The Story of Ruth–Part Two

The Story of Ruth–Part Two Earlier I wrote about an elderly woman in our congregation named Ruth. That was not the end of her story. Because of declining health and the need for help managing her 24/7 oxygen requirements, Ruth spent her last few years in a...

Soft Is Hard

Soft Is Hard Through many years of helping organizations implement major changes, I had to remind myself constantly of the maxim that “hard is easy; soft is hard.” We could produce a detailed implementation timeline, plan for all the contingencies, and line up all the...

Book, Chapter, and Verse

Book, Chapter, and Verse Often when seeking justification for a particular Christian belief or practice a person will ask for “Book, Chapter, and Verse.” This rightly flows from our belief that the Bible is the ultimate source for everything about our Christian lives....

The Story of Ruth

The Story of Ruth Sadly, many sincere Christians seem to believe that the simple act of a woman reading a passage of Scripture in the Sunday assembly would be an act of “exercising authority” (I Tim. 2:12) over the men present. I guess their experience of the way men...

The way we’ve always done it

The way we’ve always done it When our congregation was preparing to change our practice by more actively involving our women in the Sunday assemblies, the elders met in pairs with every member of the church. We had studied the matter in the Bible extensively for...

Only boys go up there

Only boys go up there One Sunday morning before our congregation completed its Bible study of what women may do in the assembly, my preschool grandson turned to me with this incredulous look on his face and observed, “Only boys go up there.” This was the first time he...