Maybe Tigger23500 and Chad M are joking. I hope so because they are foolish points if intended to be serious.

i’m a dude. i’m a dad. i’m a pastor. i get to stay at home once a week with my little girl on my day off and we have a blast! if someone in my church of all places tried to tell me i couldn’t stay at home with my daughter because it’s sinful, i’d leave the church. isn’t this sort of like looking at the speck in the eye of another while you have a giant log in your own eye?

Speaking of that when I lived in Hornell, NY my next door neighbor was a barber. Shop on the first floor, apartment on the second. When his kids were growing up, in that house would he have been considered a stay at home dad?

Tigger23505

I am planning on becoming a stay at home parent in April and am pretty excited about it. My wife is a teacher and I am a musician, who right now can’t fully support just the two of us. She has a steady paycheck, benefits, decent hours, a lot of time off, and while I am sure that caring for a baby will certainly slow me down, it does not inhibit me from pursuing what I feel called to do.

I happen to be part of an ACTS 29 church and both my wife and I believe in the more traditional view of headship in marriage, but honestly I did not even watch the video of Driscoll because , while I appreciate many of his contributions to my local church, I have heard enough from him. He may help others, but there really is no reason for me to take him into consideration at all.

Like many people have stated, it seems like the Driscolls are making mistakes with both scripture and history. I think when it comes to the work/laziness issue that most churches are looking through a wrong lens. I think Paul is judging extreme laziness and ultimately people who mooch when they could provide for themselves and share with others. In our culture we measure by the 40+ hour work week.

An unfair statement to be sure. No church in the life should acquire the mantle: “As good as it gets”. However one perceives Driscoll at least he wades through places that are controversial to a myriad of folk. I would argue decaying evangelicalism could be attributed to the issues that Driscoll is willing to face head on, which ironically are ones the decaying parts don’t want to face.

It’s all nonsense.

Isn’t Driscoll and Mars Hill supposed to be the city on the hill, the shining light of hope atop the landfill of dead and decaying evangelicalism? Is this as good as it gets?

Then again, I can shrug this stuff off, move along and still call myself an evangelical. In another denomination, disobeying family planning edicts would be met with disciplinary actions. If evangelicals won’t cross the Tiber, is the Tiber being brought to evangelicalism?

As is a usual tactic with those opposing the complementarian view some will divert the discussion to men who are workaholics or fail in a certain respect to meeting their family’s needs outside of work.

I’m keenly aware that I am to love my wife and child and lead them with a servant’s heart. My wife has no less value in her opinion than me, and if anything by her resolute love for our child and myself is more influential on our family than many would acknowledge.

As Driscoll says there are circumstances where SAHD’s are necessary, but they should not be by preference. As an aside I don’t agree with disciplining someone for the decision, but I would not be silent about it either.