2011 is almost gone, and what have we accomplished? Has the cause for women’s equality been advanced?
I began reading books about women’s equality in 2009, after I had started this ministry. Those books were written to enlighten people and when I found them, they were already old. Some were written in the late 1970s. Their truths are still relevant. The change from when those books were written is that the Council on Biblical Manhood and Biblical Womanhood was formed in 1987, and thus began a new round of damage to women’s equality. On July 24, 2010 I demanded an apology from them for their teaching against women.
Will women ever become equal in churches affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention? No. Not in my lifetime. Something will change, but it won’t be SBC. I predict a tightening, withdrawing, turtleshell-like convention that becomes narrower and narrower. Actually, I predicted this in 2000 and I don’t see anything to change that prediction. I predict a breaking-away from the restrictions of the SBC as more and more people leave the SBC churches, and fewer join with them.
I predict a great shift among Baptists and Churches of Christ. Many are already shifting away from the restrictions of those churches. The original body of the SBC and the Church of Christ will remain, but there will come out of these churches, people who believe in a bigger and more loving God than the original denomination would have you believe. (neither the Church of Christ nor the SBC admit to being a denomination, but for clarity sake, it is easier to call them that).
2011 is almost gone. What have we accomplished?
In April 2011, Dr. Mimi Haddad, the president of Christians for Biblical Equality, contacted me and asked me if I would join with Mabel and bring about a one-day conference to Houston. They had held a one day conference in Chicago in 2010, and wanted to hold one in the Houston area. Not knowing anything about putting on a conference, we agreed to do it.
God sent people our way. First, Ann Bayliss of the Church of Christ, and her friend Kathy Straker of another Church of Christ church in the area. And then Wiley Clarkson 250 miles away from another Church of Christ church joined us. God put together a group of people who have a heart for women’s equality. The conference will be held on April 27-28, 2012 at the Houston Heights Church of Christ in Houston, Texas. Dr. Mimi Haddad will be in attendance at our conference. www.cbehouston.org
Will you pray daily for this conference? Will you pray that people will hear about it, that people will attend, and that hearts will be changed, and long-held attitudes against women will begin to crumble? Will you pray that what we started in 2011 will have an ever-lasting impact on how women are treated in our churches from this time forward?
bWe Baptist Women for Equality's Blog 
Amen ! Shirley and others cannot put this conference on without divine help. God’s hand is in it all the way. The few of us working to bring the conference to reality sometimes feel like we have a mountain to move, and we do. But with faith, mountains can move. God moves them. Please pray. It’s the only way to change minds. No-one is ever changed without the Holy Spirit working in them, No Holy Spirit working, no change. We are simply the instruments bringing the good news of men and women, one in Christ, not one gender above another gender in Christ, not one “role” over another “role” in Christ. No Hierarchy in Christ.
I would love to have a logo for the message. Any artist? designer?
I was surprised to find that lots of people equate Egalitarian belief with androgyny, and we need to do a better job explaining we are for gender equality, not androgyny. That thinking is Satan’s attack. I am so angry that we cannot call ourselves complementarians, which is what we are: complementarians without hierarchy or patriarchy. All member of the Body are complementarians, just like all parts of the Body work for the good of the whole body.
Shirley is right about the hierarchists getting more and more narrow in their stand: women are now not allowed to even read the Scriptures out loud (according to Tim Challis, who has a large following). In the Catholic Church, women who are ordained as priests (they are functioning as priests anyway, just without the title), people who attend the ceremony, and anyone even discussing it, are in danger of being ex-communicated, while pedophiles are not.
It is time to throw rocks and shatter some glasses.
LikeLike
I want to encourage you with the following info.
I am a member of a Baptist church and they choose to affliate with the SBC on some things as well as with some other Baptist organizations. However, they have 2 women elders and use the old BFM and this is deliberate. So these types of churches do exist.
LikeLike
Thank you so much for your encouragement. Sometimes it seems that the battle that is being fought is recognized by only a few people as the majority of women don’t seem to question what is happening in their churches, or in the churches their friends attend. I just finished the book “Half the Church” by Carolyn Custis James. I hope the sleeping giantess has been awakened, and is rubbing the slumber from her eyes. It is a pleasure working with you, my brother, as we help women reclaim the Biblical truths of equality for all. I believe that a new church will have to come out of the SBC. The SBC was founded upon the wrong principles (slavery) and for many years kept their intense dislike of others hidden under the sheep’s clothing of their good deeds. I was proud to be a Southern Baptist, but I started writing them a long time ago because the denomination that I thought I was in, was changing before my eyes with the takeover. I had no idea what that was all about, but as I began to become more knowledgeable, I saw they were regressing. I believe our Creator gives us a new day each day and that there is no “perfect” time in history that we need to go back to. It was in my Baptist church where I learned that 40 meant a very long time, much like we say 100. It was also in my Baptist church where I heard that 40 meant exactly 40. I believe God is much larger than a literal 40, and we have trivilized God with our limitations. Again, I thank you for all the words that you use in standing up for women. I find your voice in the comment sections, and elsewhere. It brings to mind Jesus’ words “whatever you have done to the least of these, you have done it to me.” God’s blessings! Happy New Year!
LikeLike
Don, glad to know that SBC does not dis-fellowship churches with women elders, like they “dis-fellowship” the Georgian church with a woman “senior pastor”. I have no doubt such churches exist, there are just too few of them to turn the tidal wave of SBC type of “teaching” (false) and the prevailing mind set of “men & women have different ROLES”. Somehow people will be horrified at the concept of blacks and whites have different ROLES, i.e. racism is bad, but see nothing wrong with men and women have different ROLES, not realizing it is sexism.
LikeLike