Monthly Archives: September 2011

Elders: May an Elder Serve with No Children? Discerning Whether a Command is Temporary or Permanent, a Reply re Parts 1 and 2

Interesting discussion. Let me add a few points. 1. First, I can’t tell you how much it pleases me for the discussion to have begun with acknowledgment that inferential truths are not fellowship issues. However, I worry about the distinction … Continue reading

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Tulsa Workshop

As mentioned earlier, I’ll be speaking at the Tulsa Workshop in the spring. They have me set for for Friday afternoon, March 23, 2012.  The first session will be at 2:00, second session at 3:00, and third session at 4:00. The topics are … Continue reading

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Elders: May an Elder Serve with No Children? Discerning Whether a Command is Temporary or Permanent, Part 2

We’re considering the broader principles of how to distinguish an eternal command from a culturally limited command. In the last post, we considered the basis for concluding that slavery is wrong even though the Scriptures do not condemn slavery, that … Continue reading

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Elders: May an Elder Serve with No Children? Discerning Whether a Command is Temporary or Permanent, Part 1

Several times in the comments the question has arisen as to how to tell whether a command is temporary (culturally limited) or permanent (not culturally limited). It’s a question that is, of course, much larger than this particular topic. There … Continue reading

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Health Insurance for Ministers

Occasionally, I open the pages of the blog to reader to present information that I think may be of great value to many of the readers. At my suggestion, reader Steven Sarff has written a post describing one means by which … Continue reading

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Alabama vs. Arkansas 2011

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Elders: May an Elder Serve with No Children? Discerning the Nature of the Lists (edited)

Continuing with the line of reasoning presented in the last post, we need to make a list of the possibilities. This what I find in the comments and commentaries, but others may have other possibilities to add. * The passages … Continue reading

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Elders: May an Elder Serve with No Children? Toward a Better Process for Deciding

When we’re confronted with a difficult choice — a choice where there are more data and more possibilities than we can easily think through, we tend to look for “handles,” that is, easy things to grab to get an answer. Thus, in the … Continue reading

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Elders: May an Elder Serve with No Children? Analysis of the Analysis

Since I’m on hiatus, I’ve found myself reflecting on the last post quite a bit. And in reading through the comments, I noticed some patterns I thought might be worth mentioning. First, no one said anything about the joke on the … Continue reading

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On Hiatus

I’m taking a break. Not real long, but I’ve got stuff to tend to. Got lots of posts in my head but not enough time to get them out. Just need to take a few days without posting much of … Continue reading

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