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{mosimage}A friend of mine recounts the story of his son coming home from Sunday School. He asked the boy the most common questions asked at 12:15 every Sunday: "So how was your class? What did you learn?" The boy suddenly was overcome with a look of frustration and remarked: "With a book that big there's got to be more stories in there than the one's they're telling us! They're keeping something from us!"

That sent my friend into a pilgrimage that led to involvement in organic church planting.

In late September, we held our annual Simple Church Conference in Kiev. It was a wonderful time and we were blessed to have Wayne Jacobsen teach us and lead our discussions. Wayne is the author of He Loves Me and So You Don’t Want To Go to Church Anymore. 

The discussions we had about our relationship with God and with one another deeply touched our lives.

“You want to know what I’ve learned this weekend?” the man said as he drove me to a Midwest airport early one morning. We’d just spent an incredible weekend together with a house church he’d helped foster and another group of believers who joined us when they heard I was in town. The latter were deeply conflicted about their current involvement with a congregation that sounded abusive. “I’ve been selling the wrong thing!” he continued.

“What’s that?” I asked oblivious to what we were talking about.

“I’ve been selling house church,” he said shaking his head with a sigh, “instead of Jesus.” Obviously he wasn’t talking about ‘selling’ anything, but I love his discovery. Almost everywhere I go people are preoccupied with finding the right way to do church. It seems our hunger for church outstrips our hunger for Jesus.

The New Testament doctrine of ministry rests therefore not on the clergy-laity distinction but on the twin and complementary pillars of the priesthood of all believers and the gifts of the Spirit. Today, four centuries after the Reformation, the full implications of this Protestant affirmation have yet to be worked out. The clergy-laity dichotomy is a direct carry-over from pre-Reformation Roman Catholicism and a throwback to the Old Testament priesthood. It is one of the principal obstacles to the church effectively being God’s agent of the Kingdom today because it creates a false idea that only “holy men,” namely, ordained ministers, are really qualified and responsible for leadership and significant ministry. In the New Testament there are functional distinctions between various kinds of ministries but no hierarchical division between clergy and laity. —Howard Snyder

When we go back to the Word of God and read it afresh, we see that the clergy profession is the result of our human culture and history and not of God’s will for the church. It is simply impossible to construct a defensible biblical justification for the institution of clergy as we know it. —Christian Smith

This is a wonderful article about movement of disciple-making in Iran.

//godreports.com/2019/09/fastest-growing-church-has-no-buildings-no-central-leadership-and-is-mostly-led-by-women/

Dear Sister,

Thank you for your gracious letter. You've asked an excellent question. You wanted to know my view on a woman's role in the church and how I understand the "limiting passages" that seem to restrict their functioning. I have been asked this question so many times I've lost count.

To be honest, I'm monumentally disinterested in adding more noise to the ill-fated gender brawl that rages in some Christian circles. It is for this reason that I've been loathe to write on the subject. Yet I keep meeting women who have been spiritually straight-jacketed by what I find to be a wooden interpretation of certain Biblical texts. Their stories have provoked me to tread on this hazardous minefield. And for their sake, as well as for the sake of all my beloved sisters in Christ, I regret not having done so sooner.

Greetings,

We learned earlier this week that Neil Cole will not be able to attend the Organic Church Conference in Kiev. He ruptured his Achilles tendon and had to have surgery. This, however, will not change the plans for our conference.

Attention to context-historical, social, local, and spiritual-is crucial when it comes to rightly interpreting a passage of Scripture. So let's look at the local context of the first "limiting passage"-1 Corinthians 14:29-35:

Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others pass judgment. But if a revelation is made to another who is seated, let the first one keep SILENT. For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all may be exhorted; and the spirits of prophets are subject to prophets; for God is not a God of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches. Let the women keep SILENT in the churches; for they are not permitted to speak, but let them subject themselves, just as the Law also says. And if they desire to LEARN anything, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is improper for a woman to speak in the church (NASB).

{mosimage}What Kind of "Teaching" Is this?

Let's now turn our attention to the other "limiting passage." Before we look at the text, it's important to understand that 1st and 2nd Timothy are unique letters. Paul is writing to his apostolic apprentice-a man he's known for about fifteen years.

Such communication-between two closely-tied individuals-is known as "low context." It simply means that the author can assume an intimate knowledge of the reader's understanding of any particular statement he makes.

Let me unpack that.