What if Starbucks marketed coffee like a church?

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

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.

Christian Motives

This clip talks about the environment, the lords prayer, servant hood, and the true lens Christians should look through. Take the time to view this, even if your not a Christian. It makes me think about my daily actions about enemies, wealth, war, motivation and how Christ not only taught but lived.

Go here to view the video

Acceptance

I went to my weekly small group for church today and the lesson really hit me. If you do not know me, I like to win. When in a fight my initial reaction is to try and win, even if I am wrong.... So this lesson was hard for me, but I think it has helped. I will try to put it to practical use and see....

Acceptance is different then agreeing of someones action.

Our lives have been shaped by doses of rejection and acceptance and that we are far more open to the influences of people who accept us then those who lecture us.

When we struggle to accept, it is because we are holding to false standards.

When you focus on acceptance your mind does not focus on fighting to win the fight or prove a point. You can focus on the person.

Jesus did not come into this world to prove he was right. He came to accept us and show us by living a better way. This is the new lens we need to try and look through to live like him. If we can grasp a small fraction of this concept our relationships would be so much better. On the other hand, if everyone just agreeded with me, that would be easier :)