Dave

Lin, thanks for the encouragement and the feedback. Thanks Cheryl for the encouragement of knowing you have been through so much but consider it a joy to have suffered for our Lord’s name. That is powerful.

Perhaps my hope of unity comes about more because of what might be unique to our church, the PCAus. The way we deal with conflict is to simply bunker down and ignore each other. Very functional! I wanted my church to see that you can have a constructive conversation, you can get to know each other inspite of differences. I hoped that we might appreciate the seriousness with which both sides take Scripture.

All that said, over the last couple of weeks I have come to the conclusion that I have been a bit idealistic (though I am still hopeful!). I listened to Matt Chandler the other week when he was in Sydney, and he made it very clear the his church and the Resurgence have a “closed fist” policy in regard to complementarianism. They see this “law” as crucial to the purity of the church. This explains why a family left our church over the issue of women (this family just returned from visiting Mars Hill before they left us).

Ironically, I have never looked at this issue as one worthy of breaking fellowship over, I have not seen it as a Gospel issue, but rather an issue where some have not fully applied/understood the Gospel. For some though, it is a hill they want to die on. Sorry for the rambling!