Tuesday 29 May 2007

The Zimmers

The Zimmers have made a huge impact, not only in the English charts, but on just about every major news programme across the world.

Their youtube site has had more than 2million hits and, on their myspace site, they boast such friends as Lulu, Simon Cowell, Bryan Ferry and Amy Winehouse.

Some of those who took part in the recording at Abbey Road studio hadn’t left their home for a long time. In fact, one woman hadn’t left her home for 3 years until she went to London to make the video.

The show which spawned this video was a documentary on the BBC looking at the isolation of the elderly in Britain. The programme and subsequent record certainly changed that, even if for rehearsals and recording. Rather than using the money to take themselves on holiday (either collectively or individually), or doing up their homes, lifting themselves out of poverty or giving the money to their children or grandchildren, the group of 40 have decided that the money which is made will go to help support those charities working with the elderly.

What has all of this got to do with women in ministry or ministry for that matter?

Well, on seeing their websites, I had to ask myself what the potential is for our church to impact a community in this kind of way. Barring the obscenity at the end, it really does make you think, cause the mind to do flips and to ponder the ways in which ministry is done and the potential to reach out in a way that has such a major impact!

Thursday 24 May 2007

Level Seven

Level Seven have organised another thought provoking seminar. This one will be held at the House of Commons. The topic? Politics and Religion. Something dear to the heart of all adventists.

Tuesday 22 May 2007

Blogging for Beginners

What is the blogging thing that seems to be taking over the internet? It's is a growing phenomenon which is fast becoming a means of sharing information where there is a gap in establishment media outlets. It's fast and it's accurate, it's light and breezy and it's easy to do. There are posts on almost any subject under the sun. This blog is focussing on women in ministry.

The blogging phenomenon is still challenging people to think and some are still coming to grips with it. There are plenty of guidelines out there on how to write a successful blog and some of them are well worth taking a look at.

The post includes links to a few that are out there otherwise you can google and take a look for yourself.

Blogger.com which hosts this blog has its very own blog for bloggers gives lots of guidance on bloggers. They have tips and tricks and there are quick tips here.

There is a bit of an art to getting people to read your blog and, apart from telling family and rriends there are a few simple things that can be done. There are all sorts of ways to draw people to reading the blog and one mechanism is called
tagging. These really should be place on all entries once written as this will drive traffic. Increasing traffic has its own advantages and, unless we only want to talk to ourselves, it is an important step.

There are other simple tricks such as Technorati and
del.icio.us which we are now registerd to and or on our sidebar.

There are many more little things that can be done to make the site a success and I will continue to give you pointers as we develop and grow!
Carole

Monday 21 May 2007

Drug Runner Turned Pastor

Athiest, turned drug runner, turned Rasta, turned theology student, turned Adventist Pastor. Some journey. Although not a female pastor I couldn't resist sharing his story with you all. check it out here. You can also read more about his ministy on his own blog and ministry website. This is what you call mission!

Carole Williams

More Questions than Answers

It would be interesting to hear now about any comments received by women theology students while at seminary or while out in the local churches.

The reason I ponder on those comments is because, being a fourth generation Adventist women who was never given any indication that there were any areas of life which I was excluded from, I often ask myself where conversations on the role of women in ministry stem from. Are they real? Are the restrictions on women in ministry new or have restrictions always existed? Did I miss out on the conversations are was there a complete lack of discussion because it had never even been considered a possibility? And, what is the basis is for current conversations and debates? Is sensitivity to such debates heightened by a situation which really does exist out there and is there real and tangible opposition to women in the ministry? Or is there more support than people would let on? Will these questions be answered while we are still in seminary or will real opposition only come once we get out there and are posted in a church?

If the answer to that last question are yes, then how much of our attention will be focussed on trying to do the day-job rather than establishing an effective ministry which reaches the needs of the local community? If our energies are negatively refocused in this way will we be able to fulfil our calling to the ministry?

I know this poses more questions that it does answers but that reflects the complexity of the matter, the myriad of unanswered questions which do exist and which, many generations from now, women ministerial students and women ministers may still be asking.

Rather than answering any questions, I am going to leave one more for consideration and, possibly even comments. What was the basis for the decision to do nothing unless and until every conference votes in the affirmative? And how can that decision be taken when there is no baseline data to support the decision?

Carole Williams

Wednesday 9 May 2007

Can Women Preach?

Of Lulu Wightman who planted churches in Hornellsville, Gas Springs, Wallace, Silver Creek, Geneva, Angola, Gorham, Fredonia, Avoca, Rushville, Canandaigua, and Penn Yan USA, Bert Haloviak said of that she ". . . tangible evidence of her `call' to gospel ministry," "Indeed, the results from her evangelism would rank her not only as the most outstanding evangelist in New York State during the time, but among the most successful within the denomination for any time period."

Monday 7 May 2007

Women Should Refrain from Speaking in Church!?!?

Many people find themselves in hot water when they quote Paul’s first letter to Timothy and assume that he was suggesting that women should stay at home and that they should not be able to teach in church.

Two thousand years later and this text is being used to discourage women from entering the ministry or, if they do enter the ministry, it is used to stop them playing a full role.

Interesting, however, readers continue to make the same perennial mistake and take the text out of its socio-historical setting. They also fail to appreciate or to recognise that there are different kinds of passages within the Bible. There are those which a) describe events practices at that time and b) to describe teach principles for universal application.

The passage in 1 Timothy 2:9-15 describes events and practices.

Without putting much effort anyone who is interested can find out that Paul was encouraging Timothy to confront false teachings within the church at Ephesus because his own trip was going to be delayed. In the meantime, his set his words down on paper and suggested that Timothy tell the women in that day and at that time to refrain from teaching as their teachings were false. They were, however, not alone in giving false teachings. There was much of it going on in the church and the men had an equal part to play.

It is also clear from reading other passages that Paul was, in fact, supportive of women in the ministry. See for example Romans 16:1,2,7 and Philippians 4:2,3. Note that, it is in this passage that the only female apostle is mentioned and that, despite the ongoing debate among scholars about the identification of Junia, no record of the male name "Junias" has ever been discovered in extra-biblical Greek literature. (What ever you think about women as minister, read the book reveiw about Junia or even buy the book for yourself.)

Paul also referred to Priscilla as ‘a fellow worker in Christ’ Jesus (Rom 16:3) and of Euodia and Syntyche, he said, ‘these women who laboured with me in the gospel’ (Philippians 4:3).

In reality, there is neither the time nor the space in this blog to do justice to the depth of study needed to tackle the sort of comments thrown at women as they go through seminary but there are plenty of resources on the internet which can be used to help deal with the simplistic generalisations we all too often hear.

Whatever your thoughts, this would make a good dissertation for Greek scholars out there!


Carole Williams

Proving God

WARNING some may find the content in these links disturbing

The Rational Response Squad were recently given airtime on ABC Nightline to discuss their blasphemy challenge.

Their aim in life? To prove that God does not exist.

Brian of the Rational Response Squad used to be a Catholic, then a born again Christian and now he’s a self proclaimed atheist running a weekly internet radio show to ‘cure theism’. The Squad have set out to call atheists to publicly deny God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit and people seem to be responding and with ABC’s recent broadcasts and their pages on You Tube, more people will foolishly do the same. In fact, one respondent has dubbed herself Dominique666.

With sites like this and ardent adversaries what is the challenge for women coming into ministry or who are already in ministry? Is there anything the church can do to counter the ads which the Squad has post on websites aimed at young people? To what extent is this indicative of the work we are faced with and how can we use a full ‘toolkit’ (what ever that might be) to counter the impact this kind of thing has on the very people we are dedicating our lives to working with? These are only questions I know, but these are questions which are particularly pertinent in a day and age where young people have so little hope that they will take up a knife or gun and critically wound a fellow classmate without knowing understanding or thinking of the eternal impact and consequences.

On the other hand, is this the sort of thing that we need to be coming together to talk about or is ministry and studying for ministry taking up so much of our time that we don’t’ have the space in our calenders, the energy or the will to deal with the Brian’s and the Kelly’s of this world?

The other questions this recording left me with was, isn’t this proselytising? I don’t know about you, but in this clip, I heard their own atheist liturgy, prayers and there was plenty of evidence of their outreach programme!

Carole Williams