From Executive Director Owen Strachan: As CBMW is seeking support for our $30,000 matching campaign, we thought we would take this opportunity to introduce our readership to some evangelical leaders who support complementarianism and CBMW. Today, we interview Greg Gilbert, a Louisville pastor who participated in a very well-received Together for the Gospel/CBMW panel in 2012. Thanks for reading, and please join us in our campaign!
Greg Gilbert earned his BA from Yale and his MDiv from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is senior pastor at Third Avenue Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky. You can follow him on Twitter @greggilbert.
When did you become a complementarian, and what did that look like?
I think I’ve always had a complementarian understanding of men’s and women’s roles. My parents took the Bible’s teaching on those matters seriously, and so did the church I grew up in. As with so many other things, though, it must have been in college that I came to informed convictions that men and women were created by God, that he created them “male and female,” and that he had given them different roles. It wasn’t an easy conclusion to reach. Everything around me in college was pushing in the other direction, but once you come to believe that the Bible is really God’s Word, it’s impossible to get around it.
What role, if any, has CBMW played in your life and ministry?
I have read more articles and books from CBMW and its key leaders than I can possibly list! Piper and Grudem’s Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood was crucial in my developing a defensible position on complementarianism, and I’ve been helped over and over by CBMW materials in learning how to communicate complementarian ideas to people who don’t naturally embrace them.
Why do you support CBMW, and encourage others to do the same?
Careful, biblical thinking on these matters is so important in an age when everything the Bible says about sex and gender is under assault. Truths that were taken for granted 20 years ago are ridiculed today, and just as the Bible warned, evil is celebrated as good, and good rejected as evil. We as Christians have a hard road ahead of us as our culture loses the last vestiges of its Christian worldview. It’s good to know that the people at CBMW will be helping us think carefully, biblically, and pastorally about these important questions.
What have you written of late that would be of interest to CBMW readers?
Not much! Zondervan is publishing in January a book I wrote entitled, The Gospel at Work: How Working For King Jesus Gives Meaning and Purpose to Our Jobs. It doesn’t deal specifically with gender issues, but insofar as CBMW readers are Christians and workers, they might find it helpful!
You, too, can help support the ministry of CBMW. We are a non-profit organization that is fully-funded by individual gifts and ministry partnerships. Your contribution will go directly toward the production of more gospel-centered, church-equipping resources.
This new curriculum is aimed at Christians who are facing challenging questions with the rise of LGBT ideology on topics like homosexuality, transgenderism, gender dysphoria, intersex conditions, preferred pronouns, and more. The study is broken down into eight chapters that guide readers through the Bible’s teaching on gender, sexuality, and marriage. Male & Female He Created Them gives Christians with a biblical foundation that starts in Genesis 1 and 2 with God’s good design in making mankind male and female in His image.
Male & Female He Created Them: A Study on Gender, Sexuality, & Marriage can be purchased online at Christian Book, Christian Focus, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.
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