(Tim) Searching for information about the women who teach and exercise authority over men at the church Tim Keller serves, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, I found this video clip selling people on getting involved in Redeemer's Fellowship Groups. Two comments:
First, note Redeemer's target audience--the demographic their appeal is aimed at. The married? Nope. Dweebs? Nope. Husbands? Nope. Families? Nope. Mothers? Nope. Children? Nope. Babies? Heavens no.
The clip's come-on is "family." Listen to it again.
The closest we come to family is the man on the park bench surrounded by his dogs.
Second, note carefully the cool hip Rob Bell factor.
Think about what this clip says about church growth, today... The way we attract people to the Body of Christ, the Household of Faith, the "family" that membership in constitutes being a Christian, is to sell that family as hipsters.
In the book of Acts, though, we see that church growth was the result of a different sort of appeal: like, for instance, the Holy Spirit's judicial execution of Ananias and Sapphira at church, immediately following which we read:
And great fear came over the whole church, and over all who heard of these things... But none of the rest dared to associate with them; however, the people held them in high esteem. And all the more believers in the Lord, multitudes of men and women, were constantly added to their number, (Acts 5:11, 13-14)
Looks like the very opposite of church marketing today, doesn't it?
We're so evolved, church has become hip.
And the Apostolic Church?
Church growth then was through fear and death and judgment and preaching that called men to the grace of repentance. And in such a deathly serious time and place, all the officers were men. The Apostle Peter wasn't running around trying to put women in high visibility leadership positions to placate the evil spirit of his age.
So, does the fact that Redeemer has "more than 5,000 people" indicate the Holy Spirit is no longer building His Church through judgment and fear and repentance?
After all, who can argue with success?
You want to know where God's blessing is, today? Do the numbers, stupid. It's that simple.
So, apparently, the Church of the Living God's great strides forward in the Twentieth Century were Billy Graham and Bill Bright. And the Twenty-first Century?
We're off and running with Joel Osteen, Tim Keller, and Rick Warren.
Is there anything else we need to understand about the silence across the PCA in the face of Tim Keller's constant promotion of women officers, woman teaching and exercising authority over man?
We just can't quite bring ourselves to tell him "no," can we?
He's so cool. And so very many urbane hipsters agree.
