Alison

Cheryl-

My church is huge, so we cover a wide variety of people, and this means a wide variety of perspectives. The majority of the challenges I am facing represent some of the older-guard of evangelicalism, and some of the younger folks who have grown up in more conservative or traditional settings, and then come to my church after changes in their lives (career changes, moving into the city I’m from, etc), and those folks carry the teachings of their previous churches with them.

What I’m learning to recognize is precisely that, and to remember what John Wesley, founder of the Methodism that I came from, once said: “In essentials, unity. In non-essentials, liberty. In all things, charity”. I am learning to (and I stink big time at this) receive those challenges with charity and gentleness, recognizing that folks from different backgrounds carry those backgrounds with them. That doesn’t make them wrong and me right, or vice-versa. There might be some folks with that agenda of restricting women in ministry, but if they hold participating membership in my church, they can’t really bring it up in other than small-group settings, since there’s an agreement in place in our membership stuff that we can’t promote doctrines not in our official statement of faith in a divisive manner. I’m not saying the folks who have challenged me are necessarily divisive, but I think they’re widely overruled, so they keep their perspectives to themselves, for the most part.