Not Sexualized or Segregated

On the one hand, Mark Driscoll challenges cultural stereotypes. On the other hand, when it comes to gender, Driscoll's language and communal leadership advocates deeply entrenched gender stereotypes on sex, women, men, and relationships. This is more than just a disagreement about roles or how many times a week a husband and wife should have sex. It is how men and women ought to relate to each other in our contemporary world for the sake of kingdom immediacy and intimacy....

Perhaps our greatest challenge as Christians in our contemporary world is to hunger and thirst and pray for a kingdom immediacy that is not a sexualized kingdom nor a gender segregated kingdom.

There is indeed something deeply Christian, deeply eschatological, to pray with a man or woman who is a close, sacred companion but not your spouse: "I thank You Lord, for our unique history, for the depth of our shared intimacy, for our shared history of answered prayers, for our shared history of supporting each other in prayer through so many different circumstances and relationships."

[via Faith Dance]