Sunday, April 15, 2007

Effeminizing the Church (Part 2)

Ladies, Nathan Busenitz has been "live blogging" his church's men's conference this week. The theme of the conference is, "Acting Like Men in the Church".

As it often is with the things of God, the timing of this topic has caught my attention! Just yesterday while attending a women's retreat, I sat at a table with two other ladies whose husbands are in church leadership. The topic turned to movies and I commented on a series of books that had recently been made into a series of movies. I pointed out that I enjoyed reading the books many years ago but did not recall them the way the movies portray them--practically devoid of male spiritual leadership. While the movies are "wholesome", two out of the three we've watched so far focus on and highlight the spiritual awareness and responsiveness of the women while downplaying--if not ignoring--the spiritual leadership of the men/husband, as if this was or should be the "norm".

So, today when I read the FOURTH SESSION of the conference, I took particular note of Phil Johnson's words as a warning to us all--men and women! Phil pointed out that, "If we look at evangelicalism today, it seems that evangelicalism today is committed to feminine truths. If men will embrace a feminine approach to relationships and spirituality then they are welcome in the church. Everything, even the tone of the preacher, is expected to be soft—more-suited to the sewing circle than anything else. Accuracy and plain speaking has been devalued, and replaced with a love affair for things like the seeker-sensitive movement...And it is about to get worse with the emerging church — where truth is not held with courage and conviction. What we see today, instead of reflecting biblical Christianity, is a movement toward ear-tickling, truth-softening, and effeminization."

Ladies, I hope you'll read the notes from Phil's session and consider how you can and should uphold and support the Godly men in your family, church and community. We need strong Xian men who will not only "act like men" and stand for the truth, but who are CONFIDENT of our support and commitment to follow their leadership.

1 comment:

Kim said...

Not only ought we to support the godly men in our midst, but if we have sons, we ought to teach them not to shun the god-ordained role of leader. I have seen this within my own local church, where young men who desire to show leadership are put down by their own parents because they perceive that the young man is being impertinent. Boys should be encouraged to embrace their roles, not buy into the feminism that pervades their world.

Thanks for bringing this up, Connie!