http://www.atoday.org/article/1328/blogs...ference-session


Should Ted Wilson Speak at the Pacific Union Conference Session?


Submitted: Aug 5, 2012
By Ervin Taylor


I would like to conduct an informal and unscientific poll of readers of this blog.

Here is the poll question: “In light of what happened at the Columbia Union Conference session, would you recommend to Ted Wilson, the President of the General Conference of SDAs, that he speak to the delegates during the August 19, 2012 constituency session of the Pacific Union Conference?”

Before you indicate your vote, please reflect on what happened when he spoke to the union session delegates. He asked them to vote No on the question of whether the Columbia Union Conference should authorize ordination to the gospel ministry without regard to gender. The delegates proceeded to vote overwhelming Yes.

Therefore, if you are in favor of the Pacific Union Conference authorizing local conferences to ordain women, would it make sense for you to be also in favor of having Ted Wilson voice his opposition?

Alternatively, if you are not in favor of the Pacific Union Conference authorizing local conferences to ordain women, would it make sense for you to also be opposed to having Ted Wilson voice his opposition?

Please vote YES or NO in response to the following: “In light of what happened at the Columbia Union Conference session, would you recommend to Ted Wilson, the President of the General Conference of SDAs, that he personally speak to the delegates during upcoming Pacific Union Conference Session?” You are welcome to state the reason(s) for your vote.

Absolutely, yes! He is the leader of the GC, he should be allowed to speak his mind. To not allow him to do so, is to perpetuate a feeling of us vs them. I seem to remember Christ allowing His detractors to speak their minds, can we do less??

We can't accuse others of being close minded, if we do so ourselves. Freedom for all!!

Yes CoA --- I agree.

And besides - it seemed to have helped the right cause in the last vote.

I know that the GC will have their say at the session. I think Ted Wilson may well be there. May not be much good. He was there at the Columbia Union session and womens ordaination won by a 4 to 1 margin.

Feelings are much stronger in the west for womens ordaination with three colleges and universites in this union.

Thanks CyberGuy that's encouraging to hear. I am crossing my fingers.

Did someone just admit that western academia has a liberal penchant?

What gobbli-goop

Synonyms
1. progressive. 7. broad-minded, unprejudiced. 9. beneficent, charitable, openhanded, munificent, unstinting, lavish. See generous. 10. See ample.


Unless you are making up your own definitions?

Adventist universities world wide support womans ordination overwhelmingly. It is the laity mostly from South America and africa where the bulk of the adventist membership lay and who have the greatest prejudice against women reside.

So yes. Universities tend to be more liberal when they view human rights and Gods view towards men and women serving in His Church.

Why because they study scriptures and debate more than most of the laity who vote on these issues at the GC Session.

Most of the laity have never studied the issue of womans ordination when they come to vote at the session. So they come and vote their views on women in ministry according to their cultural views.

Liberal Theology includes in varying degrees:

• Lean towards higher criticism of the Bible.
• They tend to treat science as all-knowing and the Bible as fable-laden.
• Tend to favor Gay marriage - in many cases outright support for it.
• Oppose patriarchal worldview in Bible.
• Prefer "humanitarian" outreach as opposed to doctrinal truth.
• Downplay doctrine as divisive.
• Seek experiences that lie beyond objective truth.
• Tend to downplay obedience in the life.
• Generally extol justification to exclusion of sanctification.
• Tend to see God as "buddy" instead of Almighty Ruler of all.
• Lean strongly towards subjective premises instead of objective truth.
• View church structure as oppressive instead of needful.

And others...


`oG

It's not real complicated, Bruce. I could give a Bible study on male headship to a 10-year old in 5-minutes and they would understand it, thanks to the clarity of Scripture.

The world church also understands the biblical teachings against WO and votes accordingly. This is good. They are not dumb, and liberal Americans, academia or otherwise, are not more enlightened.


Rejoice always,

oG

There is a difference from the biblical bible teachers who were asked what they felt about womens ordination and those in the science levels. You mix the viewpoints of few geological scientists who view that the earth is millions of years old and put that as the view of the bible teachers in our collges. That is simply not true.

It was the bible scholars who were asked their viewpoints on womens ordination in adventist collges worldwide. They science professors were not asked.

One can sure see who controls the airwaves of the Hope Channel. Ted has been campaigning against WO all week on there. Just this Sabbath alone he was ranting on the subject three times. It became rather sickening to hear his propaganda. Not once did he address the issue in a responsible way. Just trying to condemn those that would 'rebel'.

I agree woody. It got to the point I just changed the channel after the third time it came on. He was on several different formats spewing the same thing. Got really tiring after a while. He will not convince anyone if he uses those same arguments tomorrow. Will hurt his cause more than it helps.

He forgets he is talking to a college educated american crowd not a third world uneducated crowd that is more easily persuaded by leaders of the church.

Going to the other extreme of fundamentalism just makes us like the Papal/fallen churches. Let's get back to being SDAs.


http://www.livestream.com/sligochurch/video?clipId=pla_92139baf-01cd-4829-899a-89a43e047d60

http://www.livestream.com/sligochurch/video?clipId=pla_9650e426-81a8-4acf-984c-5e907dcd9e54

Listening to these might help us to get back on the third road and do our job. As a commenter noted:

Yes. Most parts of our membership are more authority driven. IOWs they feel that if "God" has installed a leader - then that leader must know all of what is right. They do not search for themselves to study to show themselves approved unto God.

Excellent teresa. Thanks.

I only agree with your first statement. However, this authority comes from the example on how God working through Moses, Jesus, Paul, James, John and Peter allowed the human leadership of God's people to be established.

I strongly feel that within the Pacific Union, the issue of WO was building a political momentum of its own for more than ten years and during the last few months it has become something unstoppable. Personally, I don’t see it as a real spiritual issue but as an ideological struggle trying to blur the distinctions of the roles of women vs. the role of men in the spiritual leadership within the SDA Church.

The real issue is that the SDA Church is not an isolated island and whether we like it or not, we are prone to be influenced by how people truly think within the secular world. Jesus said: “By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them” (Matthew 7:16-20).

We truly need to understand that behind the WO issue there are very strong emotional, political and secular issues that has nothing to do with gaining new converts and establishing them well within the teachings of the Bible specially the New Testament. The issue did not come because many women pastors were so fruitful in winning souls for Christ that they needed to be ordained so those new people within the church could continue to have a better spiritual growth within their congregation. By this I mean that it was not a move “to make a bigger pie of people accepting the teachings of the gospel.” It was just a move in order to appear to the rest of the world that Pacific Union leadership “wishes to avoid discrimination” on how such pie needs to be handled. My belief is that, in a spiritual way, this is a self-defeating move unless we have few women ordained pastors so close to God that they will prove me wrong.

The question comes: What to do next? The answer is just: Pray, pray and pray. Our biggest challenge is not to avoid women pastors to be ordained. That is a fight the Devil wishes and is waiting for us to get into. Our biggest challenge is to fulfill Jesus mandate of preaching His message to the whole world, to every nation, tribe, language and people. I feel very happy that the President of the SDA Church has been very specific on which side of the issue he is. However, we just have President of the Church and not a king or a pope. Therefore, the real future lies in the real growth of the church. This is because new converts are usually taught to accept Jesus teachings in the way those teachings are written in the NT. Also the worldwide church is mostly based on places where unemployment is more than 20% and when the employment line is not asking for every single human body, we usually have a tendency to send the male out to work in the field while women stay home taking care of the kids. The wife’s paycheck just becomes an extra convenience in order to save money for “a rainy day.” Now, when there is too much employment out there and we need two paychecks then it becomes more difficult to ask the wife to stay home and one has to employ a babysitter or ask a retired mom or aunt to take care of the kids at home.

Therefore, the best way to deal with the WO issue is to pray God that those newly ordained women pastors could be blessed with many new comers to the SDA Church that are well established within the teachings of the Bible. Then God will decide where those women could continue to work to make His work more productive in gaining new souls for Christ. If for some reason they are not blessed in their work, the end result will be the same. Laymen, non paid workers, will raise up to do the work. This is because our fight to bring God’s kingdom to this world is not our fight and it could never be. This is a fight that belongs to God. Our real duty is first to love, second to pray, third to obey (we go to God while we acknowledge our sin and disobedience and ask Him to transform us) fourth, after we see how God has turned us into obedient children then we will experience the joy of seeing God finishing the rest of His work on this world.

FF

Why?

What good would prayer do?

They prayed before during and after the Pacific Union session today. Yet - many do not believe that the prayer was answered?

So - my question is what good is prayer?

Why go through the routine?

I would suggest that you do not understand the subject very well to making such denigrating remarks about women.






I didn't know we were in the presence of a mind reader!!!

Prayer should be seen as a spiritual journey bringing us closer to God. It was never meant to be an instrument for changing people's opinion against their best judgment.

Jesus, at the garden of Gethsemane, did not see prayer as something non useful as a means to ask God to be spared the agony and suffering in the Calvary. On the contrary, prayer was the best means to keep His connection with the Father at the moment He had to confront a very horrendous situation. Prayer was never meant to change decisions people make in their hearts and minds. Prayer has been designed to keep us always connected to God regardless of what other people do and think. The real function of prayer during any controversial church meeting is to invite God in our lives so if our sinful human nature predominates and we end up in saying or doing something that is wrong, God's Spirit could be there to help us have a better understanding of His will and to show us a way out after we make any error.



We have three kinds of prayers:

Functional prayers, non-functional prayers and dysfunctional prayers.

Functional prayers are prayers that follow Jesus' vision of what a prayer is all about:

1) Consider God as the primary reason of how and why we have been created. 2) Motivate us to honor and glorify His name. 3) Makes an invitation to God to direct our thinking and actions. 4) Makes us a bridge through which people, who have any freedom of choice, learn how to best accept and follow God's commandments. 5) See God as the real source to satisfy all our temporal human needs. 6) Takes into account that many people may fail us but helps us to see those people in the same way we wish to be seen by God. 7) Makes us to understand that many times we may wish to do things that are the opposite of God's character and through that understanding we ask God to take away any circumstance that could guide us to break His laws.

Non- functional prayers are prayers that take us nowhere because our sinful human nature many times make us go in circles without accomplishing God's will but we have to do them anyway because such kind of failure becomes our best means to welcome God in our lives so our prayers could be finally converted from non-functional to truly functional prayers and God's name could be finally glorified.

Dysfunctional prayers are prayers like the prayer of the Pharisee near the Publican in the temple. These are self-congratulatory prayers made to remind God how "better law keepers" we are than those who also go to church but are always breaking God's laws. Those prayers should never be made. On our way to church, if we have a desire to make such prayer, we should turn back because such prayer creates a "spiritual vacuum" that could not be filled in by God. When such spiritual vacuum is created, Satan comes to lead our spiritual development and the spiritual development of those who fall under our influence.


FF

Interesting comment regarding the different kinds of prayers although I tend to feel that some might have yet another catagory.

You may be right! People having a different frame of mind could come up with other category.

FF