Melbourne's first female bishop to be consecrated on May 31

[Danny Saunders]

nudge nudge wink wink say no more, back in the closet.

Anyway, another good site to have a look at is http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/confessionalstatement.php

Under (3) Creation of Humanity it says:

"In God's wise purposes, men and women are not simply interchangeable, but rather they complement each other in mutually enriching ways. God ordains that they assume distinctive roles which reflect the loving relationship between Christ and the church, the husband exercising headship in a way that displays the caring, sacrificial love of Christ, and the wife submitting to her husband in a way that models the love of the church for her Lord. In the ministry of the church, both men and women are encouraged to serve Christ and to be developed to their full potential in the manifold ministries of the people of God. The distinctive leadership role within the church given to qualified men is grounded in creation, fall, and redemption and must not be sidelined by appeals to cultural developments."

This Confessional Statement is endorsed by D.A Carson, Tim Keller, Mark Driscoll, Mark Dever and John Piper.

Hard to ignore the wisdom here, but hey if someone will ignore Scripture I guess they'll ignore anything or anyone?

[Gordon Cheng]

Jereth wrote:

Gordo,

May I ask - why are you so interested to know whether there are complementarian churches in Melbourne? As a Sydney-sider that is. Is it just academic interest?

There's no such thing as academic interest when it comes to the gospel, and the more we know about situations where friends are trying to teach others about Jesus, the better it is.

So there would be questions like what should we be praying for, and how should we advise friends who want to do gospel ministry in Melbourne, or what we should say to (and pray for) those who are currently involved? Which actually, is anyone who loves God and prays for the work there, I believe.

There are a lot of good friends I pray for in Melbourne, including some of the people I know from this forum (such as you, Jereth), and the more I know the better informed my prayers will be—and that goes for anyone else with a similar concern who is reading this forum.

Yesterday I was reading 1 Sam 12 with a friend and we came across this verse:

"Moreover, as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the LORD by ceasing to pray for you"

and it rebuked me about my lack of prayerfulness and reminded me of my Melbourne friends.