CMA votes to approve female pastors / How does this line up with Scripture?

Moore's Corner Church

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This is from protestia .com. The Southern Baptist Convention takes note of the

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Christian and Missionary Alliance denomination, CMA, and how they have now approved women pastors in what is a historic vote.

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So I'm just going to read the article and then I'll comment and we'll compare it to what the Bible says.

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It says, in a historic vote, the Christian and Missionary Alliance, so the denomination,

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CMA, which is nationwide, worldwide, I think, has agreed to allow women to serve in pastoral roles with 60 % of delegates gathered at their 2023

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General Council meeting, signing, and sealing the fate of the denomination.

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For years, the CMA, with its 6 million members and 22 ,000 churches in 90 countries, has been laboring with a dysfunctional and schizophrenic policy of pastrixes.

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And by the way, what is a pastrix? It's a female pastor. So you can already tell that this article doesn't think too highly...

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the person who wrote the article doesn't think too highly of this decision. It says the denomination allows women to be, quote, consecrated for ministry, letting them preach, teach, baptize, marry folks, oversee funerals and council congregants, while withholding the coveted title of pastor from them.

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Instead, appointed ladies receive titles like consecrated woman of God, a moniker many women felt was insufficient.

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It was a half measure pushing them to grasp for more. While they can now be ordained as pastors, the senior pastor role is still relegated to men only, which, as anyone with half a brain knows, will be the next domino to fall.

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Founded in the late 19th century as a parachurch ministry and later formed into a new evangelical denomination in the 1970s, the

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Christian and Missionary Alliance has significant emphasis on missions and missionary work.

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They emphasize Jesus and his role as a healer and an intense focus on personal sanctification, such as, quote, high life movement, which

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I'm not really familiar with, but according to this article they say the high life movement, which half of the time they say is nothing more than a bastardized form of sinless perfectionism in disguise.

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So again, I'm reading from the article Protestia, speaking to the gathered delegates,

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U .S. Air Force Chaplain Crystal Lane insisted that these new freedoms, women being ordained as pastors afforded by the denomination, would only show that the

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CMA stands behind their pastrixes. That's a hard word to say, pastrixes.

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Okay, she says, this chaplain, Crystal Lane, she says being ordained would make my life a lot easier as a military chaplain.

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Not having to make the big long explanation, but it's so much more than that.

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I'm called to join God in raising up a vast army from dry bones by the breath of the

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Holy Spirit. I know that I have an angel army backing me up, but I wonder, do

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I have the Alliance family backing me up? So she's saying it's gonna be a lot easier if I can just tell people, hey,

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I'm a pastor. Yes, I'm a woman, but I'm a pastor. Because if you say, well, I'm a consecrated woman of God, well, what was that?

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What does that mean? So now, in the Christian and Missionary Alliance denomination, women can be ordained as pastors.

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Okay, so that's the article. Now let's ask, what's the problem with this?

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Again, the person writing the article doesn't see it as a positive thing, obviously. Many people do not see it as a positive thing.

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Why? A few things. Whatever a person's opinion is, the church and Christian churches, whether it's

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Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, the church for over 1 ,900 years stood in agreement that only men should serve in the role of pastor.

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So in the 20th century, there were no female pastors. It wasn't until after the rise of the feminist movement that that changed.

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So the Pentecostals were the first group to do this. And even when they did, they were sort of seen by many as sort of being on the fringe of evangelical

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Christianity. But later, after the Social Revolution of the 1960s, then the mainline denominations all followed suit.

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And most of the mainline churches, Methodists, Episcopal, Lutheran, they quickly moved from the ordination of women to the ordination of homosexuals.

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Remember that big story, what, 15 years ago, the first gay bishop ordained in the

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United States, and that was a big deal. And now the ordination of transgender, quote -unquote, that's the new trendy thing to do.

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So denominations are rushing to be the first to ordain the first transgender bishop.

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As a matter of fact, I think that's already happened. But why did the church not ordain women?

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Again, whether it was Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, it was based on the teachings of the

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Bible. So in the pastoral epistle of 1st Timothy, one of the qualifications for a pastor or a bishop is that he must be a man.

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In chapter 2, verse 12 of 1st Timothy, the Apostle Paul says, I do not permit a woman to teach, nor to have authority over a man, but to be in silence.

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Today, people will claim that that was just cultural, and then they'll try to quote other verses out of context.

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But if you read the context of 1st Timothy, the context is who should be a pastor. And Paul does not root his argument in culture, he roots his argument in creation.

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That Adam was formed first. Why does a pastor have to be a man?

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Because Adam was formed first, then Eve. That's what Paul says. So this is the biblical doctrine of male headship.

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Now today, that's totally unpopular. You're not supposed to talk about that.

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What do people say today? Down with the patriarchy. That's what people say. It doesn't matter what the

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Scripture says. That was the old way of doing things. Now we need to fight for social justice.

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So we need to ordain women. We need to ordain gays. We need to ordain trans people.

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We just need to, whatever the next group is that they say is oppressed, you need to ordain.

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So it's all social justice and liberal progressive attitudes.

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Because the Bible is very clear, and church history for 1900 years, everybody agreed.

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So 1st Timothy chapter 2, very clear. 1st Timothy chapter 3, one of the qualifications for a bishop must be a man.

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Also 1st Corinthians 14, 34 through 37, the Bible teaches the same thing.

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Women are not to be the preachers and teachers in the church. Now can women be involved in the work of ministry?

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Absolutely. Because the common response is that this is sexist. Well here's the problem with that.

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If that's sexist, then was God sexist? Because God, according to what the

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Lord told Moses, only men could be priests in Israel. Jesus chose 12 men.

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He chose Peter, James, and John, not Patty, Jamie, and Joanne. So is Jesus sexist?

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You don't want to go down that road because ultimately you're gonna have to accuse God, unless you just totally deny the authority of Scripture.

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So 1st Corinthians 14, 34 through 37, essentially teaches the same thing, that women are not to be the the teachers in the church.

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Some people say, well that that was just Paul addressing a specific issue in the city of Corinth, so that was kind of cultural too for that moment.

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Again, that's not the context. Paul says that the reason for this, he says, this is the law of God.

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Just read it. That's the context. Well how is that the law of God? Well again, the first five books of Moses, the

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Torah, the law, it taught male headship. Adam was formed first and then Eve.

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And again, this was all understood for nearly 2 ,000 years, right up until the 20th century.

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Women can be involved in ministry, absolutely. Without women, a lot of churches wouldn't be running today if wasn't for the women who serve tirelessly and have done so much for the

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Lord. But they cannot serve in the office of pastor. So the

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Southern Baptist Convention is also experiencing division over this subject.

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Now the CMA has already sort of caved to this issue. In the

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Southern Baptist Convention, you know, 20 years ago you had women like Beth Moore. Beth Moore did women's

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Bible studies. She preached in conferences to women. Nobody really had a problem with that. But then she started preaching in churches on Sunday morning, and that's really kind of the dividing line.

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Stephen Furtick's wife, Stephen Furtick's Elevation Church, they're one of the most popular Southern Baptist churches in the

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United States. Stephen Furtick's wife is the co -pastor of the church. Rick Warren, who led the largest

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Southern Baptist Church, he ordained or started to ordain women back in 2021. So now this is really a very contentious issue.

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And anything that causes division in the church, we know that's not of God the

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Holy Spirit. If it's causing division, and it's going against the clear teachings of Scripture, and it's going against how the church universally understood the

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Scripture for 1900 years, this can't possibly be a movement of God.

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So the SBC, the largest Protestant denomination in the country, Southern Baptist, they're this, and now the

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CMA is facing it. But again, they're not going the whole way.

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They're not allowing women to be in the role of senior pastors.

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So that just guarantees this is going to be an issue, and people are going to be fighting about it going forward. So that's very disappointing, but not surprising.