Cheryl Schatz

Also for those who have been following the on going saga of Matt Slick and CARM, I would like to say that finally after months of trying to get Matt to do his obligation towards me in order to resolve the hostile name calling and attacks that started on his radio show and carried forward onto his discussion board (I didn’t even know that I was being pulled onto his discussion board until I was notified on this blog that Matt had posted several “To Cheryl” posts on CARM’s discussion board), Matt Slick has finally agreed to meet me in person to have a Matthew 18 meeting.  He is refusing to bring his wife along with him stating that he wants to protect her from me (?) but he will bring along his own pastor.  I spoke to Matt’s pastor this morning to set the meeting for the last week of August.  The exact date will depend on when my pastor will get back from vacation.

The interesting thing about all of this is that my pastor was a complementarian a year ago.  He had been looking for help to refute my DVDs and was expecting to get some substantial help from Matt Slick because of the radio debates scheduled.  My pastor was very disappointed in Matt’s performance and wrote Matt that nothing he said in the debates was helpful at all in refuting me.  However the debates did help him to see the vitriol that has one side of the debate (complementarian side) attacking the other side without Christian charity.

Recently my pastor has announced that he has become a full egalitarian.  Praise the Lord!  We had many opportunities to debate this issue and issues surrounding this one and I want to publicly state my great respect and love for my pastor who has come a long way in his understanding of women in the church.  While we had many passionate debates together, he has never run away from me or treated me as if I was the enemy.  Even in the beginning he amazed me by saying that some of the things that he heard on the DVD set were the best teaching that he had heard on a particular passage (1 Cor. 14).

So things have come full circle.  We arrived in our new city just over a year ago, and it has taken about one full year to go from having a pastor who was passionately fighting for complementarianism to someone who has become a friend and supporter eager to go with me to confront Matt Slick on his sin.  I am overwhelmed.  All I can say is praise the Lord!