Cheryl

It is not only possible but necessary to express disagreement with love. Matt simply does not practice this. In fact he seems to get his jollies from being obnoxious. Now lest anyone think I have just called him a name, let me say that Matt has described himself as one who is gifted in being obnoxious. I disagree that this is a gift. This is rather the world’s way of handling disagreements. When Matt learns to disagree in a loving way, then his ministry will flourish with both the church and the cults. He has the wisdom in a lot of areas to do a lot of good. His way of handling disagreements with Christians is not biblical. Even though he has called me a godly woman, I have never felt any love from him and he has said not one good word about my personal ministry to Jehovah’s Witnesses. It seems that it suits his style to ignore the good and lift up the disagreement on a secondary issue as if it is the entire focus of scripture. Matt’s stated purpose is that he personally is out to stop women from serving in their God-given gifts when they are teaching or preaching with authority to men. I don’t know where he gets his authority to do this. Nowhere in scripture does it say that one of the duties of an elder is to stop the women from teaching the bible with authority to the men in the body of Christ. Matt has gone above and beyond his “role” in scripture and as a teacher he will have to answer to God for what he is doing.

In the meantime I agree with teknomom that we need to be going about our Father’s business using our gifts wherever we can. We do not need the approval of the good ol’ boys club and we don’t need to stop because Matt gets in our face. We just need to serve Jesus with all our hearts and do everything to please him and bring him glory and honor. When we stand before God he will only want to know what we have done for him. We must obey God rather than men and no mere man including Matt can stop a godly Christian woman from using her God-given gifts for the benefit of both men and women.