Being a covenant member at The Village Church for five years was a means of grace in my life for that season, a true gift. But even more, learning from the pastors, teachers, elders, and ministers there has been transformative forevermore. The men and women there invested deeply in the empty well of my heart, mind, emotions, and spirit—and continue to do so from afar. I sometimes fear being the girl who always longs for what she had and can never invest in what she now has, and that fear has kept me from talking much about how grateful I am for my years there. But it is with full faith I can say I am who I am today because of every season of my life—and that particular season was rich and overflowing. I long for my friends and family there daily, but I know God has called us to this day, in this place for His purposes, even if they're difficult to see today.

All this to preface this:

One of the most transformative lessons of my time at The Village was sitting under the teaching of Matt regarding equality and complementarity, diversity and distinction. We humans worked it out on the ground at a flawed way for sure, but from the pulpit there was a high regard for the diversity of all people and the equality of every image bearer of God. It was better than any understanding of complementarian, egalitarian, patriarchal, or feminist theology I'd come to understand. It was not a "This way or the highway" view, but a "Come up higher, see how beautiful God is that He would create so intricately and that we would still only understand so partially." I loved this view of equality and distinction, particularly between genders, because it was never about saying one was better than another or more capable, but about celebrating the differences and the similarities.

A Beautiful Design was the series Matt spent a significant amount of time teasing out these ideas within the framework of the Bible and I'm so grateful Lifeway has put together a study packet on the series. Regardless of your position on gender roles, I think this series presents a level-headed, compelling, rich with the Bible, and beautiful presentation of what it means to be made in the image of God. Matt is imperfect and no Bible study series can communicate all the richness of God's design perfectly. And I can tell you for sure we stumbled over this all the time on the ground at The Village, but I'm forever grateful it was communicated with beauty and an attempt to come up from the muck of the world's culture and evangelicalism's culture and see what the Bible actually said about men, women, their hurdles, their design, and how we need both in full measure within the local church.

If your small group is interested in tackling this nine week study, you can purchase the contents here at Lifeway Christian Resources.*

*I'm not getting paid for this review.