“Go home.”

Those two words spoken by veteran preacher John MacArthur about author and teacher Beth Moore created pandemonium on the Internet last month.

While I found the comment hurtful and unnecessarily divisive, I simply don’t have the theological training to definitively share on this issue. Thankfully for you and me, this is not another opinion piece about gender and how it relates to the pulpit.

However, that two-word comment by MacArthur, that caused such a ruckus online, made me think about what the home is really about.

Women have the unique capacity to minister within the home. I’m not suggesting that we should be shackled to domesticity – we go or stay according to God’s call on our lives. But I do believe that the home doesn’t come in second or third place after platform, podium and pulpit.

The world and culture have cast the home as being a place less valuable, a place where you can’t possibly live out your calling, a place that is limited, unadventurous, and just plain boring. We have subscribed to the narrow belief that simply because home turf may be unglamorous, it is also ineffective and unproductive when it comes to ministry.

But what if we adopt a mission mindedness within our homes?

Our homes are the powerful, necessary, and unique incubators of our faith.

This is where we can be our most authentic, our most vulnerable, our ugliest, our rawest selves before our God. The safe space of our homes becomes sacred ground where God can overhaul and rearrange our lives.

That can’t happen on pulpits or platforms.

Our homes are the battlefield of our marriages.

This is where we hash out our hurts and our hearts before the Throne of Grace. This is where we wage war against the enemy to protect the sanctity of our marriages. This is where we wear out our knees, with our faces to the ground, crying out for agape love to hold two broken people together.

That can’t happen on pulpits or platforms.

Our homes are the training ground where our children are nurtured and the trenches where their parents grow in maturity.

This is where we listen to stories about football scores and choir rehearsals. This is where we collaborate with mini scientists who are missing two front teeth to create replicas of the solar system. This is where we pray about broken grade-school friendships and exam stress and not making the team. This is where parents learn to say, “I’m sorry. I messed up.” This is where we understand what patience means. This is where we catch a glimpse of Love that sent His one and only Son to die on Calvary’s tree.

That can’t happen on pulpits or platforms.

Home is where we sit on the worn couch with hurting friends who need someone to just listen. This is where we fellowship at tables weighed down by food and swap stories, laughter, and snacks. This is where we open our door to house helpers and people who work in our apartment buildings – daily opportunities to show kindness and grace that we ourselves have so freely and undeservedly received.

That can’t happen on pulpits or platforms.

Yes, a preacher may have made a public comment that was at best flippant and at worst derisive. I doubt that at that moment he understood the emotion it would unleash across the world.

Yet, today, we have the opportunity to see our homes as our mission fields and our ministry. Our homes can be holy ground and training turf, a place of communion and connection. When we “go home” we go to a place that is valuable – even vital – to God’s kingdom here on earth.

 

A version of this article first appeared on Indiaanya

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash