toddpedlar
Iron Dramatist
Let's start a post and define these words:
Sharing, telling, testifying, witnessing, praying, preaching, teaching, announcing, proclaiming, etc
If by this sideways method you're implying that we should throw up our hands and declare that there's no distinction to be made, and that Christian women missionaries delivering the Word of God as a teacher/preacher/pastor to an 'unreached people group' is legitimate, then I guess there's no convincing you.
I'm sure you've seen "effective work" by Christian women missionaries working near you, Perg. That effectiveness doesn't change the fact that many or most of them might be working in actuality as though a pastor, contrary to the revealed word of God. Are they serving as the authoritative contact, the teacher, for these people, to teach them the Word of God and preach it to them? I think it wise to think carefully about what is being done, and whether it in fact runs afoul of the Word.
I may be wrong in my assessment of what you're saying, though, and if so I apologize. Why not offer the first set of definitions, then?
What's with the accusations of "side-ways" methods. "Throw up out hands" ??? Why the rhetoric?
I apologize if my bluntness caused offence. I admitted I might be wrong in my assessment of your aim in posting what I thought was a very odd way of entering the discussion. You asked for a definition of a large number of words which evidently lie along some continuum in some people's thinking. I read that question as you approaching the issue from a different angle, meaning to promote the 'continuum' idea, and say ultimately that we are going to come up with different thresholds for violation depending on how we interpret those words. I saw that (again, if that wasn't your intent, I apologize for ever asking) as a "sideways" approach, and that approach as a statement that one shoud "throw up his hands" in trying to come up with some dividing line.