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| Q: | Yesterday a lady from the choir and the pastor each sang a part of the verses of the Psalm and a person said after the service, "the Psalms are part of the Liturgy, a singing of the Word of God, which should only be done by the pastor." What can I tell him? | ||||||
| A: | This is one of those areas where Christian judgment will have to decide whether this is something we want to do or not in a worship service. In and of itself having a woman sing the Psalm in a Sunday service is not necessarily a violation of the role of man and woman as God ordained it. The woman singing the psalm is not exercising authority over the men who are present in the service because she is not explaining the psalm and applying its message to the congregation.. A woman speaking or singing the Word of God to a man is not necessarily exercising authority, otherwise the women in a congregation could not sing a psalm antiphonal with the men, women could not sing a hymn which quotes a Bible passage, or a woman could not witness by using a Bible passage about Jesus being the Savior in an evangelism call, etc. On the other hand, since the pastor was the only one for many years who spoke the word of God in the public service of the congregation, some people may be confused if women begin to do what only the pastor did for years gone by. Before a woman sings the psalm antiphonal with the pastor in a public service, before a congregation uses women ushers, before women do anything in the public service that the pastor or only men did in the past, before laymen begin to read the gospel and epistle lessons, etc. - it would be the better part of wisdom to make sure that every member of the congregation understands exactly what the role of man and woman is according to God's word and who can speak the word of God in a public service and who should not. The apostle Paul speaks to adiaphora like this in Romans 14:1-15:6. There two principles are given: 1) the person who understands that something is an adiaphoron will gladly drop his right to do this thing if there are some who don't understand and think it is wrong to do this thing; and 2) once the person who objected learns that the matter is an adiaphoron, that person will not condemn those who do this thing even if he himself chooses not to do it. Romans 14:19 speaks to both sides in a matter like this and shows us what love will lead each to do. | ||||||
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