Happy Trails!

It appears this blog has run its course and served its purpose, so my plan is to wrap it up and lay it to rest on/about June 10. Let me know if you think otherwise. Many thanks!

Maybe a beautiful month!

I want to continue making this space available for folks to check in, provide updates and news, and generally help us keep in touch with each other.

And now for something completely different: How are you?

Enough heavy theological lifting for a while; let's head in a different, more personal direction: how are you? What's new, what's happening? One purpose for our blog is to help us stay in touch with one another in between actually being together, so let's invest some posting-and-commenting into relational things. No need to argue a point or defend a position here, just let us know "how's by you?"

"By Whose Authority...?"

Let's snip the last string off at the 58-comment point and rethread the needle.

We seem to be somewhat muddled about "ministry" and "authority," so maybe we can dialogue that a bit. There appears to be a general consensus among us that women should be full/er partners and participants in "ministry" than we perhaps used to think. There also seems to be some unease about women "in authority" ("in governmental role," "headship") over men, and this unease is present across several of our different models/understandings of "church."

So: in terms of how authority is carried/exercised in and by a "church" (however you want to define the term), are there distinctions to be made between the ways in which the men and the women of that church bear authority?

Complementing the Egalitarians

There is a difference between a "complement" and a "compliment," and perhaps we'll do some of both. Please check out this link that Joseph suggested (http://www.jesuscreed.org/?p=2143#comments), which presents an egalitarian perspective on Genesis 1-3. Let's use McKnight's thoughts as a jumping-off point for our own conversation about men's and women's roles. We don't need to let McKnight define or limit the terms of our own conversation, but it may help give us a common starting point.
And if you have trouble getting to the link, or just want to weigh in from another angle, have at it!

I'm reviewing the situation...

What are you changing your mind about? What are you rethinking, reconsidering, re-viewing (seeing again, possibly from a different perspective)? This is not a right/wrong question--NOT what were you wrong about that you have now "seen the light on" and made right?--but what are you rethinking, and why?

My personal example (at least one of 'em): I'm re-thinking the whole "role of women" question and find myself moving towards a somewhat more "egalitarian" position. And I haven't worked it all out. I continue to believe that there are fundamental, God-ordained differences between men and women, but am less sure that that matters as much in terms of the roles people play in the life and work of the church. What's pushed me in this direction is a continuing conversation within our own church, and some reading that I've done. I'm sure as well that my culture is impinging on my thought processes!

A second example has to do with evolution. Actually, that's probably not the right way to put it. I think what I'm rethinking is the ways in which science (a form of "general revelation") and faith ("special revelation") interact. If, for example, the evidence supporting evolution is increasingly compelling (and I think it is), how do I respond to that in/by faith? I haven't worked this one all out either!

The point here is NOT to debate these particular issues (although I'm happy to hear from you on them), but instead to invite us to discuss ways in which we see ourselves changing.

Change is not automatically good, of course: forward steps, backwards steps, and steps off the cliff are all forms of "change"! Your rethinkings do not need to be limited to intellctual or theological issues (as my two examples tended to be)--you may be rethinking prayer, church (as we've already been discussing), or almost anything else. And you don't need to have it all worked through. And there's nothing to say that your reconsideration process won't eventually lead you to reaffirm what you've previously held to. But whatever you may find yourself reconsidering, I'd be interested in hearing about it!

Chastened "church"?

Hey--you can't read this unless you agree to visit the previous post, "Quo vadis?" and provide your response to the questions there, OK? Please? Now, not later? Please?
So why are we not hearing much anymore from Matthew 16, "I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it" or Eph 3:10, "God's purpose was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God would be made plain to the principalities and powers"? The church is not the kingdom, but can we seek the kingdom apart from the church? Not the church as currently constituted and constructed, perhaps, but the church nonetheless. It feels like we're all (sometimes) had-it-up-to-here with church life and hungry to get 'out there' where 'the kingdom is happening.' Kinda like to genuuinely engage the real-deal kingdom, it's best to quit the church, or that the church is the ball-and-chain that keeps serious Christians from kingdom work.