gender ministry in the church

It was an interesting weekend at my church. We had dual kickoff events, one for men's ministry, and one for women's ministry. I did not attend the men's event, but I did get to go to the women's dinner, my first ever women's church event. ever.

And it was fine. That's about all I can say about it. I don't know what I was expecting, but it was fine. It was dinner and a speaker, I mingled a bit as any good pastor would, and then we had chocolate. It seemed about what I had thought it would be. Apparently the men's event went well. I have to take that as hearsay.

But today was debrief day. Once every two weeks we get together as an "adult formation team" and plan for how we can foster environments for adult spiritual formation. Anyway, that's just side information. Today, we as a team began a debrief of these events. And basically everyone concluded that they were fine. And now we'll plan for the year.

And that's where my questions started to emerge. Mostly I've been wondering why we do this. Why do we have gender based ministries and what do we hope they contribute in terms of spiritual formation? And then I wonder, why the segregation. At my church we have a class for men called "Biblical Masculinity." My question actually isn't so much about the class as it is why that class is only for men. When did we come to the conclusion that gender based ministry is to teach people how to be men or women in isolation from our created other? No matter how you read Genesis 1-2 and what principles you pull from it, you can't get away from the fact that there were two distinct people created that were meant to be in relationship. So I'm wondering where that relationship went in our gender ministry in the church and how to bring it back. I want men and women to be more than just fine. I want them to be fully the people God created them to be, created us to be actually. And I want ministries in our churches to foster that. But how do we do it?

Any answers out there?