Please read this.

Honestly, I was just going to poke at this topic and walk away slowly, not stir anything up or shake heads, but I felt a serious conviction while writing this and I’m not in the business of following man over God anymore, so as a warning, don’t get offended, I wrote this after talking to Jesus so I’m under the influence right now (it’s a play on words).

And as a disclaimer, I’m not offended at anyone, I’m not angry at anyone, I just really love Jesus and want to make Him known, so if you’re taking this the wrong way you’re deceived and you need to not worry about it. If you’re scared, it’s okay, I’ve got nothing to lose, hopefully you’ve lost it all too, but if you haven’t, this might burn you, it burnt me while writing it. I’m not afraid to roar, I am a lion after all, so here’s some roaring.

God is clear, not elusive, and I didn’t feel at rest with the last time I left this ambiguous, I repent for that, here’s the Bible:

“And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ,

until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood , to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,

so that we may no longer be children , tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.

Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.“

Okay I added a bunch of italics and stuff so you could see what I thought was cool here, but really I want to focus, since this is a “blog post,” on a single particulate of this:

We have apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, teachers, to what? To equip (Christians) to be Christians and to build up the body as a whole.

So here’s a logical inconsistency I stumbled upon last night…

In the modern church those who “equip and build the church…” in general, are our pastors (specifically, if you guys can spot the etymology, the term “pastor” is rooted in the Latin word for “shepherd.” The office of the “shepherd”).

Without going into whether “pastor” as an all-encompassing position is a good idea or not, I want to turn headlines on a silly controversy that some of a more fixated and theologically uncaring mind may be preoccupied with:

Here we have the offices of a church. Now I ask:

Are there male apostles? Prophets? Evangelists? Shepherds? Teachers?

You’re very good to answer yes to the first one. Now let’s go a little step further:

And so are there female apostles? Prophets? Evangelists? Shepherds? Teachers?

We have no problem with the idea that there are female prophets… if you have a problem with that read the Bible. No problem with women evangelists, or missionaries, in fact… we really have no problem at all with women teachers if it’s a kind we’re culturally comfortable with, to help you understand I’ll give you an example:

I made a post outlining that it’s patently and incontestably hypocrisy to “allow” a woman to teach in a worship team (as “worship leader”) or for children (as a “childcare worker”) or in a bible study (throughout the week or for “Sunday School”) or for other women… and deny the idea that God would “allow” them teach on a Sunday morning?

We must not care for these other ministries to give them a disallowed and unspiritual teacher… or perhaps we are rather hypocrites, choose one or the other: We’ve made walls and divisions and declarations and labels that God didn’t make. That’s dangerous. If we want to stop being misnomered as racist and sexist, a good place to start would be where we’re actually racist and sexist (by the way, since we’re exegeting without any context, go ahead and inform your wife she can’t speak at all in church, as of Corinthians. Unless you’re fine with hypocrisy).

Here it is: either strip women of the right to teach, or realize they have it. Whatever you do, stop using them when it’s convenient and then throwing them away like a dirty, unclean, second-rate rag. It’s disgusting and it’s dishonoring to the bride of Christ.

Either a woman cannot teach or she can. Double dipping is gross, especially when it comes to theology: it’s illustrative that we often only hire men into these positions out of our and their need, and therefore their value to the church and the church’s (monetary) value to them, and whenever convenience or necessity violates this (say, the children’s ministry, which is hugely feminine), our “bible-thumping immovable convictions” slowly drift in favor of whatever gets everything to move on Sunday morning.

What if we stopped looking at people as assets and started seeing their created value: What if we started realizing that when we look at someone, male or female, pastor or not, we’re looking at the body of Christ, our own flesh and blood, maybe we wouldn’t be such hypocrites.

Wherever lies are given the keys, death walks through the door … if you wanted to know why your youth and children’s ministries were dying and ineffective.

Are there female teachers, shepherds, apostles?

You answer that for yourself, and you are accountable not to me, but to God, whether you choose to believe what the bible says or what you have been taught, now that you have heard this.

God Bless.