before you four challenges as we continue our reflection on women in ordained ministry.

a.Variety of Gifts

Sometime ago I heard from an Indian church leader the statement that "to the extent a person's contribution is denied, to that extent the Christian community is impoverished". If we agree at all with this statement, we need to strive to bring in gifts of every individual Christian, male and female, (I Cor.12:4-11) to enrich our community and the human community at large. This also demands that any office in the church should not be restricted to particular individuals or groups. If individuals (male or female) are of the opinion that they possess the gifts suited for the offices in the church, their call should duly be respected.

b.Methodology for Theology

From the Latin American Liberation theologians we have learned that the methodology for doing theology in the future has to follow the course of dialogue between people at the congregational, pastoral leadership and professional (theologians) levels. Unfortunately, as we heard during this consultation, even inclusive words like youth and laity are in some contexts understood as "male only". Such a danger should be avoided in pursuing an inclusive approach in doing theology in the future so that equal input is not left out. The place and role of women are not just issues in Christianity. For a change in the larger religious community, in inter-religious dialogues, women's participation and contribution should be encouraged and guarded.⁴

c.Her Biography

It has been said that every work of "theology is rooted in biography" (S.J. Samartha). In other words every theological discourse contains strong biographical input from the theologians involved. That means the gender of a theologian has some determining role. (Of course in such biography in addition to the male or female bias, the biasses of class, race, geography, profession, etc. will also play a role.) At present, centuries of theological material written by men and read by the faithful has constrained Christians to thinking theologically in a male framework. Liberating oneself from such a framework is a serious challenge both for women and Christians from the younger churches. One possible way of facing such a challenge is to attempt including the feminist perspective in all teaching of theology and Christian education.

d.Alternate Organizational Model

One of the issues which emerged in discussion during the consultation was whether women will be able to make their authentic contribution even as ordained persons within the institution historically shaped for male ordained ministers. As it is now, ordination perpetuates hierarchy, privilege and power in the institutional church. How may the danger be avoided of women being co-opted into the ministry which is still structurally dominated by men? Today a search for alternate organizational models is also a concern in political, educational and business institutions. One of the challenges ordained women face is to strive for alternate ecclesiastical models. They may benefit in their search by looking at secular initiatives. (One of the places to begin may be in the theological colleges and seminaries where exposure to ministerial formation often begins).

The challenges mentioned above do not exhaust the list. They are but a few examples. In spite of being hampered by many hurdles, there are many success stories and liberating experiences. The situation is hopeful both for doing theology in inclusive ways and experimenting with new models for institutional management. I probably close with this note of optimism because I am from a younger church and a male. Of course it is for you to judge!