"If I could kick the person in the tail who causes me the most problems I could not sit down for a week." - Will Rogers

Robert Frost would approve.

First, some news briefs:

1. You can guess how I spent my day. The morning cutting rounds, wrestling with the logs left behind. I won the matches but some of them put up a good fight. The middle fingernail on my left hand is turning black but I don't think it will fall off. I only have three or four more logs in that lower area and I'm not sure I'll get them done. They're the biggest, one about 34" in diameter, and the way they're laying on top of each other I don't know how to get them cut up. 
2. Then there are the eight logs that wouldn't fit on the last truckload. Yeah, I should be done cutting rounds by November. Then comes splitting. Fun, fun. 
3. This afternoon I worked on the goat pen. I got the rest of the area raked clean of branches and started putting up the no-climb fence. Tonight we went to Coastal Farm and bought a fence stretcher and 20' of chain that should get each side's fence stretched taught. Those items, a Come-Along, and the Kia's trailer hitch should do the trick. We'll find out tomorrow. 
4. I exchanged texts with Marta this afternoon and the first kids are due the middle of October. The bottle babies she sells are from first-time does who have triplets - too much for a rookie mama to care for - and cases when a doe has trouble and can't care for her kids. So those first two does may not provide us with kids, but Marta said she has bottle babies every year, so eventually....
5. Here's a pic the McGowans took of us on one of the adrenalin portions of the jet boat ride. If there was sound with this you're ears would be ringing from Pam's scream. 
   
6. How bizarre is it that the U.S. Sect. of State did not know that the "C" designation on an email meant it was Classified?? Can you spell incompetence? Good grief.
7. The transmission arrived this afternoon via FedEx. Alas, Leroy leaves tomorrow for 10 days, and we leave next Wednesday for our trip to Phoenix to see the kids. So it will be two weeks from now before it gets installed. Through this process I've learned how rare these T-5 transmissions are. I'm hoping to sell my bad one, maybe parted out, to recover some of my costs. I was told the tailpiece alone goes for $300 on eBay. 
8. This is the steel tool used to install T-posts. One end is open, it slides down over the top of the metal post, and you raise it up & slam it down repeatedly to drive the post in the ground. It's heavy. That white sticker says the device contains chemicals known by the State of CA to cause cancer in certain lab animals. There isn't a sticker (but should be) that says the device is known by the State of OR to cause headaches and sore arm muscles. 
   

The pastor of the church we've been attending for the last 2-3 months was scheduled to be out of town last Sunday, and in his absence the email we all got said we'd have a worship service as a result. Never mind the rather odd implications of that statement re. the normal Sunday service, we figured that meant the hour would be spent singing, maybe some Scripture reading, and other misc. items. 

We were part right. We sang a few more songs than usual, but as usual we didn't know most of them. It seems each church has its own repertoire and what we sang at Pathway ain't the same as what we've encountered here. Must be an OR thing. 

After that the gal who leads worship preached a brief sermon. Then we sang a few more songs and left. 

Turns out the pastor was back in town in time to attend and was in back through most of the service. I sent him an email that night asking how her preaching aligned with 1 Tim. 2:11-15 where Paul says he doesn't permit a woman to "teach or have authority over a man." He responded Monday with a link to an article by Joseph Tkach, a pretty significant evangelical most people have never heard of, making the case that the traditional understanding of that passage is incorrect and does not preclude women from preaching in the church. 

Because we were leaving Monday afternoon to meet Bruce & Debby on the south coast I didn't have time to read the article before we left, and we were off the grid down there. So it wasn't until we got home that I had time and opportunity to read the article.

Remember what I said last night about not being able to sleep? This is why. So at 1 a.m. Thursday I was up, reading the article and writing my response. I'll spare you the technical details, but despite my considerable respect for Tkach I disagree with his analysis of this passage. He misses the mark, IMO, on several key exegetical issues, and I wrote a 3-page response to the pastor. Maybe a bit excessive, but I wanted to give it the attention his reference deserved.

Today he acknowledged receiving my email response and said he remains open to egalitarianism in the church. He didn't say as much, but I'm going to assume that if he thinks it's biblically appropriate for women to preach the same can be said about women holding the office of elder. 

Unfortunately, that's a deal breaker for us. We don't expect to agree on all points with any church we might attend, but some things rate as a Tier One item, and the authority of Scripture is one of those. Again, I'll forego the technical details and just say that I think the egalitarian view is motivated by cultural dynamics that result in what's called eisegesis (reading into the text) instead of exegesis (getting the meaning out of the text). 

Which, sadly, means our search for a home church begins anew. Neither of us is happy about that. At all. 

We discussed the option of just not attending on the Sundays a woman is preaching, something the pastor indicated to me will happen again in the future because he wants to develop the "giftedness" of the worship leader. (The homiletics prof in me shook my head at that one, but more on that at another time.) But more, this issue indicates an overall view of Scripture that just doesn't work for us. If cultural dynamics can influence the clear teaching of the Bible here, what other passages are or will be subject to review? 

So the search begins again. Sunday we'll go to a church we visited several months ago. It's much bigger than we'd prefer, but it has a lot of small groups spread around the Eugene metro area, so maybe one of those will work for us. 

Aside from leaving the kids behind, our struggle to find a home church is the only downside to our move. But it's a big one.