KD

KD

Amen. There is no remission of sin without blood.

JPK

You said: I also agree that the contemporary church has created an image of Jesus that has much of his humanity (as well as his masculinity) removed. I also agree that there's a problem with much of the "intimacy" language used for Jesus that's distasteful for many Christians (and to make it worse, only tangentially biblical - at best.) In the end, however, I don't see this as a disintegration of male "headship" but rather a demolition of the incarnation.

And to think I am looking at the result instead of the cause. Thank you for pointing this out. What is more important? Lack of male leadership or involvement or preaching a different Christ? The latter for sure and thank you for opening my eyes to this. I have been focusing on the fruit, (lack of male involvement) when the focus should be on the root, ( a wrong Christ).

Find the Barna study when you can. And again thank you for pointing out where the focus should be.

In His Name

JPK

RE: Parents "following" their kids. I agree completely with you. As a matter of fact, somewhere in one of Barna's more recent books he notes that the assumption that families will follow their kids goes back to a mis-interpretation he made from some of the statistics he did years ago. It's an interesting Mea Culpa... I'm afraid I don't have the reference with me right now though. Sorry. I'll see if I can dig it out....

RE: "'who wears the pants" -- Obviously I don't consider it a problem that in many congregations women are the most prominent leaders. So that's doesn't bother me at all. The congregation I serve is split about 50/50 male/female. The consistory is exclusively male but many of the "movers" are female. I wish more of the "movers" were male and more of the consistory was female, but that balance is not something a minister can do - it's a congregational move.

Scott -- RE: 30%... I agree with you... it's a HUGE problem (although, as I've already mentioned, the congregation I minister with is very close to 50/50). I also agree that the contemporary church has created an image of Jesus that has much of his humanity (as well as his masculinity) removed. I also agree that there's a problem with much of the "intimacy" language used for Jesus that's distasteful for many Christians (and to make it worse, only tangentially biblical - at best.) In the end, however, I don't see this as a disintegration of male "headship" but rather a demolition of the incarnation.

I don't have an answer as to how to change the 30% problem.. however, in my experience the answer is NOT to create "men's" ministries (even though there certainly is a place for such things) but rather to encourage a more well-rounded culture in a congregation where everyone's gifts, skills, talents and resources are valued - those that are easily recognized, those that are easily embraced as well as those that are more difficult to accept or uncomfortable to acknowledge. "Male" things and "Female" things are often culturally designated. For example, as you may know, I'm a knitter. In our culture, knitting is almost universally seen as a "female" thing - historically quite the opposite has been the case. It's a problem whenever the church "buys into" such designations... and although there are some things that cannot be "crossed over" (I, for example, could have never nursed our daughter when she was an infant), generally speaking, when we label things "male" or "female" we give undue value to societal peculiarities.

Grace and Peace,
`tim