http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/09/23/martin.hairston/index.html?iref=newssearch

Notice his wife his a female pastor so you see how messed up his stance is…

This is a matter, that plenty of fellow saints have discussed with him before and you know he and I have discussed our differences on it at your blog before in comments.

I find the “oh that was about marriage” line of reasoning to be no escape from the fact scripture is clear about certain men being elders and not women. Because if we were to go with the idea, that man is to be viewed as in a position of leadership in the house, but not certain men only in leadership of God’s house. That means we hold a stronger standard in the home than in the house of God. Who’s house is over the other here? If God’s house is superior, we would not dare claim a more stringent standard in our own homes with our wives. It makes all the women who claim to be church elders (or teachers over assemblies of both women and men), while saying their husband is over them in the home, hypocrites!

But what many including brothers like Not Your Typical Negro are missing (and we used to miss it ourselves when we promoted the same error) [and I'm sure NYTN disagrees with me saying he's missing it], is that marriage and the church totally correlate. There is not to be some separation between order of the home and order of the church. Ephesians 5 makes it clear they all are together.

And I think if God was having Paul speak about marriage alone in separation from church group meetings, that not only would 1 Timothy 2 be more clear about it, but 1 Timothy 3 would not be the first words to follow, in what was a letter without chapter and verse divisions. And God certainly would not have had Paul repeat the same to Titus in Titus 1. So trying to detach 1 Timothy 2 from 1 Timothy 3 does some ungodly things to scripture. And 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 is not about standards of some by-gone era. Paul directly notes the Law on this matter remains unchanged and was speaking to Gentiles who were even permissive of women divorcing their husbands, something unheard of with Hebrews, he was not addressing Hebrews who were always more restrictive. He went to the “Liberals” and told them to tighten things up a bit.

Marriage and the church body, It all is together. The mentions of Adam and Eve in 1 Timothy 2 are not some claim it’s about marriage alone, but rather how God has ordered things since the start of humanity and never has God changed how man should deal with it in any covenant made with man. Men have always been elders and Paul speaking of men teaching over an assembly and never women was not just his notion, but in keeping with commands of God and keeping with Christ’s own selection of men to be shepherds of the flock.

To be consistent, those for women elders should also allow for women to head over men in the household. They should claim all scripture about marriage was just for societal norms of years gone by. And then to be continually consistent, they should toss gender roles all together and they should approve of homosexual “unions”. It’s the real “logical” end for the advocacy of breaking with God’s commands about gender roles.

And if they want to get into talking donkey’s, why don’t they mention the burning bush too and toss donkeys and bushes into the pulpit?!

This matter is also becoming a hot topic at SpeakingTruth’s blog.

Brother Job/healtheland, the later end times for the real church before the Lord’s return, I doubt will feature any “denominations”. I feel we’ll have small house church groups and the “denominations” will break to the will of societal norms. I doubt these “denominations” with their “stores” and other ventures will hold the line forever. For now they allow assemblies like even the one I’m part of to operate autonomously, but I doubt “denominations” will continue that practice. They have some level of standard (however weak that standard may be) for somebody to claim to be part of their “denomination” and in time they’ll clamp down on member churches as the “denomination” breaks to the traditions of men.