FREDO
Maybe you better.
Posted on 07/10/2013 3:05:50 AM PDT by markomalley
A newspaper column lampooning Southern Baptists, calling the group "the crazy old paranoid uncle of evangelical Christians," is causing quite a stir in a Kentucky city and put a pastor's job in jeopardy.
The column was written by Angela Thomas, the wife of Bill Thomas, an assistant pastor at the First Baptist Church in Madisonville. Her column was done in response to the Southern Baptist Convention's opposition to a new Boy Scouts of America policy that welcomes gay members.
"Sexuality doesn't come up and isn't relative to typical scouting activities but now, thanks to Southern Baptists, the parents of little innocent scouts everywhere are having to have The Talk," she wrote June 19 in The Madisonville Messenger. She writes a weekly humor column for the community paper, which publishes daily.
In the weeks since, the status of Bill Thomas' job with the church has become unclear. The First Baptist pastor said he had accepted Thomas' resignation, but Thomas' wrote in a letter obtained by the newspaper he had not quit.
Thomas has worked at the church for 10 years and was also its musical director.
Bill and Angela Thomas declined to be interviewed by The Associated Press on Tuesday. But he previously told the newspaper he agreed with what his wife wrote.
The column said Southern Baptists have become "raging Shiite Baptists" after drifting "to the right" for the past four decades.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Too many in the church think Jesus would have drifted to the left. They better think again.
“Thou shall not make fun of thine husband’s vocation”
“The column said Southern Baptists have become “raging Shiite Baptists” after drifting “to the right” for the past four decades.”
It does sound like she needs to pray. Church politics are brutal but putting something like that in the paper is problematic.
That's so the little tykes will be able to recognize a sexual predator queer scout (or scout leader, once they beat that restriction back) when he comes to the tent (or is already IN the tent).
This is what happens, when a church sets up it’s own version of a ‘corporate board room’. (Find THAT in either ‘Timothy’, if you can.) Also, has this church a current ‘503c’?
It is always amazing to see what happens, when a pastor’s wife opens her mouth, and begins to give her views. A lot of folks don’t accept a pastor’s wife, as a separate, thinking, human being of value, which unknown to them, IS an American value. It seems that “the right to free speech”, ends at the pastor’s domicile, and shall not be seen or heard of, in the outside world. The cry of “Pastor, bridle thy wife!”, must be raging throughout Kentucky, and beyond.
I give her a lot of credit, for stating what she feels needed to be said! The Pentecostal addage, “Wives, submit to your husbands.” has never sat well with me, (and I was married twice), because it -IS- an encroachment on the American right of free speech, bought with blood, (some of mine, too).
FREDO
Maybe you better.
Pepeat, fire THEIR sorry butts. These ministerial jobs are hard to come by. They can be replaced in a flash.
Ironically, if a conservative pastor’s wife had written a column that made similar sharp criticisms about homos, the same people defending this woman would be in full attack mode against her.
Actually, it's thanks to the predatory perverts on the left that we have to have "The Talk". Back when I was a young Scout (before I became an adult Scouter, and now a former Scouter), any evil pervert who harmed a child sexually would not have made it home. Today? Those who pose a danger to the innocent are part of Scouting's new diversity, thanks to our leadership being hijacked.
As a former Southern Baptist pastor I am stunned that she would think that Southern Baptists have drifted to the right in the past 40 years. Frankly it has probably been more of a move to the left rather than to the right... and I was in college and working as an associate pastor 40 years ago IN KENTUCKY., so I do know a bit about churches in Kentucky, their theology and the climate in leadership.
From the perspective of a Southern Baptist Church that believe the Bible to be true, it is difficult for them not to stand by several scriptures that are specific about these issues.
Like it or not, any married couple who serves in the ministry in any capacity knows that there are limits to what the spouse of an employed person can and cannot do. She absolutely had to know that it would put her husband’s job at risk before she wrote the letter to the newspaper.
If you read the article you will also see that her husband’s job was at risk because he allowed an openly gay person to join the choir. When asked not to allow it, he refused. This flies in the face of the theology they believe and in a church the choir is up in front of the whole church regularly. They represent the church. My guess is that this is the primary issue AND perhaps her motivation for writing the letter in the first place.
I suspect, like churches I have worked at, that a man or woman living with a girlfriend or boyfriend outside of the marriage bond would not be allowed to sing in the choir or hold positions in the church either. Neither would they allow non-Christians to serve in ministerial roles.
I do not give her credit. Anybody can open their mouth and garbage comes out. There should be a little common sense. A woman should support her husband’s beliefs when it is their paycheck, and in his position for goodness sake! The southern Baptist’s support the Word of God and what it says - and I say.....thank goodness.
Gee, I hate to say this ... when I was referring to ‘the corporate boadroom’, you proved my point.
Even when I was a Pentecostal, for more than a year, I have always felt that a wife, anybody’s wife, as long as they are American, has the right to speak her piece, even if you don’t like it! HE married her, not YOU!
But .... who am I? just another American.
This isn’t a “free speech” issue at all. Nobody is saying this woman (and her associate Pastor husband who said he agreed with her) had no right to say what they said. But the congregation and other Church leaders also have rights to speech and if they believe these people do not properly represent their Church then they have every right to fire them. If it was my Church I would make it quite clear that either they go or I go and I would have no problem shaking their dust off my feet and leaving if that’s what it came down to - the Bible commands me to flee from Babylon.
A church is an organic unit and the wife if part if that unit. She repudiated that church and, like the vain and silly fool she must be, has now made it impossible to do his job and he must go. He serves at the pleasure if the congregation and they are offended and undermined. It’s nit unlike being an officers wife in the military. You want the military life? Be s military wife.
The dingbat has it backwards. It was the acceptance of openly gay scouts that made sexuality a topic of conversation in scouting.
It also obviously didn't occur to her that scouting is usually one meeting a week and a week or two of jamborees, etc., per year. The scouts also attend school and many other activities that take up the bulk of their time. The need for "The Talk" is present whether or not a boy is a scout.
She seems to have succeeded at being wrong on every point she thought she was making.
> That’s so the little tykes will be able to recognize a sexual predator queer scout (or scout leader, once they beat that restriction back) when he comes to the tent (or is already IN the tent).
Or already has a tent of his own.
We'd like to believe that churches are perfect, but any Christian will tell you that are filled with people just like you and me. And any good Christian will tell you that the people of the churches face problems just as the rest of us do.
Sin can break out and what is a church body to do? It can ignore it; letting the sin fester - just causing more problems later or the church can use church discipline - dealing squarely with the problem, reducing the effects and getting back on track sooner than later.
It sounds like the assistant pastor's wife touched off a firestorm. If the assistant pastor was also the youth pastor, then the churches parents would have had a major concern for their children (an issue this article studiously avoids).
No church parents wants gay teens making overtures to their sons in the churches boy scout program. If those overtures are successful what are the parents to do? What is the church to do? Ignore it and just watch it fester?
So, I believe the wife's article touched off a firestorm of controversy just as the Devil and the mainstream press so loves. And while Worldly folks pile on, the church struggles on to deal with the problem.
In this case, I commend the church for using graceful church discipline. Grace, because a severance package was offered. Good church discipline is evident because if was contingent upon non-disclosure (no need to give the churches detractors more ammunition). However, it seems the assistant pastor has not abidded the church Elders (who had to approve such a package in the first place) causing yet another headache for this congregation.
My prayers of support go to God for this church in it's attempts to resist the obvious attempts by the world to infiltrate it with sin.
Thus I am requesting a PRAYER BUMP for this Congregation (and other Congregations) dealing with such worldly attacks, That the Elders be given even more Wisdom from Above to quench the fiery darts of the wicked one. And to be enabled yet again to serve the Lord with gladness; ministering to the needy so in need of His gracious Salvation from such sin and death.
Practicing Southern Baptists, like practicing Catholics, believe that Marriage is between one man and one woman, and that homosexuality is an abnormal, sinful, hedonistic, chosen life style which shouldn't be pushed.
Didn't the pastor's wife know what her husband did for a living?
Certainly she has a right to say anything she wants to ... but if the people that employ her husband don't like it, they can fire him.
If a wife wrote a column in which she described the management structure and owners of the Madisonville, KY hardware store where her husband works as "a bunch of nazis and perverts", he might find himself unemployed the next day .. how is this different than that?
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