I've recently had the joy of helping Abi Flavell publish her first book - Healed & Whole. She's worked so hard on it and it paints an incredible vision for the church of men and women working together to achieve God's great mission.

I asked Abi to write today's Raw Disciple newsletter to give you a taste.

Releasing men and women for increased kingdom impact

I remember the first time I had the joy of leading friends of mine to Jesus. I'd been leading the Christian Union at my university and as a newly saved Christian I couldn't stop talking about Jesus! It seemed easy to gather students that wanted to hear more about the love, joy and fulfillment I had found.

I'd started to turn up to my church's alpha course with handfuls of people and slowly I watched numbers of them explore faith and give their lives to Jesus. Then I had to work out how to disciple them and help them mature into the kind of disciples that knew how to share their own faith with others.

Recently, I met up with a friend that I shared the gospel with over 15 years ago and back then she could not accept it. I spent a long time explaining again and again who Jesus was but she didn't want to know.

We lost touch for a number of years but she had a dream one night that showed her news being broadcast to the whole world that said 'Jesus' love was the key to everyone's healing and salvation and it was available also to her' - she called me the next day 'out of the blue' desperate to know about Jesus. Not long later I had the joy of baptising her. As we met up last week she was telling me how she was able to share her new faith with her colleagues at work.

Kim, another friend I've seen come to faith, shared a story at church this last weekend that as the only Christian in her family she is finding life hard particularly because their family is going through a season of bereavement. However, the rest of her family are looking at Kim and seeing her inner strength and starting to wonder where it comes from.

Living and working in a working class community, I have seen how powerful women's social networks can be. The gospel can travel swiftly in the friendship circles that women create and this was also the case in the early church.

The gospel was being spread by women, women were Jesus' disciples, they helped fund his ministry and this was also the case with Paul, who acknowledged a large number of female co-workers in his writings throughout the New Testament. Before the fall we see the first prototype team, Adam and Eve, delight in one another and share a joint commissioning to extend the Kingdom of God on the Earth (Gen 1:28).

Yet over the years, despite these beautiful snapshots of men and women working together to bring forth life, the roles of men and women and their call to co-labour alongside each other to extend the Kingdom, has become contested territory. Many argue about whether women should be able to 'preach/teach' or hold certain 'offices' of church governance once a church is established.

This debate, whilst certainly important to consider, can generate negative rhetoric that sends the message that women are 'less needed' in the work of bringing life in the kingdom of God. When this happens it can introduce insecurity into women's call to reach the lost and can slow down the church, as it effectively freezes some of its very valuable assets.

Korea and Iran are said to be currently experiencing an explosion of secret disciple making movements across the nations, largely being pioneered by women set on fire by the gospel. China is another nation where underground house churches have reportedly flourished as women have taken a lead, bucking the trends of cultures not favourable to women's gifts.

I am not advocating for any particular position around the roles of men and women, what I am recommending is that, wherever we find ourselves making disciples, we must endeavour to do so in edifying partnership - as teams where male and female feel needed and equally free to take the gospel into new places and people groups.

To allow us to flourish as co-labouring brothers and sisters we need to address anything that hinders our ability to work with one another and reconcile any issues that have arisen from our past history together. Time is short and Jesus is soon returning (Rev 22:20), may we continue to keep focussed on the vast, ripe harvest, whilst at the same time working to resolve all that might slow down the spread of the gospel.

In this last season our local church has partnered with an Anglican church in our community to prayer walk and talk to people about Jesus on the streets. I was recently put through my paces by Mike, a friend of mine in his 70s who has probably been rejected more times for sharing his faith than I have had hot dinners! Yet, I had to quicken my stride to keep up as he bounded after any person we came across. He shows no signs of slowing or losing his zeal, even in his older years.

It has stirred me deeply to see men and women from different denominations and different generations come together to push back the darkness, one street at a time in our local neighbourhood.

May we all choose to delight in our similarities and be perpetually intrigued by one another's differences - let us rediscover the joy of co-labouring side by side for Jesus and His Kingdom.

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What a phenomenal message of the power that's available for us in sharing the gospel together! Thank you Abi - and don't forget to pick up her book