A Prayer
From a Battered Complementarian
My God! with trembling we search
Your word, for light to shed on a fumbling church
Who so oft' misses the mark,
And bumps its toes in the proverbial dark.
Should Thy daughters lead, and preach, and pastor
A flock; to call and curb them from disaster?
Should women adopt those very same roles
That men have assumed as Cure of Souls?
For my part I stand with years, twenty hundred and eight,
Of men who have, with fear, shouldered that weight.
Called archaic by some, yet still convicted
That the office of pastor be restricted.
We who battle for Thy design, to be assumed
By flocks gone 'stray; more often find ourselves entombed
Under argument and debate complex,
But most often devoid of Thy own Great Texts.
Oh my God! Help me, a clay jar oft'
Cracked, to bear being torn, and beat, and scoffed.
'Tis a wearying thing to be damned Authoritarian
By Siblings in Christ, named Egalitarian.
