Not really.
Oh, I guess it's ok. It's cold and grey and dismal in north Texas and we're having an "ice storm" tonight.
Yay?
We had a really brutal staff meeting yesterday after church. This is why I hate staff meetings. It was extremely discouraging. One person dominated the entire meeting and was very negative the whole time (and it wasn't the pastor, who really should be controlling the meeting). This all just adds fuel to my fire on how wrong the whole "institutional church" thing is. I'm just not in a position to do anything about it right now.
For President Obama to remain strong and disciplined in every part of his spiritual life
Be diligent in these matters; give yourself wholly to them, so that everyone may see your progress.
�I Timothy 4:15
Heavenly Father, we rejoice that You have placed in each one of us a desire to know You deeper, to devote ourselves to the study and proclamation of Your Word, and to seeking love, faith and purity just as Paul exhorted his prot�g� Timothy to do in the passage above. We are grateful, Lord, that You, the Creator, desire to have a relationship with us, the Created.
God, we intercede today that You would place in the heart of President Obama an unquenchable desire to know You. Even in the midst of his great responsibilities and challenges as our president, give Your child, Barack Obama, the hunger to seek You, and the time to do so, on a daily basis. Let him be disciplined and, as a result, strengthened in his spiritual life, and let him grow closer to You, O God, in Your name we pray, amen.
How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?
Consider and answer me, O LORD my God;
light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death,
lest my enemy say, "I have prevailed over him,"
lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.
But I have trusted in your steadfast love;
my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
I will sing to the LORD, because he has dealt bountifully with me.
"David confesses, that unless God cause the light of life to shine upon him, he will be immediately overwhelmed with the darkness of death, and that he is already as a man without life, unless God breathe into him new vigour."
"It is by faith that we apprehend the grace of God, which is hidden from and unknown to the understanding of the flesh."
(Commentary from Heart Aflame: Daily Readings from Calvin on the Psalms)
1 Timothy 3:1-13
This is a passage in which Paul gives Timothy some guidelines for "leaders" in the "church." Now...the ESV translates the word "overseer." According the commentary in the Reformation Study Bible, the Greek word is used interchangeably with "elder." It is important to understand that, in the New Testament church, there was no leader! Historically, the individual house churches did not have "pastors" or bishops or preachers. Every member functioned equally in the working of the church.
Now, as for this passage at hand, what is Paul referring to? I believe that he is talking about the qualities of an "elder," which was someone who did provide a type of "leadership" in the body. But it was more like someone that people could turn to for advice. And these were not "appointed" or "ordained." And "elder" was just that. Someone who was older and more mature in Christ. They did not run the church. The church was run by, well, the church. And was supposed to be controlled by Jesus Christ, who is the Head of the church.
Paul gives some moral conditions, though, to Timothy (who was probably, like Paul, a travelling church starter) to pass along to churches in consideration for who they would look to as elders. One glaring statement is this: For if someone is unable to handle his own affairs, how can he take care of God's church?
Paul then goes on to describe the conditions of the "servants." This would be what we consider to be "deacons." (Keep in mind, too, that deacons were NEVER meant to be a governing body of the church. They were originally selected to wait tables.) Paul even says, here, that they not be "using their position to try to run things." There even seems to be a provision for these "deacons" to be women. WHAT??? Hehehehe...the word translated in most traditional versions as "wives" could easily also be translated "women." So there.
Now, if we read these qualifications, how do we react? Do we read these and immediately shy away from the idea of being a "servant" in the church because we aren't "good enough?" I think that these conditions should cause us all to aspire to a higher morality in our lives. Not that being "good" makes us more spiritual, but each of us should have a desire to at least be a servant in the body of Christ. And the way the institutional church is structured, those in positions of leadership had better be "toeing the line" on these qualifications.
I pray for all people in positions of leadership in the traditional church (myself included), that we might be able to uphold these conditions as long as we are in such a position. I'm also praying for you to arrange things so that I can experience what the true church is supposed to look like and how it is supposed to work. I'm very unsatisfied with the way things are right now.
Grace and peace, friends.