There has been much controversy recently over the idea of women preachers. Does the Bible permit a woman to preach? Can a woman be a pastor? Isn’t a preacher and a pastor the same thing? Actually, they are not the same but even famous, well educated, highly credentialed ministers and scholars typically fail to make this distinction.
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Moses messed up. He did something which resulted in God banning him from the Promised Land. What did he do to warrant such a punishment?
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What’s the point of studying the Old Testament? It was written by ancient authors to ancient people concerning an obsolete covenant (Heb 8:13). One famous mega-church pastor said we don’t need the old testament scriptures to prop up the new covenant. So why would anyone want to study the Old Testament?
Why study the Old Testament?
The Bible is an interconnected whole. It is like a living organism that cannot be reduced to smaller pieces and retain its essence and being. Check out this marvelous graphic that depicts how the Bible connects and hyperlinks to different parts of itself. Along the bottom of this image is one vertical line for each chapter in the Bible. The longer the line, the longer the chapter. All of the colored arcs show 63,779 Bible cross-references. This is an incredible visualization that drives home the fact that the Bible is an astonishingly complex and interconnected collection of texts. Want to make sense of these scriptural hyperlinks in the New Testament without the Old Testament? Good luck with that!
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The Bible talks a great deal about purity laws; the idea of being clean or unclean. This concept is not very familiar to us today and it raises a number of questions. What exactly did it mean to be clean or unclean? What caused a person to be unclean? How did a person get clean again? What was the downside of being unclean? Was it a sin to be unclean?
What the Bible means by clean and unclean
The terms clean and unclean aren’t referring to how clean or dirty a person or thing is. Rather, it is a concept related to a person’s (or object’s) fitness or suitability for engaging in Tabernacle/Temple activities.
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One of the few things that most religions have in common is a clergy/laity distinction. The clergy are people who have been appointed (ordained) to perform religious duties, rituals and tasks which the common people (lay people, laity) aren’t considered qualified to do or aren’t expected to do. Some terms that are commonly used to refer to clergy within Christianity are priest, reverend, minister, preacher, bishop, pastor, father, etc. In short, clergy are the people behind the pulpit and laity are the people in the pews.
Opposite views of clergy and laity
Although in the minority, there are some movements and denominations that have rejected the notion of a clergy/laity distinction. While this is a more biblical approach, it isn’t without its problems. The emphasis upon equality among believers may result in people serving in a capacity they are not gifted for. Sometimes this is allowed to go unchecked because of a reluctance to question someone’s “right” to serve. In reality, it isn’t about rights, but about finding a way for them to apply their gift in the correct role.
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