In this presentation Pastor Lambert further considers the Fall of Adam and Eve in Genesis three. In the garden did role-reversal play a part in the Fall from paradise? And when were Adam and Eve’s eyes opened according to Romans? Lambert follows by addressing the remarkable theory that Eve was a priestess in Eden.
Pastor Mike Lambert continues with part 3 of his series, “A gender agenda.” In this message, Lambert addresses texts including Ephesians 5; 1 Timothy 2; 1 Corinthians 11, and Genesis 2, and discusses creation order.
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1 Corinthians 1 Timothy Biblical Interpretation CAP authors Complimentarian Council of Adventist Pastors (CAP) Doctrine of Unity Equality Galatians Gender Headship Marriage Mike Lambert North American Division (NAD) Ordination Without Regard to Gender Seventh-day Adventist Church Submission Unity Women in Ministry Women's Ordination
A gender agenda, part 2
In this second of six presentations, Pr. Mike Lambert addresses important texts including Galatians 3:28, 1 Corinthians, and 1 Timothy, especially addressing unity and equality and role distinctions. Pastor Lambert also draws important connections between the home and the church. This sermon was preached at the Stateline Seventh-day Adventist Church in Milton-Freewater, OR.
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Annual Council CAP authors Church governance Columbia Union Conference (CUC) Complimentarian Council of Adventist Pastors (CAP) Culturally driven Distinct roles E-60 Ellen G. White Equality Feminist Theology Galatians Gender General Conference General Conference Session 2015 San Antonio General Conference Working Policy Headship Insubordination Male-sex specific roles Mike Lambert NAD TOSC Report NAD Working Policy NAD Year-end Meeting North American Division (NAD) Ordination Without Regard to Gender OrdinationTruth.com Pacific Union Conference (PUC) Polity Sandra Roberts Sandy Roberts SECC SECC constituency meeting Seventh-day Adventist Church Southeastern California Conference Theology of Ordination Study Committee (TOSC) Unilateral Action Unity Utrecht General Conference Session 1995 Women in Ministry Women's Ordination YEM
A gender agenda, part 1
Mike Lambert, pastor of the Stateline, Oregon, Seventh-day Adventist Church, delivers the first of six presentations—all of which we shall post online over the next few weeks, from his series titled “A gender agenda.” In the series, Pr. Lambert addresses the cluster of texts and arguments favoring and opposing women’s ordination, with associated issues. In this first part, Elder Lambert begins to address Galatians 3:28 but also provides a quick but careful walk through the historic developments of the issue in the Seventh-day Adventist church from its beginning right up to the present. Stateline Church is located immediately south of Walla Walla/College Place, WA.
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Acts Adventist Today Biblical Interpretation Church governance Cindy Tutsch Congregationalism Council of Adventist Pastors (CAP) delegated authority Doctrine Doctrine of the Church Doctrine of Unity Feminist Theology Gender General Conference Session 2015 San Antonio Headship Liberation Theology Male-sex specific roles NAD TOSC Report Ordination Without Regard to Gender Principle-based Historical-cultural Method Queer Theology Reader-response criticism Rosemary Radford Ruether Seventh-day Adventist Church Theology of Ordination Study Committee (TOSC) Unity Virginia R. Mollenkott Women in Ministry Women's Ordination
A new path?
Our pastors have given thought to an article recently published on the internet and offer this little response. The article in question proposes that the Seventh-day Adventist Church not follow the path of other churches by not splitting over the question of women’s ordination. We certainly desire that the church not split! But what is the truly pivotal question, the one which determines whether we are united or divided? And why does the author avoid it? We address this in “A New Path?” FIND IT HERE.
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Biblical Interpretation Council of Adventist Pastors (CAP) Culturally driven Daniel Scarone Doctrine of Holy Scripture Doctrine of the Church Feminist Theology Junia Male-sex specific roles Nancy Vyhmeister Ordination Without Regard to Gender OrdinationTruth.com Seventh-day Adventist Church Theology of Ordination Study Committee (TOSC) Women in Ministry Women's Ordination
Women's ordination—the biblical vs. the theological: is this the question?
Pastor Daniel Scarone reminds what the New Testament church did and did not do with reference to female pastors, bishops, and church members, and points out the challenges of theological versus biblical approaches. Lucid material!
FIND IT HERE.
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Ad Hoc Committee on Women in Leadership Annual Council Attitude Biblical Interpretation Church governance Columbia Union Conference (CUC) Council of Adventist Pastors (CAP) delegated authority Distinct roles Doctrine of the Church Doctrine of Unity E-60 General Conference General Conference Session 2015 San Antonio General Conference Working Policy Gleaner Headship Homosexuality Insubordination Male-sex specific roles Methods of Bible Study 1986 NAD TOSC Report NAD Working Policy NAD Year-end Meeting North American Division (NAD) North Pacific Union Conference (NPUC) NPUC Ex Com Decisions NPUC Executive Committee Ordination Without Regard to Gender Pacific Union Conference (PUC) Principle-based Historical-cultural Method Rio Document 1986 Sandra Roberts Sandy Roberts SECC SECC constituency meeting Second Wave Feminist Theology Seventh-day Adventist Church South Africa-Indian Ocean Division (SID) South American Division (SAD) Southeastern California Conference Ted N.C. Wilson The President's Report Theology of Ordination Study Committee (TOSC) Unilateral Action Utrecht General Conference Session 1995 Women in Ministry Women's Ordination
One year ago today. . .
Exactly one year ago on February 4, 2013 the OrdinationTruth.com website went live. Much has happened this past year. Reflecting on the past orients us for the future.
The attempt to introduce women’s ordination (the practice of women and men in the Church serving interchangeably in positions of spiritual authority) has a history in our midst. The emphasis as it has developed in our lifetime has its rise in the 1960s. The ordination of women as local elders was introduced at 1986 Annual Council.
In due course, the ordination of women as pastors with full global authority was addressed at two General Conference sessions (1990 and 1995). Decisions were made at the highest level of church authority. The Church refused to take the step of ordaining women to these positions of spiritual authority. Our brothers and sisters were not convinced that the practice was reconcilable with Scripture.
By 2009, North American Division (NAD) leadership remained urgent to proceed. They targeted the Church’s E-60 policy. This world church guidance forbade women from serving in male headship positions such as conference and union president. But General Conference (GC) leadership upheld the decisions of the GC sessions (exactly what did NAD leadership expect?).
After an extended interaction between the NAD and GC, NAD leadership saw they could not prevail by following the rules; GC policy was too clear. The result? In early 2012 the NAD president wrote to the leaders of NAD Unions inciting them to action with directions such as the following:
“The North American Division and its Unions and Conferences (as local circumstances permit) must become more intentional in the development of pathways to ministry for female pastors. We must also develop intentional methods of mentoring women who can take on executive leadership positions within our conferences. . . . We must continue to move this matter forward throughout the North American Division” (Quoted in the E-60 link above).
The division president told them that in order to bring change they would have to make it happen at union and conference levels.
The result of this astonishing move came with speed. By midyear NAD’s Columbia and Pacific Unions had held special meetings and voted themselves their own variances, placing themselves in opposition to the world church. They denied the authority of the 1990/1995 General Conference sessions. They even acted in the face of earnest appeals by the General Conference administration which sent our current president to these meetings to plead that they not act in disunity.
It should not be passed over that these actions were undertaken even as the current GC administration was responding to the 2010 General Conference session request to revisit the question of women’s ordination by forming the Theology of Ordination Study Committee (TOSC), a gathering of more than 100 scholars, laypeople, pastors, and administrators representing all 13 world Divisions of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. And yet, even as that process was beginning, these Unions exceeded their authority and began to “ordain” women.
When we in the North Pacific Union Conference (NPUC) learned from our union paper, Gleaner, that the NPUC had created an ad hoc committee to study these matters and that our Union would now “educate” church members concerning the basis for “ordination without regard to gender,” after which it would hold a special session as Columbia and Pacific Unions had, we knew forces were converging which might lead to the same insubordinate outcome as those Unions. It became necessary that we investigate further for ourselves, and then seek to aid our Union and if possible influence it not to join itself to the example of the other NAD Unions.
Appeals were forwarded to NPUC leadership. We pleaded that the proposed steps not be taken. We are thankful that until now the NPUC has not held a similar session.
Surveying the situation, we saw that issues were not contained to the NPUC, and heard from many from across the NAD who were as alarmed as ourselves at actions now manifesting in the North American field. Because the NPUC continued to send mixed signals, our initially chosen name (“NPUC Supporting Pastors”) made unclear what we did and did not support. Growing interest throughout the NAD and a desire from others outside our Union who wished to participate led us to change our name to the Council of Adventist Pastors (CAP). Now pastors throughout the North American Division territory could participate.
What the NAD president and Columbia and Pacific Unions had begun continued to bear its fruit. In October 2013, the Southeastern California Conference constituency, in opposition to its world church, elected Ms. Sandra Roberts to serve as its president in direct violation of E-60 and GC session decisions.
This was not all. Each Division invited to be involved in TOSC had been asked to study the issues surrounding women’s ordination. NAD leadership appointed itself a committee, too. Its committee released a 249 page report pleading that the world church permit it to ordain women.
Most astonishing of all was that—at last—the unavoidable issue of hermeneutics was placed front and center. The NAD admitted in its report that in order to neutralize the Bible evidence opposing the ordination of women, it was necessary to use a plan of biblical interpretation they called the “Principle-based, Historical-cultural” method.
This method is said to be intended only for selective use. It is to be applied especially in the interpretation of what the NAD called “difficult” New Testament “headship” texts. The NAD-proposed method exactly contradicts the longstanding Seventh-day Adventist approach to biblical interpretation called the Historical-grammatical approach, voted by Annual Council in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1986.
We commend current NAD leadership for their lucid admission that this change in interpretive methodology is required to make possible the achievement of their purpose. But is the church ready to lay aside the Historical-grammatical approach that Scripture interprets Scripture? Is it ready to discard the one methodical approach to the Bible which has led to our unity on a worldwide basis in embracing the seventh day Sabbath, and our adherence to the literal, physical, visible, audible Second Coming of Jesus with kindred truths?
We believe that every church member within the North American Divisions would be blessed by the NAD’s Minority report.
Another development of interest coming from TOSC has been that some in our world divisions have called for a return to biblical fidelity on the issue of women elders, that the practice be discontinued.
“There is a lack of biblical precedence for the appointment of female elders…. there is no biblical support for the ordination of woman pastors. The ordination of women elders should also not be considered. That implies that as from the action date, women shall no longer serve as elders” (Summary of the South Africa-Indian Ocean Division Biblical Research Committee on the Ordination of Women, pp. 1, 3, at
http://www.adventistarchives.org/brc-southern-africa-indian-ocean-division-presentation.pdf, accessed 2014-02-04).
Other Divisions have also found the desire to ordain women as pastors having global authority biblically unsustainable. For example, consider these notes from fellow believers in the South American Division:
In the New Testament, the preeminence of male spiritual leadership is seen in the role of the husband at home (Eph 5:22-33; Col 3:18-19; 1 Cor 11:3), in the leadership of the apostles, the elders and the deacons in the Church (Acts 6:1-6; 17 14:23; 15:6, 22; 1 Cor 12:28; Eph 2:20; 4:11; 1 Tim 3:1-13; Titus 1:5-9), and in the ministry of the prophets, the pastors-teachers, and the evangelists (Acts 13:1; 21:8; 1 Cor 12:28; Eph 4:11). . . . The New Testament plainly presents the qualifications required for someone to become a bishop/presbyter/pastor (1 Tim 3:1-7; Titus 1:5-9). According to these texts, the pastoral ministry seems to belong to a distinctive area of male spiritual leadership in the Church. Faithfulness to biblical teaching predicates the need to follow this orientation. There is no clear biblical basis, therefore, to ordain women to the pastoral ministry” (South American Division Summary and Report on its Study and Proposal on the Ordination of Women to the Pastoral Ministry, pp. 3, 4, http://www.adventistarchives.org/brc-south-american-division-presentation.pdf, accessed 2014-02-04).
We find ourselves much in agreement with these initiatives which would help restore consistency and unity and help revitalize as a global people our faithfulness to the Bible.
Looking to developments anticipated between now and 2015, we remain alert. Columbia and Pacific union leadership remain in place, and those Unions are presently “ordaining” women in opposition to the General Conference session determined position of the world church. Those Unions are presently operating in flagrant defiance of the world church. They have substituted their authority for the authority of the General Conference.
Another trend we already see is pro-WO advocates urging that the General Conference is illegitimately gathering power to itself, centralizing its authority. We anticipate that these unfounded charges will be broadcast ever more loudly by those who insist on acting in contradiction to the appeals for unity which have been offered on behalf of the world church.
TOSC is set to complete its study process this year and forward its report to 2014 GC Annual Council. The NAD’s proposed “Principle-based, Historical-cultural” method is now public knowledge and Adventists are only just beginning to process the implications that would follow its adoption. Shall the Seventh-day Adventist Church endorse the ordination of females to male headship roles? Possibly. But if so, it is clear now that it will be at the cost of the most primitive, basic issue of all—how we interpret Scripture.
It is urgent that we count the cost now before we buy the product in 2015. If we are going to charge women’s ordination on the Seventh-day Adventist hermeneutical credit card, we must first consider what it will cost in the long term.
Although we have had an enormous response to our continuing study and website, many Seventh-day Adventists—even some pastors—remain unaware of this website or of the existence of the Council of Adventist Pastors. We encourage all readers to share this blog post link with fellow Adventists and especially with your pastors who, in this one post, will have a sample of links and materials the scores of pastors who are CAP have shared. Maybe your pastor would like to participate?
And now: Let OrdinationTruth.com year two BEGIN! . . .
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Attitude Biblical Interpretation Council of Adventist Pastors (CAP) Culturally driven General Conference General Conference Session 2015 San Antonio Hermeneutic of Suspicion Historical-grammatical method Methods of Bible Study 1986 NAD TOSC Report Ordination Without Regard to Gender OrdinationTruth.com Principle-based Historical-cultural Method Rio Document 1986 Seventh-day Adventist Church Theology of Ordination Study Committee (TOSC) Unity Women in Ministry Women's Ordination
January 2014 TOSC: a report
Recent days have found some of us in communication with participants in the Theology of Ordination Study Committee. Thus, it has been interesting when several persons not present in that meeting have urgently sought to post in links and comments copies of certain news reports to OrdinationTruth.com. (Indeed, one significantly slanted report has been quietly withdrawn.) We have read these reports, comparing notes with some present at TOSC. It is even being reported that the chair of the committee feels most of the divisions are willing to accept women’s ordination and that the time for study has passed.
Whether or not this individual is being quoted in context we do not know. We do know this: the Seventh-day Adventist Church will determine whether or not to ordain women in the 2015 General Conference session. It will not be determined by TOSC or any news network, website, conference, union, or division.
We also know that current deliberations are of necessity conducted in an atmosphere of biases, influences and threats. Some articles in print and online with women’s ordination under discussion have included reminders that funding supporting church mission in overseas divisions is, in measure, dependent upon North American dollars. Neither are we unaware that for the past several decades, pro-WO North American Adventist academic opinion has been exported round the world through an influence traceable to Andrews University international students. Therefore, it is no surprise to us if the current dominant North American academic perspective has filtered into the leadership ranks in places far afield.
The January 2014 TOSC included a more significant and contentious discussion of hermeneutics than previous meetings. Positions on hermeneutics within TOSC at present are in sharp disagreement. This is no surprise, since proposed changes to how the Church interprets Scripture would be unparalleled in our history, and have the most far-reaching impact on its ability to maintain a distinct Seventh-day Adventist identity and mission going forward.
Never before in Seventh-day Adventist work have changes contemplated been so significant. This situation seems an unlikely time to discontinue investigation. If the goal of this most extensive study is an enduring solution for the Church, the issue of hermeneutics cannot be avoided. It is impossible to envision any unifying solution with the church markedly divided over methods of interpretation. The Church has long agreed that the Historical-grammatical approach be used while avoiding even a modified use of methods that approach the Scriptures from a critical standpoint. The North American Division is asking the church to embrace hermeneutical pluralism, to approve the practice of a method of interpretation in direct contradiction to the Historical-grammatical.
Is this the path to unity?
When the Council of Adventist Pastors began publishing this website a year ago, we stated that a part of the reason for its operation was as an alternative resource for church members where information provided might sometimes be at odds with “officially” presented news and views. None should be surprised when OrdinationTruth.com chooses not to echo lines that have been predetermined to sustain certain preferred perspectives.
God has His hand on the wheel. A world church is considering these matters. Issues are becoming more sharply defined. The Holy Spirit is working. Pray for all as the Church seeks to follow the lead of He who is still its Head, Jesus.
Louis R. Torres takes a look at a phrase commonly used (“Priesthood of all believers”, but probes a bit deeper in this short article. FIND IT HERE.
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Biblical Interpretation CAP authors Council of Adventist Pastors (CAP) Culturally driven E.D. Hirsch Headship Hermeneutic of Suspicion Historical-Critical Method Historical-grammatical method Jim Brackett Larry Kirkpatrick Male-sex specific roles Methods of Bible Study 1986 NAD TOSC Report North American Division (NAD) Ordination Without Regard to Gender OrdinationTruth.com Postmodernism Principle-based Historical-cultural Method Reader-response criticism Redemptive hermeneutic Rio Document 1986 Seventh-day Adventist Church The Welcome Table Trajectory theology Women in Ministry Women's Ordination
NAD's PBHC hermeneutic: a closer look
This short program examines the North American Division “Majority Report” proposed “Principle-based, Historical-cultural” (PBHC) method of biblical interpretation. The method has been proposed as a means of dealing with certain “difficult texts” proponents of women’s ordination (WO) have struggled with. With the use of the PBHC method, the difficult texts disappear, and “no conclusive evidence prohibiting the ordination of women can be found in the Bible.” This video examines proposed guidelines for when to use PBHC, notes its close relation to the Historical-critical method, and discusses its embrace of reader-response criticism. Finally, the question is answered, can this method be considered to be compatible with longstanding Seventh-day Adventist use of the Historical-grammatical method. In behalf of the Council of Adventist Pastors (CAP) host Jim Brackett interviews Pr Larry Kirkpatrick.