I stayed up reading until 1 am last night. I don't know when the last time I did that was! My mother-in-law sent us a book in the mail, and once I started reading it, I just couldn't put it down until I finished it. And it wasn't because I just had to know what was going to happen next, either. It was because this book was saying things to me that I desperately needed to hear!

The book is So You Don't Want to Go to Church Anymore, by Jake Colsen. (Don't worry, WM friends, the title of the book doesn't have anything to do with why I liked it.) The book is Jake's journal of 13 conversations with a close friend, occurring over the course of a four year period when his world is turned upside-down. It reminds me of the ideas that Karmen has shared with us that have changed her world over the last year. It reminds me of why we didn't want to be a part of certain churches anymore (this of course does not include Wheatland!). Most of all, it reminds me of the truth of God's unquenchable love and the reality of my inability to earn it or to be worthy of it - my inability to please him with my works done in my own strength, and the fact that He'd rather have me ditch those than have them get in the way of living in His love.

I started the day yesterday determined to be my own cognitive therapist - to journal the thoughts that were running through my head and to analyze which untrue or unproductive thoughts were causing me to get weighed down with anxiety or depression or confusion or anger. After a bit of thought, writing, and analysis, including an important discussion with Heath over the lunch hour, I felt like I had uncovered some of the thoughts and feelings that were troublesome to me, and replaced them with truer, more balanced ways of thinking. Then, when I began reading this book last night, it built on the process that had begun that morning, the process of ferreting out untrue and destructive thoughts and exposing them to the truth. It was a really good, much needed process, which will probably take a while to fully sink in and take root again. I say again because these truths are not new to me, but are things that I too easily forget and need to return to again and again.

So, in summary... If you want to be reminded of who God really is and to have your first love with Him renewed, you gotta get this book!

Last night at house church we discussed Men and Women in the Church by Sarah Sumner a little bit. I think we are all trying to find common ground, which is a good thing. Because ultimately it's not an issue that any of us would want to affect our fellowship. But along with that, maybe some of us have been a little reticent to really state where we're coming from...

For the last 10 years or so, I have taken the Biblical passages regarding women fairly conservatively. I have believed (and taught other women) that we are to be submissive to our husbands and not to be leaders in the Church.

There, I said it. I outed myself.

To be fair, I am reconsidering these issues, and it is shaking up my understanding quite a bit. Like I shared with those of you at house church last night, my understanding of husband-wife roles (which has blossomed over the last 5 years or so especially) seems to have really enriched our marriage. So I feel like I have a lot at stake.

An interesting thing about Sumner's view of the texts is that she actually does not set aside the unique roles in the marriage relationship. She does a beautiful job of laying out the analogy in Ephesians 5 that describes how the husband is the head of the wife, who is the body. I love how she describes the submissive "posture" of the wife as the body and the loving sacrifice of the man as the head, and the interaction between the two. After reading that chapter, I was relieved to see that perhaps my understanding of husband-wife roles would be compatible with a new understanding of women's roles in the Church.

However, the point when our consensus fell apart is when Sumner says that the fact that the husband is the head doesn't make him the leader. Somehow that doesn't compute for me. I understand that headship means more than that, and I appreciate her expansion of the head-body analogy. But it seems to me that leadership is implicit in the husband being the head. If the husband and wife disagree, then someone has to submit and someone has to lead. Right? If the husband is described as the head in the Biblical analogy of the marriage relationship, then it would seem to follow that he is the leader in these situations. To be fair to Sumner, I think she would say that this analogy is not even addressing these situations, perhaps?

This may seem like a minor point of contention between her and I, that wouldn't really affect the practice of the concept. But ultimately it affects whether or not a woman can be a church leader. Because if a wife is to be led by her husband, then I don't see how she can lead the church of which he is a part. There is a conflict of interest. What if he disagrees with the direction she is leading in the church? Wouldn't she have to yield to his opinion since he is her leader?

I guess some of this goes back to our definition of what a church leader is and what a church leader really does, i.e what level of authority they have. Many of us have been part of churches where the leadership position was used in an abusive way, in one way or another. Some of our church leaders have thought their position entitled them to micromanage our lives, to demand a certain level of commitment which translated into certain actions or activities that were expected in order to be in good fellowship with the church. (For those of you who haven't experienced this and don't know what I'm talking about, this can play out as a legalistic list of obligations and behaviors, such as: attend church Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night, plus serve in at least one ministry; abstain from drinking alcohol or using tobacco or cussing; vote Republican; observe the Sabbath and give a tithe on all your earnings; and the list can go on and on.) We may also have been taught that their leadership provided some sort of umbrella of protection as long as we went along with it, that they were responsible for us and would be answerable for us somehow. Most of us that are part of Wheatland are moving away from this type of leadership.

Sumner makes a good point that no person is the head of the Church. Christ is the head of the Church. But yet, aren't there decisions that have to be made, and people who have to interpret what Christ's desires are for those decisions? And when people don't agree on which direction Christ is leading, someone has to decide, and that person is the leader. Right? Actually (and I am just thinking this through as I type), maybe not. Maybe the church, inhabited by Christ's Spirit, can reach a consensus on what Christ desires for its direction and even for decisions on specific issues as a whole. There may be a few who disagree with a certain decision, but if most feel that this is the way the Spirit is leading or speaking to them, then that is a way that Christ is leading His Church, isn't it? I guess most of us have been taught that Christ uses certain persons that he raises up to be leaders in order to lead His Church. That the responsibility for making decisions is delegated to trusted, approved decision-makers, who make all of the decisions every time. But it doesn't have to be that way, does it? It could actually be the whole church that has a voice. Or is that just the chaos that is described in 1 Corinthians, which we are to try to avoid?

If I ask my earlier question again ("What if [the husband] disagrees with the direction [his wife] is leading in the church? Wouldn't she have to yield to his opinion since he is her leader?") in light of the church structure which I just described, then I have already answered myself. The answer is, we are relying on the consensus of the church as a whole, inhabited by Christ's Spirit, and what they believe is the direction He is leading them - rather than on an individual leader who is somehow taking responsibility for the entire congregation of interpreting Christ's desires for them. So there would never be an opportunity for this scenario to occur.

Maybe a leader isn't so much a judge and decision-maker as he or she is an example that people are inspired to follow...

I may have just talked myself out of my earlier reservations regarding women in leadership. We'll see. I will be interested to discuss this with some of you later - especially you, husband. :-)

Last week at house church we had a brief discussion on baptism, which I'm sure could have gone much longer if we'd all had the time (and if the kids had had the patience). I was reminded of a blog entry I wrote almost a year ago about my own experience and thoughts on baptism at the time. It is interesting how ideas about baptism have evolved in the Protestant Church at large since the Reformation. If you compare Catholic or Eastern Orthodox concepts to Protestant churches' ideas, sometimes they are drastically different, and other times surprisingly similar (surprising when you consider how different other practices of that particular church might be from Catholicism).

All of this got me to thinking about how much I have reevaluated my own understandings of matters of our faith since my friends started converting to Eastern Orthodoxy one by one. It's really been a shocking occurance, since most of us came from a non-denominational "are Catholics really saved?" sort of background. It is a big leap to go from a movement where many completely disregard Catholic theology and doctrine as corrupted (please don't be offended, my Catholic readers, I am simply representing how some people in Protestant churches feel), to joining a church that shares roots and much doctrine and theology with Catholicism. The Eastern Orthodox paradigm for understanding theology and doctrine is so different from ours. They trace their roots back to the Apostles, so they view their doctrine as being handed down by the Apostles - albeit the understanding of certain doctrinal issues grew and was defined over the first few centuries of the Church's existence. The Protestant paradigm for formulating doctrine, on the other hand, does not place much value on what previous generations of the Church have thought was the correct interpretation of the teachings of the faith. Rather, the Protestant paradigm draws its understanding of doctrine entirely from what is present in the text of scripture. If the doctrine of previous generations does not seem to be supported by scripture, then the assumption is their understanding was corrupted.

I grew up thinking my paradigm for approaching theological and doctrinal issues was best because the Scriptures should obviously be our primary authority, as the Word of God. Only what is contained therein can be relied upon. Traditions of men can be corrupted. We saw in the Reformation a time when the traditions of men certainly did become corrupted, with indulgences and the like. Because of this, it was assumed that any Catholic doctrine that was based primarily on tradition rather than scripture was probably similarly corrupt.

However, as an adult, it occurred to me: The very Scriptures that we hold to be more reliable than tradition were verified to be the true Word of God, the true representation of Gospel teachings, by men who taught other doctrines that I summarily reject. I trusted them to define the canon of scripture, but I do not trust their doctrinal teaching on issues not directly referenced in scripture.

I could go into this a lot more, into why it is or is not a contradiction on my part, and whether or not I am justified to question their extra-Biblical teachings, but let me just say it was enough to make me consider if there were practices or teachings I have dismissed out of hand that might have value. It has also put into perspective the unspoken Protestant (especially Evangelical) assumption that the typical Catholic or Eastern Orthodox way of "getting saved" is not valid (i.e. no altar call decision, no specific moment in time when you pray to acknowledge you are a sinner and to ask Jesus to come into your heart, no adult baptism and specific moment in time when you realize the Holy Spirit's presence).