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A Swift Saturday Supplement

Too much to do... too little time... So today's round-up of pages that have caught my eye is more rudimentary that usual... But hope your find it interesting/entertaining/challenging (delete as applicable)...

A BIBLICAL APPROACH TO WALLOPING YOUR WOMAN?
The media has been filled with the very public unravelling of the relationship of Nigella Lawson and Charles Saachi, raising questions of what constitutes domestic abuse. So it was against this background that I was slightly disconcerted to find this piece in the Huffington post that purports to point to a site which advocates Christian husbands spanking their wives to maintain a Biblical marriage... So that is why Evangelical Alliance and others are advocating a "Biblical approach to marriage" in the face of marriage equality legislation!? Now I know my Bible fairly well, while I have never read any of the "Forty Shades of Grey" books, but this seems to owe more to the latter than the former. I have not actually checked out the original site (for much the same reasons that I haven't checked out "Forty Shades of Grey") and would have been wary of commenting, had I not also come across a reference to it on The Wartburg Watch which I came across because of another discussion I have been involved in regarding child abuse within the church. I'm not too sure that it is helpful to look at child abuse and what is little more than "Christianised BDSM" under the same heading however...

WHAT PASTORS AND LAITY NEED...
On the United Methodist Reporter and Rachel Held Evan's sites there have been two sets of paired pieces looking at the things from the perspective of pastors and people in the pew...
Rev. Sky Lowe McCracken, district superintendent for the Paducah District of the Memphis Annual Conference of the UMC posted "Things for United Methodist Preachers to Unlearn..." which actually includes things that many preachers should unlearn, especially the first that he mentions, the heresy of "professional distance" for pastors/preachers from their flock...
However, the partner-piece it prompted by one of Rev. McCracken's lay leaders Susan Sadler Engle, "Things for United Methodist Laity to Unlearn" was probably more interesting, and worth a read by both pastors and laypeople.
Rachel Held Evans was on a slightly different but complementary tack when she wrote earlier in the month "11 Things I Wish More Pastors Would Say..." which was swiftly followed by a piece entitled "What pastors want to hear from their congregations" which was largely culled from some of the responses to her first piece.
I suppose that as I move to a new station in a week's time, I would urge any of my new congregation reading this to have a look at these 4 posts, together with my own "Operating Manual for Ministers."

AND...
Four final, unrelated pieces...

And once again... Come on you Lions...

Cheers

 
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