My New Favorite Top Ten List

Written no doubt as a backlash against so-called "Christian" patriarchy, this list (found on google) both amused and vindicated me. (I particularly loved the Judas/Eve comparison!)

Top 10 Reasons Why Men Should Not be Ordained

Top Ten Reasons Why Men Should Not Be Ordained (think David Letterman)

10. A man's place is in the army.

9. For men who have children, their duties might distract them from the responsibilities of being a parent.

8. Their physical build indicates that men are more suited to tasks such as chopping down trees and wrestling mountain lions. It would be "unnatural" for them to do other forms of work.

7. Man was created before woman. It is therefore obvious that man was a prototype. Thus, they represent an experiment, rather than the crowning achievement of creation.

6. Men are too emotional to be priests or pastors. This is easily demonstrated by their conduct at football games and watching basketball tournaments.

5. Some men are handsome; they will distract women worshipers.

4. To be ordained pastor is to nurture the congregation. But this is not a traditional male role. Rather, throughout history, women have been considered to be not only more skilled than men at nurturing, but also more frequently attracted to it. This makes them the obvious choice for ordination.

3. Men are overly prone to violence. No really manly man wants to settle disputes by any means other than by fighting about it. Thus, they would be poor role models, as well as being dangerously unstable in positions of leadership.

2. Men can still be involved in church activities, even without being ordained. They can sweep paths, repair the church roof, and maybe even lead the singing on Father's Day. By confining themselves to such traditional male roles, they can still be vitally important in the life of the Church.

1. In the New Testament account, the person who betrayed Jesus was a man. Thus, his lack of faith and ensuing punishment stands as a symbol of the subordinated position that all men should take.

Don't Complain, Unless You Can Offer Something Better

I have been complaining quite a bit lately about churches in general and my church in specific. I've been talking about how little actual give-and-take there is, how much division -- not only doctrinally, but between age-groups -- how much sexism, and how little genuineness there is. Or even how boring it is to always follow the same formula, and how hard it is to actually "get something" from the sermon every week -- while at the same time being prevented from ministering the way we feel called to do.

Well, as my grandmother once said, "Don't complain, unless you can offer something better." While I don't totally agree with her -- sometimes complaints are the only things that lead to making things better -- I have thought and prayed about it for a long time and have finally come up with something better.

Here it is:

When you gather for worship, each one of you be prepared with something that will be useful for all: Sing a hymn, teach a lesson, tell a story, lead a prayer, provide an insight. If prayers are offered in tongues, two or three's the limit, and then only if someone is present who can interpret what you're saying. Otherwise, keep it between God and yourself. And no more than two or three speakers at a meeting, with the rest of you listening and taking it to heart. Take your turn, no one person taking over. Then each speaker gets a chance to say something special from God, and you all learn from each other. If you choose to speak, you're also responsible for how and when you speak. When we worship the right way, God doesn't stir us up into confusion; he brings us into harmony. This goes for all the churches—no exceptions.

If this sounds familiar to anyone, that's because it's not really my idea. God had it first. This is The Message's interpretation of 1 Corinthians 14: 26-33.

I read this to Grey tonight, asking him to keep in mind our usual church-going rituals. I asked him, "When is the last time we gathered together with everyone having the opportunity to share a song, prayer, or teaching as he or she was led? And with no one taking over? He pointed out that our church, the "worship team" sings... and we listen to them and sing (always following their lead of course). Then someone else gets up and prays... and we listen to him and agree. Then someone might give a testimony... and we listen and applaud. Then the pastor gets up and preaches... and we listen. That's an awful lot of listening, my friends.

So when did being the Body of Christ become a spectator sport? All the references in the New Testament that I've ever found talk about how inclusive and involved the early believers were with one another, and how very much into giving, sharing, and mutuality they were. So why do we go to church and sit there like bumps on logs (or saints on pews) just to listen?

I've been studying 1 Corinthians for a while now, trying to learn about Body life. Here's another little gem that I've gleaned from it, also from The Message (1 Cor 12: 14-20):

A body isn't just a single part blown up into something huge. It's all the different-but-similar parts arranged and functioning together. If Foot said, "I'm not elegant like Hand, embellished with rings; I guess I don't belong to this body," would that make it so? If Ear said, "I'm not beautiful like Eye, limpid and expressive; I don't deserve a place on the head," would you want to remove it from the body? If the body was all eye, how could it hear? If all ear, how could it smell? As it is, we see that God has carefully placed each part of the body right where he wanted it. 19-24But I also want you to think about how this keeps your significance from getting blown up into self-importance. For no matter how significant you are, it is only because of what you are a part of. An enormous eye or a gigantic hand wouldn't be a body, but a monster. What we have is one body with many parts, each its proper size and in its proper place. No part is important on its own.

So now that we've established that the order of service pretty much disempowers all the congregants to being a bunch of little ears, just sitting there and taking it all in -- what about the pastor? If we're the ears, he's the mouth. Is he the mouth of God? Hmmm. Now, there's a question, isn't it?

This morning my son and I actually went to church, to the same one we've been attending for three years. Our pastor got up and gave a little talk and as usual, he went off on a rabbit trail. He said, "There, that's a sermonette." Then he laughed and went on, "You know what you get when you have sermonettes, don't you? You get 'Christianettes.'"

Oh, I can't even begin to count the number of things wrong with that little joke of his. I'll try, though, because it bothered me too much to just let it rest.

1) Sermons make Christians.
2)Sermon-listening turns Christians from miniature ones to being full-size.
3) It puts the entire responsibility for spiritual growth onto the shoulders of the pastor.
4) It completely discounts the ability of the Holy Spirit to help Christians mature.
5) It diminishes all other aspects of Body life, making sermon-listening the only thing that helps Christians mature.

That's enough for now... and ordinarily I would just laugh it off as a joke of his... except this wasn't the first time I've heard it.

But while we're on the subject, let's talk about the pastor. Specifically, let's talk about the idea of a group of believers hiring someone to come and teach them week after week. Where is this idea found in scripture? Scripture shows us lots of examples of early believers sharing responsibilities equally -- each one according to his gifts, yes, but there is not supposed to be any external judging of gifting. No one person was supposed to be in charge of how things were run -- they were to depend solely upon the Holy spirit's leading to keep order... and the thing is, Paul tells us that if they do, then order is kept. No one else is supposed to be telling others to teach, or sing, or whatever; they're supposed to depend on the Holy Spirit's leading to prepare something for themselves, to share with each other.

There's that "each other" phrase again, implying mutuality, turnabout, and deferring to one another. Grey and I were wondering today just how that would look, in our church. The pastor is very much in charge. He shares the responsibilities with three elders (two now, since one moved away), but with this church so heavily into the unscriptural "Covering" doctrine, everything has to pass by him and receive his OK before it becomes part of the "order of service." So really, he's doing the Holy Spirit's job. And he's also doing the congregants' job, whose responsibility it is to bring the teaching. And with him putting his head together with the worship team, they're doing the congregants' jobs as well, who are supposed to be the ones preparing and bringing hymns and songs for the corporate worship.

No wonder the poor man's burned out. Not only is he doing the job of 50 people, but he's doing God's job too!

And yet, if I were to tell him this, it would be considered borderline heretical.

The "Covering" Doctrine of Authority

Our church is big into the concept of "covering." We wanted to offer a Crown Financial Ministries small group study to our fellow parishioners a year ago, but when I broached the topic to the pastor's wife (who is in charge of the majority of the ministries there), she took control of the idea. I had been thinking to meet in our home, but she said no, they'd rather have it there in the church meetingroom so they could have it under their "covering." They didn't want to use Crown materials, but instead use "HomeBuilder" materials instead, which apparently has a financial piece to it. She did offer us the chance to lead the finances class, but only in their building and using their stuff, and she specifically said it was so that we could be under their "covering." (Never once did she ask to see the Crown materials that we already had -- it was their way or the highway, it seemed.)

Last summer they did a whole big video series, 3 months' worth, called "Under Cover" by John Bevere. The whole point of it was all about respecting the authority which God has placed over you -- which is all right and good -- but then he said that the church (read: pastor) is the principle authority that God has placed over you.

He said that pastors should be obeyed; the example our pastor came up with was that if he asked all the men to wear Hawaiian shirts to church on Sundays, and they didn't have a spiritual, Biblical reason not to, then they should all wear them. Because he, the pastor, was placed in authority over us, and we owed him our respect and to a certain extent, our obedience.

To me, that smacks of cultism, to be quite honest.

Whatever happened to God's being our authority?

Another thing: I know several pastors and their wives in real life, and they all say that they can't have real, deep, open friendships with people in their congregation. They can't "confess their sins one to another" unless the "one another" is a bunch of other pastors. Why not? Because it undermines their authority for people to think that their pastor struggles with the same sins they do. This is a perfect example of "authority" coming between people. In order to keep their authority, they must show a different face to their congregation than they do to their group of pastor-friends. When they should be concentrating on building relationships (loving your neighbor as yourself), they concentrate on saving face.

People call pastors "shepherds" and the congregation "sheep." But really, isn't the pastor just another sheep and Jesus is the Shepherd? You can't have equality between people when one of them is constantly set up above the other as a spiritual authority. It's one thing if they take turns: If I go to another congregant and ask for counsel, then for that moment she has spiritual authority over me... but at the same time we're still peers, in that I can choose whether to follow her advice or not. AND by the end of the conversation we're back to being peers again. And then she might need counsel from me.

If I go to the pastor for counsel, I go as a supplicant, someone who is constantly "lower" than he is. His advice has the ring of authority to it, and there's usually a strong undercurrent of "you must do *this* to be in the will of God," where the peer would more likely say "you must pray and figure out for yourself how to be in the will of God." And after my counseling session with the pastor, he's still the one in authority over me, and I'm still the supplicant. There's no equality there. He's never going to ask advice from me. There's no submitting one to another there, as Ephesians 5 directs us to do.

Now, a huge part of the church idea of "covering" is also protection, as I mentioned already -- specifically in this case, protection from spiritual error. Yes, the pastor's word will carry the ring of authority, because he wants me to follow his advice and wants to protect me from error...

But isn't it the Holy Spirit's job to protect us from error? And if I have this man, even as a pastor, as a "covering" -- an intermediary between me and God -- it seems as if he is trying to do too much. He's trying to do God's job. If God wants to teach me something that our pastor's ordaining denomination does not believe, then the pastor would actually be protecting me FROM GOD, wouldn't he? (And yes, there are a few issues where I suspect this is the case)

I do agree that we need teachers of the scriptures, yes. But do we need one person who is constantly in authority over us, who can't allow himself to be real with us, and who essentially comes between us and God? Whether it's authority, protection, or whatever, his "umbrella" is still between us and God.

The more I think about it, the more the concept of "covering" seems like

a) control, as in wanting to keep control of the congregation and what is taught and all, and...

b) fear and lack of trust in God -- that God won't be able to correct any possible errors that may crop up.

I see it at our church -- our pastor and his wife are very, very busy people, because they have so many ministries going on. However, they don't delegate as much as they should, because they want to stay in control of what's going on -- and they call it keeping us under their "covering."

Disclaimer: No, I'm not bashing pastors in any way; I know they work hard and can get burned out and most of them do a great job. I'm just complaining about the concept of "covering" that some of them teach. All too often I've heard people use that word when it really meant "control."

(The Baptist church I grew up in called it "male leadership" and was a lot more subtle about it... but there still weren't any women heading up any church ministries.)

It seems as if I am embarking on wilderness journey here, questioning things I've been taught by one church or another. The doctrine of "covering" just strikes me as wrong, in the sense that I've been taught by our pastor and his wife. It's like saying that Jesus' sacrifice wasn't enough; we still need go-betweens, between us and Jesus.

And here I thought the curtain of the holiest of holies had been torn all down the middle -- it really seems as though the "covering" people want to sew it back up again. Whether the covering is supposed to be the husband, for a woman, or the church/pastor/elders, for the husband -- they still get between us and Jesus.

I've also heard it taught (I think I've mentioned this before) that they view it as protection, to help protect you spiritually from demons, from false doctrine, etc. Well, for many many people what it actually protects them from is directly experiencing God's grace and presence!

I have the Holy Spirit inside, to protect me from false doctrine... I have the authority of Jesus' blood to protect me from demons (and again, the Holy Spirit to help with discerning them)... and I don't need anything getting in the way of my access to God.

Covering is starting to sound like a euphemism for "control" to me.

Call me crazy, but I'm pretty sure the Holy spirit should be the only one in control.