Category: Hmmmm

my friend hemant, aka, friendlyatheist, reposted monday’s blog about keeping your mouth shut.

his readers have left some interesting comments.

one comment in particular, caught my attention.

greta writes,

I gotta say, I don’t know if I could say anything harsher or more critical than the comments people actually made on the original post. I’m actually sort of impressed. A lot of them sound more hard-line atheist than me. I just can’t figure out why half of them keep going to church if that’s how they feel.

The one that made me want to cry:
Raising my hand: “Umm, pastor? I have a question.”
Damn. If that’s the thing you can’t say in church, there is something seriously wrong.

now, don’t get me wrong. that post wasn’t there to make everyone feel guilty or anything. i just wanted to know deep down, what some of your thoughts were and how you felt.

why do we feel that way? thoughts?

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i get a lot of email asking for advice. and sometimes most of the time i think you guys would do a much better job answering this stuff than i would.

here’s an excerpt from someone who would like to remain anonymous.

“This tithing thing. My wife and I have been Christians and going to church for some time. We recently started tithing 10%. This is a huge step for us because of the amount of debt we are in from our past. Every month since we have started tithing, we have also bounced checks and been overdrawn. If you look at our finances, every penny (and some) is accounted for before we even tithe. But we thought we’d “test God” like so many people say about tithing. We really don’t spend any on extra things. We don’t eat out, or buy clothes, or spend much on excess at all. I’d be happy to show anyone my checking account statements any day.

But now we are getting far behind on our bills because we would rather not pay them than be overdrawn. I don’t want to sound cynical (really) but it is hard for me to continue tithing when I see that our home church has all the fancy stuff like big TVs and the staff always seem to have the latest gadgets and wear “hip” clothes when we have to be so careful when we get groceries. It’s not cheap feeding two adults and two little ones.

What do you think is more important? Tithing or being personally responsible with our money?”

dig in you guys…what do you think?

Today’s post is from my friend Crystal Renaud. She is a strong woman in ministry (which you’ll be able to tell from this post!) and it has been really cool to see her grow and mature since the first time I met her (as a wee-barely-out-of-high-school-student). This is her second time guest blogging here. (Read her first guest post here).

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Crystal writes:

My post today reflects my personal opinion and in no way reflects my employer or any particular church or denomination.

Without further ado, here it be.

The Good Ole Boys Club

Confession: I am a bit of a feminist.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not an extremist or going to lead a new suffragette movement, but I definitely have opinions when it comes to the power of women and dare I say it, their power in The Church.

I have coined the phrase, ?Good Ole Boys Club? to refer to male leadership in The Church. As a woman, you can imagine this is a very difficult club to join. There?s a certain lacking anatomy that is against us. And because of this, being a woman in ministry is a lonely existence. These women are often unfairly silenced, their pay is considerably lower than their male counterparts and their hiring in these positions comes few and far between.

How do I know this? Because I am one of them.

Without a doubt, there are women all over this very blogsphere called to lead, and who are strong and equipped to do so. But in this male-dominated field, they are simply not accepted. You know who you are.

Now, I am not a believer in women as senior pastors – however women do have a ton more to offer The Church and even to the men they are following than given the opportunity to prove.

All over the Bible, there were women like Deborah (Judges), Esther, Martha and Phoebe (Romans) who were all leaders in their own right (and even so over men). Not to mention the various other seemingly nameless deaconesses and prophetesses, oh and Christ Himself appearing to women first to spread the news that He had Risen. Somehow these men were not afraid of women having a say and a platform to lead from.

I am not going to claim myself a theologian; you can throw at me all your Timothy & Titus descriptions of an elder all day long, but that still doesn?t explain the inequality among men & women in ministry today.

So tell me, in a country where women have overcome great oppression, have reached the top in business, juggle full-time jobs and/or full-time homes, why is ministry leadership still a clubhouse with a wooden sign saying ?No Girls Allowed??

ever since returning from africa, i’ve wondered something.

is it just me, or does THE CHURCH seem to have its funds distributed fairly unequally?

if we are all THE CHURCH (made up of individual, local churches)

and, if we are shown an example in acts 2:44-45:

All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need.

then why:

is there a hard working children’s pastor making $75/week and who gets his office furniture from the side of the road because his church can’t afford to buy him any?

are churches closing because they don’t have enough money to sustain ministry?

edit: and i won’t even go into listing things that are broken in churches around the globe and in impoverished countries.

when:

other churches are building multi-million dollar facilities…in the same town, on the same road, right across the street from each other?

…i could make this list longer, but i am sure you get the point.

like really.

why?

please understand that i seriously over analyze everything – especially words. i’m from the belief that words shape everything, so their importance is paramount.

with that disclaimer in tact, please let me say…

every time i hear the words “worship was off the hook tonight” (and not merely because they said “off the hook”…we’ll save that 80s catch phrase for a later discussion) or “i can’t wait to worship this weekend” i literally feel my stomach do this awkward knotting up thing.

i truly wonder if as a modern day church culture we are reshaping the true meaning of worship with our words…which then leads us to reshape the true meaning of worship in our lives.

and honestly, i think we take this issue too lightly. i know i’m not the first to bring it up or wonder about it. but within our own church bubble, we almost repeatedly chant, “we know worship is a lifestyle…we know worship is a lifestyle…”

do we? do we really?

god does not take empty worship, or even ceremonial worship, lightly. when i was working on my book, i studied a lot about the different forms of sacrifice and their meanings. it is almost spooky how old testament sacrifices parallel to the things we say today.

amos 5:21-22 says,

“I hate, I despise your religious feasts; I cannot stand your assemblies. Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them.?

burnt offerings were a sacrifice that said “i’m giving everything to you.” it was the only offering that nobody ate afterward. the entire animal was consumed by fire (devotion, dedication) and the smoke offered to the heavens (offering upward to god).

the israelites said they were completely dedicated to god. they sacrificed entire animals in order to prove it. but god saw their hearts. and he would have none of it.

how often do we say “god, take all of me?” but it’s just because we feel like we need to say that?

empty worship. god sees it.

micah 6:8 defines what god requires for true worship of him.

“He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

how many times do we get this backwards?

step 1: get people to a weekend service.
step 2: encourage them to “feel” the song.
step 3: inspire their hearts to fully unite and engage with the father’s love for others.

the heart comes before the words. before the song. and well before the weekend service.

(painting by scott erickson)

::edit:: nathan points us to this incredible song by jon foreman that was just put up today that addresses the same issue.