Welcoming or Tolerating?

“We welcome homosexuals.”

“We can’t condone homosexual behavior.”

How many churches do you know that make both of those statements?

I was reminded of that reading a story in the Christian Post where a Lutheran pastor in Minnesota tried to get his church to leave the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) after the denomination voted to allow ordination of non-celebate homosexual pastors. When the congregation voted on and rejected that idea, he resigned and started a new church with people leaving his old one. The pastor used both of the opening phrases to describe his old church.

Seriously, if we were “welcomed” into a church but told that our “behavior” of having sex with each other was considered sinful, I don’t think we would feel very welcome. Tolerated, maybe, but certainly not welcome. Who wouldn’t feel the same way? Sadly, that concept continues to be a mystery to many mainline churches who have to tried to convince people (and perhaps their own congregations) that allowing people in the door without swift and direct condemnation is a sufficient display of Jesus’ love.

Isn’t this just one tiny step better than the worn out “Hate the sin, love the sinner” approach some of the more fundamentalist churches take, especially when the hate part is so often directed at the aforementioned sinners.

Remember, the only people Jesus cast out and was sharply critical of were the religious types, the ones who administered the Law that had grown so it was impossible for anyone to be in total compliance. He loved sinner of all types, but the religious leaders really got on his nerves, mainly because their rules put obstacles between people and His Father. Jesus came down to earth and suffered on the cross to give us a path to the Father, not to keep “certain types” away and out of fellowship with Him.

Jesus doesn’t tolerate sinners, He loves them. Perhaps our churches should put more effort into doing the same.

More from Jim and Brenda Johnson at: Straight, Not Narrow!

Gay Marriage Splitting the Lutheran Church?

Well, I suppose if you’re bound and determined that you have no way of overcoming your bias, hate, intolerance and bigotry against the LGBT community it is.

In a post on the notoriously anti-gay CBN.com website:

The liberal Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is heading for a split over gay marriage.

The denomination voted in August to allow sexually active gay and lesbian pastors. Opponents say that’s in direct contradiction to scripture.

“We don’t feel we have a choice,” Paull Spring, a retired Pennsylvania bishop now chairman of Minnesota-based Lutheran CORE told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “The vote on sexuality opened the eyes of many to how far the ELCA has moved from biblical teaching.”

Conservative Lutherans say they will soon start drafting a constitution to form a new denomination. They hope to have it off the ground by next August.

So now there will be more us’s and them’s. But unlike our anti-gay friends over at CBN, I tend to view this as a positive instead of a negative. If you’re hell bent on hating the gays, then by all means, form your own “we hate the gays” religion. File your tax-exempt forms and use your tax exempt money in an attempt to uphold discrimination.

But for those who were strong enough (and obviously a majority in the Lutheran church) to stand up and say it’s not OK to discriminate. Thank you! As an American citizen, I applaud your strength, courage and wisdom.

Churches Need to Move Beyond ‘Gay’ Issue

I applaud the decision of the Evangelical Lutheran Church to ordain regardless of sexual orientation. And I look forward to the day when all Christian churches will be beyond this current issue of selective Biblical literalism. I know the ELCA’s was a decision reached through Biblical study of the entire canon (not just a few passages), prayer, discussion and soul searching. And I know those elements of Christian spirituality will be staples for the ELCA as it moves into God’s future. May you in the ELCA know that there is a great cloud of witnesses — past, present and future — cheering you on so that you may continue to run the race of faith with perseverance looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.

More at: MLive.com

God Attacks Lutherans!

It turns out that God doesn’t just send really big storms like Hurricane Katrina to express his hatred for gay equality; he also sends smaller storms like almost-kinda tornadoes.

A Baptist pastor and popular Calvinist author says it was no accident that tornado-force winds hit downtown Minneapolis the same week that the nation’s largest Lutheran group was meeting there to debate liberalizing its policies toward gays.

John Piper, pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, wrote in an Aug. 20 blog that powerful winds that ripped through the city Aug. 19 were “a gentle but firm warning” to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Read more at: Scienceblogs

Lutherans Vote in Support of Gay Marriage & Clergy

The nation’s largest Lutheran denomination, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) voted this morning in favor of allowing individual churches to support same-sex unions, however, that hasn’t been the focus of debate during the church’s biennial meeting in Minneapolis, Minn., this week.

The big debate, over whether or not to allow sexually active clergy in homosexual relations serve has been the hot button issue and expected to be voted on yet this afternoon.

Earlier today however, church delegates voted 619 to 402 to approve a resolution that allows churches that want to recognize same-sex unions to do so in the manner they see fit.

Updates will come as the vote is determined.

This is certainly a reason to believe that opinions favoring the equality of LGBT citizens has evolved tremendously over the past couple years.

UPDATE:

By a vote of 559 to 451, delegates to the denomination’s national assembly in Minneapolis approved a resolution declaring that the church would find a way for people in “publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous same-gender relationships” to serve as official ministers.

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