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Making Progress on the church acceptance front

rtidwell said:
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Consider these quotes and perhaps the girlfriend who will "play along with" you will end up being the real deal. :)
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Real deal as in one that I would surprise my wife with?
 
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Daniel DeLuca said:
You know one other possible nefarious reason they could be OK with the marriage problems in their congregations, is the amount of money they charge for counseling services, and the number of people willing to pay for it.
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They charge money for it!?!? Wow.
 
Daniel DeLuca said:
I say that, because when I first reached out to Andrew, it was right after I told my wife what the Bible has to say about polygamy. She wanted counseling, and I told her that I was willing to see a counselor who was hostile towards polygamy, as long as we could also see one who was at least neutral on the topic. I didn't know of any who wouldn't be hostile towards it, so I asked Andrew if he knew of anyone. At the time. I didn't realize that @cnystrom lived only a few blocks away from us. I'm still wondering when we can get together with them and Andrew and his wives and one of the brother-in-laws who happens to be Romanian. Andrew told me that he would do it for free, but would ask for consideration to donate to this ministry. I'm still trying to work that out, but my wife isn't all that concerned about our marriage right now.
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They are fun to be around, but not easy to schedule. :)
 
frederick said:
In 1 Thessalonians 5:21 is the command for Christians to test all things. Most Christians fail to obey this command so ideas and teachings that come into the churches go untested; there is no scrutiny by the people of what they are hearing, no critical thinking. This has resulted in the all but total lack of spiritual discernment evidenced in the lives of the people. The flip side to this problem is that the preachers don't want to have what they are teaching put to the test. Therefore people are discouraged from being critical thinkers and the problem persists. And this lack of discernment involves all aspects of life, not just marriage/polygyny. **big sigh**
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Some churches do still maintain the tradition of questioning.

I've mentioned elsewhere that our church allows anyone to raise a hand and interrupt the sermon with questions. Usually this is because the listener wants clarification, but on super rare occasions the speaker gets challenged.

This doesn't mean we don't value unity about essential matters, because we do. But the essentials don't seem to be the things people argue about. So we encourage members to lump most controversies into the broad category of "disputable matters". Debate these things all you like, but we are a service church, and expect members to find a way to coexist. If you start an argument about theology and disrupt a service event, we're giving you all the dirty dishes.
 
Jeff Ray said:
Some churches do still maintain the tradition of questioning.

I've mentioned elsewhere that our church allows anyone to raise a hand and interrupt the sermon with questions. Usually this is because the listener wants clarification, but on super rare occasions the speaker gets challenged.

This doesn't mean we don't value unity about essential matters, because we do. But the essentials don't seem to be the things people argue about. So we encourage members to lump most controversies into the broad category of "disputable matters". Debate these things all you like, but we are a service church, and expect members to find a way to coexist. If you start an argument about theology and disrupt a service event, we're giving you all the dirty dishes.
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I've seen some of these on YouTube. That's kind of an extension of the Sunday School concept. I engaged in that when we went through Matthew and we got to chapter 19.
 
I've mentioned elsewhere that our church allows anyone to raise a hand and interrupt the sermon with questions.
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Men and women to ask? 1 Cor. 14:35
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Yes, women too.

We regard the role and limitations of women in the Church are one of those disputable matters. I understand some feel what Paul said was for all times and places, and others feel it was to solve a particular issue at a particular time and place. Romans 14 & 15 tell each of us to discuss and debate, becoming convinced in our own minds what we believe, but we are further commanded to not let that break our unity with our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Looked at this way, most controversies in the church become disputable matters, and we are no longer able to use that as an excuse to separate ourselves from one another (church splits, or individually leaving to find another church that might make us feel more comfortable). Instead, we are required to find a way to coexist in spite of our differences, putting the needs of Christ's church ahead of our need to only associate with people who are theologically (or ideologically) similar.

Yes, there are limits to this. The Pastor decides what the essential doctrines of our church are, and we've lost plenty of people who have a different notion of what is an essential vs. disputable doctrine. But for the most part we think we are doing the right thing, and the kind of Christians we retain (vs. the kind we lose) seems to support this.

And it leads to the unusual situation of my being able to publicly challenge my Pastor on the issue of polygamy, without getting thrown out merely for disputing established doctrine.
 
Jeff Ray said:
And it leads to the unusual situation of my being able to publicly challenge my Pastor on the issue of polygamy, without getting thrown out merely for disputing established doctrine.
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Wow! And they haven't asked you to be silent about it on the church premises? Man you need to take over this thread! You are farther along than I am!
 
Well, our Sunday School class/Grow Group, has been going through Ephesians. The whole church is, FTM. We are in chapter 5. Well, you can imagine how that section about "wives submitting to your husbands" went. If there was not enough evidence of the Matriarchy in our church before, it was on full display. I thought dealing with polygamy, was a challenge! They were appalled at the thought that submit actually means submit. To hear the leader use the textbook, which completely ignores Scripture, was appalling, in and of itself! I was glad my wife showed up late and missed that discussion. I reiterated what I have stated before, that Feminism has invaded the church, after the leader read a portion of the book, which COMPLETELY misquotes Scripture, and says that husbands and wives are to submit to one another. I corrected him, and his response was that was what was in the book. The class erupted in laughter when I stated that Feminism has invaded the church.

We had prayer time after the lesson, and one of the men asked for prayer for his marriage; this was the second time he asked for prayer for his marriage. Everyone seems to want to recommend some marriage class that a couple is putting on on Sunday evenings, but I look at him and see him acting so timid, with his high pitched voice, and wonder if his wife questions his manhood. Then there was a lady in our class, has troubling making a decision which job to take. I told her husband that he knows her better than anyone. Yesterday, I sent him a text telling him that he should decide for her, since she doesn't really know what she wants, and another one telling him to lead her and to take charge. It's like the whole class is full of Beta Males who have been beaten down by the church and it's desire to be palatable to the Oprah Winfrey culture that we live in, and they need someone to stand up and tell them to act like real men!
 
Daniel DeLuca said:
They were appalled at the thought that submit actually means submit.
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That's a pretty good description of the reaction of most Christians to the idea. Their opinions are grounded in the world's ideas, not scripture.

Poly affects you, submission affects every marriage there. Their reaction of poly is basically an outgrowth of their feminist worldview.
 
Daniel DeLuca said:
Well, our Sunday School class/Grow Group, has been going through Ephesians. The whole church is, FTM. We are in chapter 5. Well, you can imagine how that section about "wives submitting to your husbands" went. If there was not enough evidence of the Matriarchy in our church before, it was on full display. I thought dealing with polygamy, was a challenge! They were appalled at the thought that submit actually means submit. To hear the leader use the textbook, which completely ignores Scripture, was appalling, in and of itself! I was glad my wife showed up late and missed that discussion. I reiterated what I have stated before, that Feminism has invaded the church, after the leader read a portion of the book, which COMPLETELY misquotes Scripture, and says that husbands and wives are to submit to one another. I corrected him, and his response was that was what was in the book. The class erupted in laughter when I stated that Feminism has invaded the church.

We had prayer time after the lesson, and one of the men asked for prayer for his marriage; this was the second time he asked for prayer for his marriage. Everyone seems to want to recommend some marriage class that a couple is putting on on Sunday evenings, but I look at him and see him acting so timid, with his high pitched voice, and wonder if his wife questions his manhood. Then there was a lady in our class, has troubling making a decision which job to take. I told her husband that he knows her better than anyone. Yesterday, I sent him a text telling him that he should decide for her, since she doesn't really know what she wants, and another one telling him to lead her and to take charge. It's like the whole class is full of Beta Males who have been beaten down by the church and it's desire to be palatable to the Oprah Winfrey culture that we live in, and they need someone to stand up and tell them to act like real men!
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I'm tempted to copy and paste an entire conversation that took place on my fb page the other day. I shared an article on patriarchy by another blogger, and a lady who is almost never on facebook but considers herself a biblical scholar, jumped on the "Ephesians 5/mutual submission" bandwagon. With a little help from @PeteR, I simply stated the semantics and then sat back and watched as she and another friend conversed and pumped each other up with their mutual stance. You really can't fix that, so I refrained from replying to anything else they said lol. I'm sure they thought they won...:cool:
 
Robhar said:
I'm tempted to copy and paste an entire conversation that took place on my fb page the other day. I shared an article on patriarchy by another blogger, and a lady who is almost never on facebook but considers herself a biblical scholar, jumped on the "Ephesians 5/mutual submission" bandwagon. With a little help from @PeteR, I simply stated the semantics and then sat back and watched as she and another friend conversed and pumped each other up with their mutual stance. You really can't fix that, so I refrained from replying to anything else they said lol. I'm sure they thought they won...:cool:
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I wish I had time to debate all these poor self-deluded souls!
 
steve said:
I hear you, but the delusion doesn’t come from within themselves.
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I wish I had the platform to debate those deluded leaders who are responsible for propagating these lies.
 
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