Prayer at a Remembrance Day Service

I was invited to lead the assembly in prayer at a Remembrance Day Memorial Service at a retirement complex in Burlington. I asked our heavenly Father to comfort those who mourn the death of loved ones and that the memory of the dead in the past 100 years in the battlefields of Europe Asia and Africa might spur us on to strive for peace. I then acknowledged that this could only ultimately occur under the grace of God in the Prince of Peace, our Lord Jesus Christ in whose name we pray and who will come again.

It was remarkable how many of the seniors came to me and thanked me for praying in the name of Jesus. They all said, "That no longer happens in public prayers." Imagine that! It has become remarkable for a Christian gospel preacher to pray publicly in the name of Jesus Christ!

Grudge

This past Sunday I preached on the 6th commandment: "you shall not kill." I urged upon the congregation that carrying grudges leads to murder. Read this!

Women's Voting 2

YFNWG (Hi Fred!) wrote in the comments on my Monday posting on women's voting and suggested that perhaps the solution would be "one vote per household."

The one vote per household that he mentions of school societies is a bit 'off'. It's "one vote per membership fee". If all my children (when they lived at home) became members, they would all vote. Or if two or three shared a membership, they would only get one vote among them.

I have a question, as well, about the "one vote per household" idea: "What constitutes a household?" What status would a boarder have? What about two single students sharing an apartment? What if my adult children still lived at home? What about a woman whose husband isn't a member of the church? Who is head of that household? Why would we adopt such a cumbersome method, fraught with all sorts of subjective pitfalls, when we should just extend the vote to all communicant members.

As for the vote only being an "expression of preference" comment: The Church Order says "those elected shall be appointed" (with the rider of course that no "lawful" objections were forth coming). The consistory is bound by the Church Order to appoint those elected. But that does not make the vote an act of governing. The Elders rule the church under Christ. The Lord's authority flows through the council, which appoints. The authority to govern, to be vested in the appointee, flows not through the congregation (as in the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod,) but through the council from the Head of the Church. This is true, even though the council is bound by the Church Order to appoint those whom the congregation has elected. (This would be similar to the way in which Canada receives her Governors General. The Prime Minister provides Queen Elizabeth the name of the one whom he wants appointed. But the Queen appoints. The authority of the GG is vested in her by the Queen, not the PM; though, by convention, the Queen is bound to appoint the one the PM sets forth.)

Women's Voting

Here is an interesting discussion from the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod concerning women's voting. It seems that many members in the Canadian Reformed Churches would agree with this federation of churches that women should not vote because it is an act of governing. But then should not some of the conclusions hold as well?

Scripture does not speak directly about the implications of voting. However, it may be significant that when a successor for Judas was being chosen, Peter addressed the men of the congregation concerning this responsibility (Acts 1:16 literally refers to "men, brothers."). Since Scripture directly forbids only the exercise of authority by women over men, we must ask if all voting involves an exercise of authority. We have not maintained that all voting always involves authority. We have, however, said that only men should cast votes which exercise authority over men. In our system of church government the voters' assembly is the authoritative governing body of the congregation. Among its more important responsibilities are the calling and removal of pastors and teachers, electing or removing the leaders of the congregation, and the acceptance and exclusion of members. For this reason, participation in this and other governing bodies in the church should be limited to adult males who are able to properly exercise authority over other men.

Some people have suggested that the issue of voting rights for women can be defused by changing the voters' assembly of the congregation into an advisory body without final authority. Such a redefinition of the nature of voting and the role of the voters' assembly would establish a hierarchical church government in which the final authority was in the hands of a board of elders, not the congregation. The same would be true if the synod convention were made anything less than the authoritative governing body of the synod. Do we really want to remove final authority from the hands of the congregation and hand it over to a small board? Furthermore, it is questionable if allowing women to vote in a body which was only advisory would satisfy people who insist that women must have more power to determine the program of the congregation. The desire of many women to have their needs and wishes considered when the programs of the congregation are determined can be met by less drastic methods than changing the nature of the voters' assembly.


I think that if we maintain that voting is an act of government, we need to change our Church Order to reflect that and then incorporate an article that states that the final authority rests with the male members of the church. Of course that would be a profound deviation from the principles of synod of Dort which, when it laid down the original Church Order, rightly maintained that the ruling body of elders held the authority in the church under the lordship of Jesus Christ.