A friend of mine, for 30+ years, has left the Vineyard church we have attended for most of that time. The issue he claims is causing him to leave is that the Houston Vineyard now has some women pastors, and this really offends him.
There is a male Senior pastor/teacher, and four other male pastors; who are, severally, men who facilitate Operations (& teaches Dave Ramsey type financial classes) & Life/Home Groups, Member Care and Healing, Youth & Young Adults, Intercultural & Mercy Ministries (& Biligual/Spanish). No women are "over" them.
The women pastors are a female senior pastor over the entire FEMALE Administrative staff, and the female pastor of Worship and the Arts.
All the staff are extremely gifted and talented, as well as anointed for what they do in particular, and ther is no "usurpation" taking place.
My friend is claiming that the VIneyard is making the same mistake as "the USA Anglicans and Episcopalians about 30 years ago".
He goes on to say (in an "open letter" to me, the male Senior Pastor and the Member Care & Healing Pastor):
"The fruit that followed (the USA Anglicans and Episcopalians) was the door opening to more and more divorce and acceptance of homosexual pastors, because in my opiniion, this is the gradual opening door to homosexuality and marriage breaking (against God and man) and sexual perversion because it lifts and chases away the order and covering of God, replacing it for a religious spirit counterfeit that becomes a continuous oppression that all ultimately succumb to out of weariness due to lack of liberty."
"In my current estimation -- and again, I could be quite wrong -- I think that this is a twisting of divine order and actually, that it is the homosexual spirit, entering at its first stages....just like it entered women's liberation in the 70s and has resulted in the cultural, sexual fruit of today."
He goes on to say stuff that, frankly, sounds to me like "boasting of a false gift" (wind and clouds, but no rain, hence no real fruit from God), even so far as to "hint" that his "superior discernment" of demons no one else can detect (he grew up in a communal Christian doctrinally-correct-but-personality-cult-following).
He gets a little weird in saying "There are no male and female, Jew and Greek, slave or free, etc. in the spirit as far as citizenships of those born into the kingdom of God, but there are major differences in the souls and bodies...and the woman being deceived was in the transgression". He speaks of "a wound in which we've succumbed to the swords of feminism".
He says also, "I denounce a "seeker sensitive" false gospel and a mommy God who is too nice and too much into touchy feely counseling instead of the fear and power of God of war, the Lord of Hosts, and God as Judge. Yes, we comfort the afflicted. But, I see us comforting the comforted.".
Finally, he says, "Some direct bad fruit that I foresee, is unbelievers coming in and seeing a woman pastor at the pulpit. Some men would want to run out the door, thinking that they'd found a church full of wussies, and in my opinion, as it stands so far, they have", and "I again say that I think that it is nothing less than the homosexual spirit and the rebellion of apostasy and maybe the root of that is our pride, the lack of fasting, and the forgetting of the poor, according to what scripture says was the sin of Sodom.
Our city is certainly a city of Sodom and we're known for having much sexual sin and human trafficking -- and...for our high percentage of obesity".
On the 23 of April, our Senior Pastro will be teaching, on a Friday, about how to minister to homosexuals in God's love.
You can see the possible cinflict. Perhaps it's better my friend fellowships elsewhere for the time being. Pray for him, please.
Any feedback? I feel God is as against sexism, as much as against slavery--both still exist today. If Jesus and/or Paul had made slavery and sexism their main focus, the Romans would have easily destroyed the church. In the Millenial Kingdom, I seriously doubt gender will be an issue.
OT2