Some students wore hats in our services. Some were from Holland and
others came from similar congregations where all the women wear hats.
Another student was convicted by this and began to raise the subject
with her friends and finally came to me. ‘You say you believe the Bible,
but here is plain teaching in 1 Corinthians 11:5 and you and the
congregation ignore it. Why is this? You are not consistent.’ What did I
tell her?
If I preached and told the women to wear hats none of them would do
so. There is not a single one of them who is wearing a hat now. They are
not going to turn up the following Sunday to my exhortation with hats
that they have retrieved from their wardrobes or gone out to purchase. I
would have turned half the congregation into guilty unhappy people. I
do not want to be the kind of minister who tells the congregation ‘Wear
hats,’ and immediately they do that or they are disciplined for not
doing so. Such ministers are cult leaders.
There are far greater priorities I would want for the entire
congregation than that the women wear hats. I would want many of them to
come to the mid-week meeting. I would want them to love their
neighbours as themselves, to turn the other cheek, to be more prayerful
and forgiving, to display evangelistic zeal, to be faithful in personal
devotional exercises. Wearing hats is way down my list of exhortations.
It is a great challenge to us to be seen to maintain in the
congregation the headship of men. We do so by having just men as elders
and deacons, men making the announcements, welcoming people at the
doors, giving out the bread and wine at the communion, and the men
taking the lead and praying in the Prayer Meeting. For this to be
appreciated and supported is an achievement, while insisting on hats
being worn by the women would detract from that. Continue at Puritan Rising
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