Unity Questions
Dear Al and Bruce,
I am happy to know that you are concerned for our churches worldwide and humbly offer to help. Churches, in the past, have formed around a set of core beliefs and practices and gone on to do things great and small for God.
I have a few questions and look forward to your reply:
1. Why is it necessary to have paid women staff in order for older women to train younger women? Our congregation is small and we cannot afford to support WMLs. At the moment, we are supporting an evangelist and a youth minister. We don’t have the money to support their wives, but we have so many children and teens, that we had to raise money for the youth minister. Binding this practice on us would be an undue hardship. Are we simply in sin because deaconesses (unpaid) are looking to train the younger women?
2. We have committed ourselves to six purposes, but only two of them are mentioned in this letter. Specifically, we are committed to helping the poor and to sharing the Gospel in our community. You may read our mission statemnet at the following link:
http://www.omahachurchofchrist.org/modules/wfchannel/index.php?pagenum=5
I wonder what you think of it, in light of a seeming disparity between what the call to unity advocates.
3. We have no college students. We hope that the youth minister will be able to grow into a role to get a campus ministry started. Is the document a pledge to provide funds to allow us to hire a campus minister in order to start campus ministries in our area?
4. We have established regional training and discipling with local institutions in addition to churches in Kansas and Missouri. Would we be able to keep our working relationships?
5. Do you believe that this unity will limit our benvelonce to HOPE Worldwide? Do we have the option to continue our work with Direct Relief International, the Francis Sienna house, and other organizations? At this time, we have chosen to not contribute to HOPE or take part in its programs.
6. To help other churches, we will be able to volunteer our help and training, or will the men and women we select as a steering committee have authority to require us to send certain men and women to another city.
7. If we are unified in beliefs, but not practices, does that disqualify us from being considered brothers? For example, if we choose not to participate at this time, yet an issue arises between our church and another that is a member, we will be considered less than brothers? Will there be a way to resolve the conflict?
8. Is there a financial commitment involved in participating?
Thank you for your time with my questions.