Linkathon!

Rick says:

The Burleson post at the first link is excellent.

Jerod says:

Wade Burleson –
I’ll guess that Wade confuses the outcome of Heaven (no male nor female) with the realities of fallen life here. There are differences between the genders imo. Women are able to receive and decompartmentalize more data and come away with something that makes sense, no matter how contradictory the sources. Men are thicker, often taking years to come to the same conclusion or to consider the woman’s more comprehensive perspective (per everyone’s favorite, Mr Prasch “It is a foolish man who doesn’t listen to his praying wife.”). I wonder if God ordained males as leaders in the church because of our tendency to slow things down by dint of cognitive processing so that together things are fully fleshed out.
Now how that works out in both matriarchal and patriarchal leadership is often the opposite because of our pride. Prideful for women are just as bad (toxic?) as prideful men.

Christian militia – ya know, it’s one of the curses of the internet, in the nineties no one would even know these dorks existed.

Churches too big to fail – my wife said something that stuck with me after we left Calvary and were considering another church associated with CC, a little bigger – “somethings gotta be wrong theologically or doctrinally to attract that many lateral transfers from around the valley”. Doesn’t mean they can’t bear fruit, but the bigger the tree the more birds will live off of the fruit.

Catholic sex abuse vs SBC sex abuse vs Etc…
Something that occurred to me after I read Duane’s post:
Maybe entrepreneurial church growth (even alluded to in The Prince) starts with “Here am I, I guess I’ll go” rather than “Here am I, Lord, send me”.

-The bigger the denomination the bigger the cracks in accountability
-The less pastors are pastored to
-The less the word is preached and motivational sermons heard
-The more the CEOs are seen as closer to God on the great boardroom in the sky
-The greater leverage a despicable person has on the pastor/ceo to keep things hushed up
Or a despicable pastor has on the yes-board to keep things on the DownLow.

As well, take this for the kilobyte it is worth,
In my worthless opinion, there is an historical connection between the Roman Empire that practiced using boys for sexual pleasure and the church that Roman Empire spawned which continues the practice. In the same way the Roman Empire was destroyed by its list for dominance by failing to account for its own logistical weaknesses so is the church being destroyed in the same manner.
How did such rampant abuse infiltrate the Protestant Evangelical church? It never left. It just broadened it’s target. As we read our word increasingly less and depend on what the pastor says about scripture rather than what scripture says to us more and more we increase our emotional and spiritual dependence on him/her. So the more likely we are to offer up our families as acceptable sacrifices to the person up front. So egregious sins and cover-ups naturally follow from people given so much power over our thought life. It’s even an old testament model of leadership decline.

It is again a pew problem. Our propensity to shy away from conflict, to cave to cognitive dissonance, to keep accountability in the smallest things.

The New Victor says:

For its faults, The Roman Empire lasted quite a long time. This is a disgusting human issue (the Bacha boys in Afghanistan disgusted my Army buddy who did 1.5 tours there) that will be around until Death and Hades are cast into the lake of fire.

Martin Luther's Disciple says:

Do I have to go to church? was a good article.