Posted on 08/27/2006 4:21:52 PM PDT by doc30
Woman Taught Sunday School For 54 Years
WATERTOWN, N.Y. -- The pastor of a church that has stopped letting women teach Sunday school said that won't affect his decisions as a city councilman in upstate New York.
The First Baptist Church in Watertown dismissed Mary Lambert Aug. 9 after adopting what it called a literal interpretation of the Bible.
The reverend recently dismissed Lambert, who had taught Sunday school for 54 years, citing the biblical advice of the apostle Paul: "I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent."
Lambert has publicly criticized the decision.
The church board said other issues were behind Lambert's dismissal, but it did not say what they were.
LaBouf, who also serves on the Watertown City Council, issued a statement saying his stance against women teaching men in Sunday school would not affect his decisions as a city leader in Watertown, where all five members of the council are men but the city manager who runs the city's day-to-day operations is a woman.
"I believe that a woman can perform any job and fulfill any responsibility that she desires to" outside the church, LaBouf wrote Saturday.
Mayor Jeffrey Graham, however, was bothered by the reasons given Lambert's dismissal.
"If what's said in that letter reflects the councilman's views, those are disturbing remarks in this day and age," Graham said. "Maybe they wouldn't have been disturbing 500 years ago, but they are now."
HA ... fat chance in hell I'd be silent
"He should convert to Islam that way we will have all the nuts in one basket."
LOL That's what I was thinking.
How many men is she teaching? It sounds more like children to me.
This is wrong. She taught Sunday school for the past 11 years. She had previously been on the Deacons board. Added together she has a total of 54 years service to the church.
We faced the same problem in our church. Three years ago we made it a policy that all children's and teen's classes were to be taught by married or engaged couples only. Even the nursery is staffed by couples.
It seemed that it wasn't that men were not willing to do the job, but instead were intimidated by their perception that teaching was a nurturer role best preformed by women. We now have such an over abundance of teacher couples that we went to a rotating schedule where each couple only teaches about once a month.
What a difference this has made. Behavioral problems have almost become a thing of the past, students are participating better and are learning more readily. The teachers no longer get stressed or feel overburdened, which previously had led to teacher drop out.
The only downside to this is that there are singles (mostly women) that would like to teach also but now cannot.
This is so idiotic. Firstly the scriptures of the new testament refer to women holding positions of clergy not of general speach, secondly these quacks are saying that the Gospel of Timothy prevents women teaching Sunday school; Timothy was taught by his mother and grandmother! None of the news testament scriptures say anything about Sunday school they addresss the mass specifically not educational programs outside of the mass. It's just so backwards I'm practically at a loss for words!
"I wonder how children, and new teen converts, are supposed to be taught in the modern church. In every church I have been in there is a vast shortage of males willing to work with children"
This is a gross misrepresentation of what the Bible teachers well aside from any such shortage.
I'm sure that you have seen this, but this is the town that Leah will be working and living in.
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