Monday, August 28, 2006

WOMEN IN MINISTRY: AN INTRODUCTION

I've been wanting to do this post for a good while now, and I'm finally getting to it. I'm not going to post it all at once because it will take too long for me to write in one sitting and too long for you to want to read it, so I decided to do a series. Part one will be an introduction...

I firmly believe that the church, especially the fundamentalist church, has wrongly left women out of leadership roles. I believe the New Testament reveals that in the early church women played a huge role in ministry. There are really only two passages in the New Testament that would seem to suggest otherwise, and I believe that those who use those two passages to discriminate against women take these passages out of context. Not only do they take these passages out of context, but they ignore the rest of the New Testament. Don't get me wrong, though, I am not trying to bash those who think this way. I believe that those who are against women in ministry mean well. They want to follow the scriptures, and they want to follow God's plan. However, I can't get past the rest of the New Testament, and I truly believe that their interpretation of these passages is misguided.

The two passages I'm talking about are 1 Timothy 2:9-15 and 1 Corinthians 14:34-35...

In Timothy it says:
[9] I also want women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, [10] but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God.
[11] A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. [12] I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. [13] For Adam was formed first, then Eve. [14] And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. [15] But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.

In Corinthians it says:
[34] women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. [35] If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.

Before I delve into these two passages, I'm going to take a look at the passages that would support women leadership in the church. Stay tuned.

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

BACK TO SCHOOL

Today is my first day back to school. I only have one class, which is good. YAYA! I get to start out the semester with Greek 1. Many of you are thinking, "wow, that's going to be ridiculously hard. It's all Greek to me (Ha Ha Ha)." Man, I've never heard that joke before. I think my dad says it every time I mention greek class. When it happens, though, I practice my best sarcastic laugh. He thinks it's funny every time. But don't worry about me and Greek; it shouldn't be too hard since I took 4 semesters of Greek in undergrad. The only problem will be to remember this stuff.... Wow, that's so weird. I used to be in undergrad. I'm all growed up now and in grad school. Rock on, me.

So as the semester rolls on, hopefully I won't get too stressed out from all of the classwork, ministry, and everything else. It's time to lean on the everlasting arms. Yay for Jesus.

Monday, August 21, 2006

JAMBALAYA, DAVID CROWDER, AND THE TRAGEDY OF WALKING

This past weekend was a busy one, but a great one. Friday night Truett treated all of the incoming students to Buzzard Billy's. If you don't know, Buzzard Billy's is the local cajun food restaurant here in Waco. It was a catfish buffet type of thing with hushpuppies and other good stuff. I only wish they served jambalaya because I haven't had some good jambalaya in a good while. I can't complain complain, though, because the catfish was excellent, and it was free.

The coolest thing about Friday night was the people we sat by. Things got interesting when Shari and I slowly figured out that 2 of the people live in the Quadrangle apartments, our former home. We also figured out they both lived in our exact apartment. The guy lives in Shari's old place, and the girl lives in my old place. We figured this out because the girl started talking about bugs, and immediately I figured that it was my old apt. We had a disgusting bug problem when we lived there. It was a funny little coincidence.

Then Saturday was the big church mixer thing for all of the incoming freshmen at Baylor. We went out and passed out flyers for our church's college ministry. It was a good time, and we met lots of cool people. Apparently it went really well because we had several college students visit our church this Sunday. Our table was pretty close to UBC, home of the David Crowder Band, and sure enough, THE David Crowder was there. I really wanted to go over there and meet him, but I figured he probably got that all the time, and I didn't want to be "that guy." I'm sure he's a great guy, and I'm sure he loves meeting new people since he's the worship pastor at a church and all, but still, I would have felt funny. I did, however, meet another guy named Adam from UBC who is a Truett student who has a wicked cool blog. He goes to Coco's shaved ice and rates all of the snow cone flavors. Check out his site here. From there, I found another good blog by a friend who is an intern at UBC named Matt Singleton. Click here. Both of these new blogs are on my sidebar.

Add a major mood shift... now.

This week at the youth Sunday School, one of the verses we used was Micah 6:8: And what does the Lord your God require of you? To do justly, love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.

Sometimes I wonder if I ever really get it right. I do all of this talk on Sunday nights about sharing our faith with our friends, and I talk a lot about giving everything you have to God, but, man, I wish I could it right myself. What happens if I teach our students something wrong? What happens if my words slip in such a way that it influences somebody in a negative light. I guess I just really hope and pray that all that I do comes right back to this wonderful scripture in Micah. I pray that with everything I have I am following God, including my words, my actions, my hopes, my fears, my relationships, etc. I hope and pray that our students grab a hold of this concept, too. I pray that give all that they have to following Jesus.

Tragically, we'll never get it completely right, but it is through the grace of God that we try, and that we can try with all of our hearts.

Thursday, August 17, 2006

ORIENTATION

Today is my first day of Orientation at Truett Seminary. I am excited. I get to start something new and refreshing, and I know that I already have friends there. I am confident that God is going to use Truett to teach me amazing new things, refresh my spirit, and provide me with new support and friendship. Yay for God, yay for Truett, and yay for today. My socks are rocked off once more.

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

YOU ROCK MY SOCKS OFF

WARNING: this post may envoke warm, fuzzy feelings on those who were involved.

Do you see those pair of feet on the right? Do you notice that they aren't wearing any socks? Do you know who's feet they are?

To answer all of your really good questions... Well, those are my feet, and they don't have socks on because you rocked them off of my feet. It's also why I'm wearing flip-flops today. Those darn socks just won't stay on. You may ask, "Marc, how did we rock your socks off?" Another good question. Answer: Our student ministry made my birthday one of the best ever.

I really didn't expect you guys to do something for my birthday in the middle of the first week of school. I kind of got the hint that you were going to do something, but I figured it would be on a Sunday when everybody was there anyways. You guys are awesome. On top of that, there were like 25 people at Cheddar's last night! Even if I did expect something in the middle of the week, I would never have expected to see that many of you there. Again, you guys made my day. You made my week. You even made my year! It was so cool that all of you guys showed that you care.

Not to mention all the crazy cool gifts you guys got me. Some great books, Jack Johnson CD's, giftcards from Target, Starbucks, and Hastings, a crazy cool T-Shirt, and straight up cash. Thank you all so much for being so kind and so generous!

Seriously, I love all of you so much that it hurts. I can't tell you enough how much I appreciated everything! Rock on, WHSM!

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

UNLEASHED

So I went to Promise Keepers this past weekend with my father-in-law (dad #2), and I had a pretty good time. On a scale of 1-10, I would rate it at about 7. If you don't know what Promise Keepers is, it's basically a huge, thousands of people man rally. Picture a Disciple Now for men, only packed in the American Airlines Center. Lots of testosterone.

On my way up there, though, my back right tire blew out on the busy part of I-35 getting into Dallas. Luckily it was just after the construction, so I had a shoulder to pull over and put on my spare. It was all well and good, but after I drove for another five minutes, I remembered that I forgot to tighten the lugnuts. So I had to pull over again, and thankfully nothing bad happened.

Anywho, Promise Keepers was pretty cool. The speakers were pretty good. In a nut shell, the whole weekend was about letting God work in every aspect of you life, and being obedient to him. Mostly, it was angled from an evangelistic perspective, so I didn't get as much out of it as I had hoped.

As far as teaching goes, the coolest thing was a video they showed by Rob Bell (you can check out his stuff at nooma.com). He described how disciples were picked out by rabbis in Jesus' time. Rabbis picked disciples if they were the best of the best of the religious students. They picked the smartest and the brightest. But Jesus came along and picked up some fisherman and tax collectors, guys that had already picked up the family trade, guys that couldn't make the cut. These disciples weren't good enough to be religious leaders in most people's eyes, but because Jesus believed in them, these were the guys who changed the course of history.

The second best part about PK was Lincoln Brewster. I would say that he was easily in the top 5 Christian artists that I've seen live. Brother could play the guitar. And the funny thing is that he had diarrhea (I know because he told us). Even though he was sick, he still rocked my face off. It was sad, though, because he only played like 5 songs.

I can't stand it, though, when preachers scream the entire message. Especially when I have a headache. It's okay, you can just talk to us, I promise. We're still going to listen. I have an easier time listening when you're not yelling, actually. I know you mean well, but please don't scream at me. Oh, and to all you worship bands out there, if you have an event with 3 or more sessions, please pick different songs to sing and use a different song order. It just gets old when you don't do that.

But all in all, I have to thank Dad #2 for a great weekend!

Friday, August 11, 2006

STOP IT!

I saw this report on Nightline the other day, and it spoke of some Christian groups that support Israel mainly because they believe that they are God's people. Waco got some more bad publicity because one of the preachers mentioned in the report was a pastor in Robinson, and of course, the report cast her in a negative image. In a nut shell, some Christians are pretty much blindly supporting Israel's attacks on Lebanon solely because of their interpretation of scripture. I gather that those who think this way are the Tim LaHaye/Left Behind types who interpret literally the apocalyptic literature found in Daniel and Revelation. They think that the "prophecies" found in these books foresee an outline of the distant future, and they believe that the nation of Israel is one of the main players in the story.

STOP IT! This kind of thing makes us look ridiculous. We (especially the church) should not blindly support a nation that bombs the heck out of somebody else because of a kidnapping. Where is the justice there? Where is the mercy? The nation of Israel is NOT the representation of the people of God. I'm sure that there are Godly people in Israel, but the nation as a whole does not adequately represent the God of the Universe. If you want to look at this situation through the light of the scriptures, the church is the people of God - not any nation founded through war. The church represents God's people, not Israel. God's people are those who pray for their enemies and who love their enemies.

I guess if you want to support Israel, that's fine, but don't do it because of some futuristic interpretation of scripture. We have to remember that people wrote the Bible, so there is naturally going to be a certain difference in thought, literary style, and motives of writing from what we might think today. There are certain places in the Bible where we can't just pick it up and expect to know exactly what it means without a certain amount of study. Prophetic and Apocalyptic books in the Bible are some of those places.

Support Israel if you really think they're doing the right thing, not because of literal interpretations of Revelation or Daniel. Just from my own personal viewpoint, though, I don't see how Israel's reaction to Hezbollah is really going to solve anything. Israel has been in the same cycle of violence since its inception, and the blame should be placed on both sides.

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

PAINTING CATS

So this past week I have had the pleasure of painting Lindsey's condo. But it wasn't just painting, per se. We also had the joy of taking down wallpaper and texturing the wall. When I say taking down wallpaper, though, it seems to give the connotation that this was an easy task, which is hardly the case. It was more like scraping off a few decades worth of plastered on wallpaper - there that's better. It took about three days to get that mess off, and even still, there are traces of the stuff. It was impossible to get it all off. So when we tried to texture the wall last night it looked like poop. That's mainly because the texture we used was subpar at best. We're going to try the whole texture thing again today, but we're going to use a different method. Let's pray for my sanity's sake that it works. I really want this to be our last day of painting. That would be ideal.

Needless to say, it's been an eventful week. I haven't been able to blog because of the whole painting thing. Painting has taken all of my free time that I normally use to get on the ol' computer. But, hey, at least Shari and I got a new cat this week. She looks kind of like the one in this picture. We named her Lois - after Lois Lane if you're me, and Lois Griffin if you're Shari. But you are neither me nor Shari, so I guess that means that you didn't name her. We found her off the street, and she has gotta be less than 6 months old. She definitely plays like a kitten. One thing she likes to do when Shari and I are asleep is run downstairs, then in about 5 minutes sprint back upstairs and attack our feet, then sprint back downstairs before we can do anything about it. She'll do this over and over until she gets tired. Needless to say, Shari and I haven't slept incredibly well in a few nights. She's a very playful cat, almost too playful. At least she's got great personality, though. Normally I don't like cats all that much, but this one acts kind of like a dog (except with really sharp claws that scratch me sometimes), so I like her pretty well.

I'll be back with another post much sooner next time. I realize that it's been over a week. I've just been worn out from blogging. You could say that I needed a blogging vacation. But I wouldn't suggest saying that if I were you because someone might laugh at you.