"Hats and a Haircut"

A young man who is serving as a missionary in Southern Sudan writes about his prayerful decision to follow the teachings of 1 Corinthians - and not only those verses in chapter 11.

November 8, 2008: "Why I cut my hair and thoughts on the relevance of passages from 1 Corinthinas to life out here in Sudan", by Ryan Weeks.

Spending some time reading through his reports has been interesting and enjoyable too.

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For more thoughts on the woman's headcovering from 1 Corinthians, see:

November 09, 2008, "A call for a new Reformation in the church: Headcoverings?", by Arthur Sido at "the voice of one crying out in suburbia" [Michigan] blog.

"Headcovering". An article with links found at TheOpenScroll.com. The conclusion from this article:

Our freedom in Messiah allows the Lord to bless us without regard for anything beyond simple faith - to a degree. While we are young, and, for a season, the Lord allows us to be weaned on the milk of the word, and there is in that early season of our development relatively little expectation about our behavior. As we mature, we come to a place of greater expectation, learning the Lord’s discipline for those whom he loves, and we are brought into a place of abiding. The Lord draws us closer and we learn to enjoy Him particularly as a friend, while at the same time coming to greatly respect his holiness and authority. The Lord deals with us individually, in a way very personally suited to who we are. Now, you may rightly say that the Lord has blessed you greatly despite any prior ignorance and neglect of certain practices. However, there comes a time when the holy spirit convicts us of the need to change. Perhaps the spirit has been moving upon you with regard to headcovering.

Headcovering as a practice of the church is similar to the practices of baptism and the bread and wine communion.They should be practiced in the proper ways giving the Lord due honor; bringing blessing to those who practice them and bearing the appropriate and intended powerful testimony before witnesses. They should not be viewed as merely carnal practices but rather as they are in truth; spiritual. Proper instruction concerning them is certainly the duty of those appointed to minister to the assemblies of saints through teaching, but, indeed, each man is personally responsible to search out truth for himself whether what he is being taught is actually so.