Women as Deacons in the Church

If you hang in long enough to read this post, I would be interested in your comments, please post them by clicking "comments" link at the bottom of the article.

There are many interpretations depending on your perspective. But what we do know for sure is Christ is the equalizer for the poor, women, orphans, and everyone else. Not just men. If someone truly believes they have a gift and are called to serve who are we humans to judge? Was not Christ on the cross for all of us? Is it too hard to believe that the issue at hand is salvation for all and each of us have a role to play. Using any amount of energy on condemning someones calling, even if it is a "woman", means we are not focused on Gods kingdom, but our own earthly world and biases.




Women role in church:

• Acts 2:18 - God ordained women to preach
• Acts 21: 8-9 - 3 of Philip's daughters preached.
• Acts 18:26 - Priscilla played key role in teaching spiritual formation even to men
• There is some evidence that a few were women deacons

Christ and women:

• Mark 5:25 - Christ touch women when menstruating, taboo back then
• John 4:1-27 - Christ established relationships with women of questionable ethical and moral backgrounds
• Gal 3:28 - In Christ there is neither male or female
• Christ reversed the trend deliberately and had a different attitude towards women than was expected. He spoke in public with the Samaritan woman (John 4 : 27) and allowed a sinful woman to approach Him in the house of Simon (Luke 7 : 37).
  
• He affirmed the equal status of the rights and duties of married couples ( Matthew 19 : 3 – 9).
  

Key verses people bring up are Eph 5:22-22 (wives submit) and 1 Tim 2:11-12 (learn in silence)

Taken at face value you can see why people believe women should not have roles in the church. But, looking at the bible and historically at the culture, education, and to other documents we find that it may be that some women who became Christians were quick to abuse the new freedoms of spiritual liberalization and not only spoke out about religious issues, but their marital issues and lectured husbands in the church. If that is the case, some think Paul was telling them to be silent in the church and talk in private. These scriptures were written to churches about specific issues.

The fact that the bible is believed to be infallible does not mean you take every scripture at face value or pull it out of context. Scripture was written to a certain culture and situations and to this day is valuable to Christians.

All of us see scripture through our own lens. What I mean by this is we experience life different then anyone else and we take these experiences and incorporate them into our faith and how we see scripture. I am sure we can interpret scriptures all day on all sorts of topics. But, I have to restate my first paragraph:

"But what we do know for sure is Christ is the equalizer for the poor, women, orphans, and everyone else. Not just men. If someone truly believes they have a gift and are called to serve who are we humans to judge? Was not Christ on the cross for all of us? Is it too hard to believe that the issue at hand is salvation for all and we all have our role to play. Using any amount of energy on condemning someones calling, even if it is a "women", means we are not focused on Gods kingdom, but our own earthly world and biases."

So will Women go to hell or disappoint God for being a deacon or will he rejoice because of the lives she touched and souls she brings to Christ using her unique and beautiful skills as a women?

Are we playing our part as a Christian or are we playing arm chair quarterback, picking at someone in the game?

In the end we all have a calling and only we know what God has put in our hearts. Let's travel the journey together and support each other on the way. We may disagree on some issues, but they all are overshadowed by the fact that we exist to worship him and in Christ we can do all things.

Here are some interesting info:

Greek Philosophy on the Inferiority of Women:
http://www.womenpriests.org/traditio/infe_gre.asp

History in the Baptist Church:
Even the early Baptist churches had women preach and deacons, not until Calvin and later Southern Baptist that these roles were taken away.
http://www.baptisthistory.org/contissues/deweese3.htm
http://baptisthistory.org/contissues/huffman.htm

Biblical commentary and good links:
http://www.biblicalfoundations.org/?p=38

Commentary on Church issues:
Getting the congregation involved, bridging the generational gap and the role of women.
7 min. 16 seconds into the video it talks about women in the church
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9022771525666008496

Kids Choir @ Watts

Stephen has been going to choir this past year and really enjoys it. He moves up to the older kids class next year and they seem to learn a lot about musical theory.

"This tried and proven program will be used with grades 3-5 and comes from the English school the same name. The concept is simple. Singers have a brochure in their choir folder that has a series of goals and lessons to be checked off that include Good Team Work, Theory/Sight Singing, Rehearsal Techniques, Christian Training, and Vocal Production. At the end of rehearsal, each child asks for two of the items that they feel that they have learned to be checked off and continue to do so each week until all items are checked off. When that happens, they receive a medallion with their name engraved and white ribbon that they wear over their choir robe. They then proceed to the Light Blue level, which has harder material. Light Blue is followed by Dark Blue and Red. In addition to the goals and lessons listed above, the program by its design also encourages good attendance."

Stephen's class - This Little Light of Mine (at the end you hear Chloe next to me singing)



Older class showing us how they practice pitch



Click here for some more short videos of them in action. The first 4 videos are of the older group Stephen joins next year. The last 3 video is of Stephen and his class.

The program is called "The Royal School of Church Music".

Church Weekend Retreat

After our trip to Florida, we drove to the Church beach retreat. We had a nice time. We met new friends and got to know others better. We also had a great theme about baptism and the journey after we are dunked.

Below is a slide show of the landscape on Fort Caswell. I also have some pictures of people/activities:

• Landscape photos in the slide show below
  
• People photos
• You can find these and more pictures in my Kodak Gallery.

Jesus and Santa

We were coming home from church tonight and Stephen mentioned he knew why Santa Clause was magic. He said that "Santa must know God because only God gives magical powers out. Santa and Jesus must know God and thats why they are magic. Did you know that Jesus is the only person to ever come back from the dead.."

He seems to have a fascination on where God lives and even told Chloe he punished people and sent a bad storm. Chloe's stomach was hurting around the same time and she cried out "God put a storm in my belly!!!"

OK, so how in the heck do you explain this to a 5 year old and 3 year old. I did what any mature self respecting parent would do. I laughed!

I think I am gonna pray tonight that God does not put a storm in my belly. That could be a good country song.

Wednesday Nights

Wednesday nights has quickly become a time our family looks forward to. Since we have attended Watts Street Baptist Church (month or so), the children look forward to eating dinner at the church and then attending chorus/class. They seem to enjoy mixing it up with the adults and children. It is starting to feel like home.

After getting the kids settled in class, we had an option to attend a book discussion or yoga. Both sounded really interesting, but we decided to do the yoga. It was a neat experience. They discussed meditation, breathing, and how yoga can prepare you mentally for meditation or study. We walked through some techniques and at the end I really felt like it was something I could do ongoing. Something apart of my lifestyle to help slow me down and bring me to a calming place to relax, pray, or study. It was mentioned they plan to do classes monthly.
The class mostly full of 60 somethings. That sounds weird but it was kinda neat to. I miss my parents and grandparents a lot and having some wiser folks around is comforting. Plus, they don't laugh at me when I am in a downward dog position...