But, as Sam said, I don’t think Claire being married precludes her from dealing with these questions at all. As Sam said, I think all my questions apply to married women – even the last one in a slightly different way (should a married woman submit only to her husband, or also to her pastor, or to all men?). And I don’t think you have to be single in order to see how the Bible applies to single people, just as I don’t think you have to be female in order to see how the Bible applies to women. (Anyway, Claire was of course single at one time in her life!)

I guess the point is that Claire’s book helped me immensely. It has little to do with whether she as the author is married or single, and everything to do with her many years of studying these passages, and the clarity with which she writes.

I find your comments interesting:
Church planting is also the ministry of choice for many of our keen young men in Bible and theological colleges. If given the choice between launching a brand new, cutting-edge congregation, perhaps in an under-served inner city region, or going to take up an assistant’s job in a struggling outer-suburban congregation… well, it’s hard to blame someone for dreaming of building their own thing from scratch, and fixing all the things they’ve always wanted to fix about church in the process.

And yet, for all its popularity in some circles, church planting remains stubbornly unpopular in many others, for the same reason that we don’t like evangelism, three-bean salad or a second airport for Sydney. We are in favour in principle, just not so much in practice, and especially in our own backyard.

Do I detect a wee straw man lurking here? Those who are pro-church planting are young keen cutting edge Mark Driscolls who are on fire for the gospel which is juxtaposed with those who have concerns about church planting (not so much the practice, but some of the attitudes of the church planters), but they are merely subborn due to their dislike of evangelism, and are suffering from NIMBY syndrome due to being relegated to a struggling outer suburb congregation that is struggling and this is compounded by being the assistant rather than the Senior Pastor.

I mean who wants to spend those years battling to remove pews, the organist, that annoying statue, revolting Bushell’s Tea or trying to discple church members who are elderly, those with low disposable income, those who have spiritually been poorly fed when you can start your own church with people and funding from the ecclesiastical/denominational platform (that is looked down upon and rejected as being antiquated)and you can have the church just the way you want it and bi-pass all those problems.

Of course no church has the monopoly on the unsaved, but what saddens me is the way church planting is seen as the cutting edge way forward for the proclamation of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and there is very little said about the ministry of those guys who are serving in denominational churches in those outer suburbs (dioceses) that are struggling. The silence is rather loud.

I guess that the latter form of ministry is just not cool/sexy/cutting edge enough.