Personally, I like the idea of elders leading small groups. And I mean really elder, gray hair and all – both male and female. I’m kind of bored/burnt out on age segregation in Christian circles.

It’s true, people aren’t trained to do much more than sit and listen and sing along. That’s all fine, but it should never have become the extent of our Christianity. The real ‘meat’ is in personal growth, and that won’t happen with the typical quarterly lesson book or devotional guide. We’ve lost the model Jesus gave of a mentor, an internship. Generations have been raised on Christianity lite and pop psychology.

It takes time, but there’s no reason we can’t get the few who really know the Scriptures to each take a small group and slowly get them used to participating. And we need to re-learn that ‘building each other up’ isn’t just a theological exercise, but a life. The first believers shared their lives, not like many in the churches who invite a new family for lunch when they first ‘join,’ and then only ever see them in their ‘spot’ in the sanctuary each Sunday.

I’m being ‘schooled’ about this right now. We left the Institution and I’m giving family Bible studies. It’s kind of a challenge to find topics that work for an adult, a pre-teen, and a nine-year-old. We just take it one week at a time. Above all, I want my kids to learn that being a Christian means an active life of interaction as well as personal study.

I think part of the problem is that we are not maturing up enough believers to do this well. I have seen problems with people who attempt to interject in the service, who obviously do not know their Bible, and the main problem is that not enough people know their Bible well enough to realize that the pastor is not upset that the person is interjecting, but rather trying very hard to prevent the person from teaching something false without offending.

How do we get people to want to mature, rather than snore, during the sermon? (Obviously empowering women frees up half of the congregation that is not always encouraged to use whatever knowledge they have attained in many church settings… Actually, perhaps more knowledgeable women would help encourage the men to do the same?)

That should read ‘the control of the lesser by the greater’ or ‘the control of the greater over the lesser.’

Aw, you know what I meant.

I read the New Testament about how believers behaved, remembering that the earliest were all Jews and would not just suddenly drop everything, but even so there is little that resembles what has been traditional practice since Constantine. People just got together to share their lives, their meals, their gifts. Some were elders because they knew the Scriptures well and lived them out. Such were to teach the others and bring them along side as elders someday, or at least to an acceptable degree of maturity.

This is in stark contrast to the typical Sunday school student who never graduates, the child who never grows up, the eternal dependent. The sight of a young seminary graduate teaching the ‘senior adult’ class just has ‘wrong’ written all over it. But most of all, ‘church-ianity’ is built upon hierarchy. It has to be; a business must have layers of management and a CEO at the top.

But Jesus didn’t set up an organization, he set up an organism. We are parts of one body, not employees or worker bees. The ‘pulpit’ (find that in the New Testament), raised platform, theater seating, stained glass windows, robes, programs, chants – it’s all from ancient Greco-Roman society.

Sadly, though, house churches seem to have thrown off all those pagan trappings but one: misogyny. Some of them are even stricter than the SBC. They recognize ‘the priesthood of all believers’ – well, all except you. All the males can do what we see in the New Testament, but the females must remain silent in the ‘services.’ How they can see one but not the other just defies all reason.

What is it about misogyny, over all other sins, other practices, other traditions? Why is it the universal quality of societies and religions worldwide throughout history? Genesis 3:15.

Ultimately, the common practices of ‘church-ianity’ and misogyny have hierarchy in common, the control of the ‘greater’ by the ‘lesser.’ It’s all about control, about who is in charge, about defining limits for other people.

In 1 Corinthians… Paul talks about one bringing a song, another a word, etc… there is so much more mutual sharing when God’s people gather. They didn’t even do church like we do… our model is based on the synagogue model.

With my small group we do prayer that everyone can participate in… popcorn prayers, everyone adds and someone is appointed to open and close. Prayer is a communal thing – why make it about one person having more authority than another and then ranking who should do it when?

Such ranking diminishes prayer and robs believers of their own authority. It all comes from the umbrella theory of authority by Gothard… that stuff just never dies.

What harm would result from a woman praying aloud in the presence of a man? Honestly, I can think of no bad thing whatsoever. Now if said man were to define his manhood or his spirituality or his self-worth by keeping women from praying in his presence, then such flawed measures of manhood might well be harmed. But again, I find no potential harm of any kind. That’s the sort of consequence that needs to happen, in my opinion. If you only get personal strokes from keeping an entire gender silent in your presence, then you need to forego those personal strokes.

It is interesting all the ways that people find to create so-called Christian law codes out of this world’s unbiblical traditions. It’s plain old ugly misogyny, wrapped up in religious trappings.

I’m erring on the side of freedom.