by Steve | Mar 5, 2013 | In the News
By John Southwick
After 14 years in the Research Office of the General Board of Global Ministries, I have come to look at churches through evaluative eyes. I look for fruitfulness and whether a church’s branches are barren or bearing fruit. It is in that light that I look back on the church where I got my call to ministry more than three decades ago. This was a spectacular church led by a remarkable senior pastor, but I was clueless to those things, having just come to a true faith in Christ and being oblivious to church distinctions. As I reflect back after many decades, I can identify several characteristics which may have contributed to the greatness of this church.
Park Avenue United Methodist Church had been a comfortable, white church in Minneapolis in the early 1950s and then experienced “white flight.” The members who moved to the suburbs drove back to church and wanted it to stay as it had been. The pastor had a more missional view, though that word was yet to be defined as such. He believed the church should minister to the community it was a part of. Lots of church battles ensued, but the pastor prevailed. During my time there, it had become one of the most diverse UM congregations to be found.
Dr. C. Philip Hinerman served there for 36 years until mandatory retirement. When he retired, Park Avenue had the highest worship attendance in the Minnesota Annual Conference. Most other mainline churches in the neighborhood had either closed or dwindled significantly. Also, while statistics are not available, it is likely that Park was in the upper echelon of UM churches with calls to ministry per member. Many of these were to the ordained ministry, such as myself, while many others were to missions or para-church work.
Park’s outreach to the community was central to its mission. Its summer program was legendary, with such offerings as sports teams, typing lessons, and summer camp experiences. Also, an annual summer event was the Soul Liberation Festival. In the parking lot of this essentially inner-city church, a stage was set up and national caliber Christian recording artists performed nightly, along with top-notch speakers. While many in the church and community turned out, this event had a metro-wide draw and reputation, bringing large outdoor crowds.
Phil Hinerman, a founding board member of Good News, was an exceptional leader in many respects. Though he was not a student of leadership techniques, he was a highly motivated, deeply spiritual man. Aware of his limitations, but trusting in a mighty God, he was a man of prayer. Those close to him knew that he rose early in the morning to pray. From his afternoon schedule, he carved out time to pray – and did again in the evenings. These prayer times could easily be an hour or more in length. In this respect, he sounds a great deal like John Wesley.
Dr. Hinerman was a fine pastor, but he was also an evangelist and yearned deeply for people to come to a saving faith in Christ. Furthermore he frequently called people to totally surrender their lives to the Lord Jesus. I still have a list he wrote on the back of an envelope of areas of one’s life that need to be surrendered, which he wrote for me in one of my times with him. He once told me that he shared the surrender message at a pastors’ assembly and that many responded at the altar.
Dr. Hinerman’s meetings with me at his favorite restaurant hangout were not unusual. He met multitudes of people there. These were times of fellowship, counseling, and mentoring. No wonder so many went into the ministry. He genuinely cared for his flock, as well as the community he served.
Much more could be said about Park Avenue and “Doc,” as he was affectionately called by most who knew him. At its core, the strength of Park Avenue was due to the mighty hand of God. God loves to use surrendered leaders who spend time on their knees, with a passion for souls, and a love of the people and community. If more churches had pastors with these qualities, the church vitality we talk so much about might be much more prevalent.
John Southwick is the Director of Research, Networking, and Resources for Good News. Dr. Southwick brings with him a background in research and pastoral ministry that will enhance his work in helping to foster renewal in United Methodist congregations.
by Steve | Mar 5, 2013 | Magazine Articles
By Stephen Rankin
The United Methodist Church, after significant collective soul-searching, has developed a list of markers for vital congregations.
1. People engaging in energetic, Spirit-filled worship
2. People professing faith in Christ
3. People growing in their faith (usually through small groups)
4. People engaged in mission
5. People supporting this mission financially.
This list captures essential practices, but it also makes me think of perhaps the deepest, most pressing, concern that haunted John Wesley: formal, conventional, outward religion. Every one of these markers can be quantified. They’re good markers, but the temptation to focus on what we can easily observe always lurks close by. If we see growing numbers, for example, we quickly assume that all the necessary inward work is happening and we can feel satisfaction. If we succumb, we will have missed the point.
In Discourse II on the Sermon on the Mount, Mr. Wesley offers this characteristic observation about conventional versus vital religion: “The religion of the world implies three things: (1.) The doing no harm, the abstaining from outward sin…(2.) The doing good, the relieving the poor; the being charitable, as it is called: (3.) The using the means of grace; at least the going to church and to the Lord’s Supper. He [sic] in whom these three marks are found is termed by the world a religious [read Christian] man. But will this satisfy him who hungers after God? No: It is not food for the soul.”
Study that list. It’s kind of scary isn’t it? Every one of our vital congregations markers can fit nicely within Wesley’s worry.
They don’t have to, of course. But unless we ask probing questions about what is happening in the lives of people through the practices associated with these markers, we will not achieve our goals.
Along with the markers for vital congregations, we need markers for vital Christians. In addition to people attending energetic, Spirit-filled worship, what do we think God is doing through the worship in the worshippers? It’s great to have a bunch of people in small groups, but what is happening in them through this experience?
We need to develop some markers for vital Christians as well as vital congregations.
All this makes me think about another of our goals: reaching younger and more diverse people. Young people typically don’t care much for formal religion. It is one of the reasons “spiritual, but not religious” has caught on among them, why an increasing percentage (by some estimates as many as 1/3) claim no religious identity.
It has become almost a parlor game to blame the church for this situation. I think too much has been made of the hypocritical, ignorant Christian portrait to explain fully what is going on in our world. But I do believe that we still pay insufficient attention to the quality of Christian discipleship that our congregations demonstrate.
What if, then, in addition to the markers for vital congregations, leaders began asking what vital Christians look like within those United Methodist congregations? What kind of Christian do we expect to become as God works graciously in us?
These questions drive us back to sources that describe – to steal the title of a Watchman Nee book – the normal Christian life. Precisely here, Mr. Wesley has something to offer. I commend pastoral and denominational leaders prayerfully, reflectively to work through once again the Discourses on the Sermon on the Mount. We could do far worse.
Stephen Rankin is the chaplain at Southern Methodist University in Dallas and the author of Aiming at Maturity: The Goal of the Christian Life (Wipf and Stock).
by Steve | Mar 5, 2013 | Mar-Apr 2013
By Jessica LaGrone
A young woman was sitting around one evening with a group of friends when the conversation turned to religion. While politics and religion are known to be dangerous subjects among even the closest friends, the way things have gone in the political sphere lately, religion may have been the safer topic!
As her friends went around discussing their convictions, it was clear that most of these young adults weren’t really sure what they believed. They spoke in vague generalities, and some of them weren’t able to articulate what they believed at all.
Finally, she realized everyone was looking at her. Somebody said: “Well, you’re quiet, what do you believe?”
She opened her mouth without even knowing how she would answer. She started out: “I believe… I believe in God.” Then out of nowhere heard herself say:
“I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord.” Almost unable to stop herself she continued: “He was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried….”
She proceeded to recite the entire Apostles Creed from beginning to end. When she looked up her friends were wide-eyed, and no one was more shocked than her. She had grown up in the church reciting the Apostles Creed – and even though she didn’t even know she had it memorized, when asked what she believed, it just came out.
Millions of Christians recite the Apostles’ Creed on a regular basis. Others may not say it aloud, but look to it as a template for the most basic beliefs of the Christian faith. For many, the words of the Apostles’ Creed have formed the backbone of their faith.
Many churches have drifted away from using repetitive liturgy like creeds in worship. They say that we do better to speak straight from the heart each time we articulate our beliefs and feelings about God, since anything we repeat often enough will become rote, more about habit than genuine conviction.
One of the first weddings I ever performed taught me a valuable lesson about speaking from the heart. I was just out of seminary, young and naïve, and when the couple said to me in premarital counseling, “Pastor, we’ve written our own vows,” I had no good reason to object, so I said yes.
When we reached that point in the service, however, I realized the wisdom of using traditional vows, as the couple’s words spoken “from the heart” ranged from cliché to cringe-worthy.
“I vow to be more in love with you each day than I was the day before.” “I vow that I will always rub your feet at the end of a long day.” “I vow that you will always be my Pookie Bear.”
That’s when I realized that you just can’t improve on the traditional words that couples have spoken at weddings for centuries. “I promise to love you, comfort you, honor and keep you, in sickness and in health, and forsaking all others, be faithful to you as long as we both shall live.”
You really can’t do better than to promise those things. They are the heart of every strong marriage.
The same thing is true about the Apostles’ Creed. You really can’t improve on these promises, these vows. Sometimes words that are scripted for you can express the convictions of your heart better than anything you could make up yourself.
When we try to express what we believe about God, our words will always fall short. But the words of this creed have stood the test of almost 2000 years of Christians saying what we believe together.
While it wasn’t written (as some legends have surmised) by the apostles themselves, the basic form of the Apostles’ Creed can be traced back to the earliest centuries of the Christian faith.
It served three basic purposes for the early Christians:
1. To catechize – to teach new believers what the Church stood for.
2. To defend – to guard the faith against heresies and false doctrines.
3. To evangelize – to tell the world the core of what the Church believed.
Catechize
The Apostles Creed was used as an outline of the faith for baptism preparation for new believers.
During what we now call the season of Lent, those who wished to be baptized into the faith would spend time studying the beliefs of the Christian faith as outlined in the words of the Creed. Then, at dawn on Easter Sunday, they would line up and affirm their faith by responding to the Creed as a set of questions.
Do you believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth? And they would answer, in chorus: “Yes, I believe!”
Do you believe in Jesus Christ, his only son our Lord? “Yes, I believe!”
This would continue until they had answered in the affirmative to all twelve declarations of the Creed. Only then would the new believers line up, and one by one, step into the baptismal pool and be immersed in the water, baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The Creed itself is Trinitarian in shape, with a section affirming the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, followed by a handful of short but important pronouncements at the end – the holy catholic (universal) church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, and the life everlasting.
Defend
It can seem unfair that, while the Father is given just a couple of lines, and the Holy Spirit a meager six words, the lengthy core of the Creed is dedicated to declarations about Jesus.
The explanation for this seeming inequity lies in the Creed’s objective to defend the faith against false doctrines. In the early days of Christianity heresies about Jesus were rampant. Rumors that Jesus was not truly human, or that he was not divine, or that his crucifixion or resurrection were a sham quickly turned into doctrines for splinter groups of Christians. The Apostles’ Creed was a way of summing up, in very few words, what Christians do believe in order to stop speculations.
Centuries later, there are still more misconceptions about Jesus than any other person in history. We need the affirmations of this Creed more than ever to remind us of the core truths about Jesus Christ.
It’s interesting that the only person named in the creed besides God is Pontius Pilate. Since Pilate was a recognized historical figure, the statement “suffered under Pontius Pilate” served to place Jesus at an exact moment in history, refuting any claims that his story was a fairy tale existing outside of historical record.
Pilate goes down in history in the Apostles’ Creed as the one under whom Jesus suffered, even though he never physically struck Jesus, never convicted, or sentenced him. All Pilate did was wash his hands of the situation. His public censure everywhere the Apostles’ Creed is spoken reminds us that there is no neutral stance where Jesus Christ is concerned. When faced with the question of Jesus, Pilate’s attempt not to decide where he stood was a clear and condemning decision. Our words affirming belief in Jesus Christ as the Son of God whenever we say the Creed marks our choice.
Evangelize
The content of the Creed follows a basic explanation of what Christians believe, simple enough for anyone to share with a friend who wonders what this faith is all about.
I often hear from new believers who have been regular church attenders in the past but have only recently embraced the faith for themselves. They sometimes say things like: “You know, I’ve been in church all my life, but until now I never heard the Gospel.” I’m never sure exactly how to respond to that. I usually say, simply, “That’s a shame.”
It is a shame. It’s a shame that there are churches out there that have lost sight of telling people that God wants a
relationship with them, that he wants that so much that he died for their sins and that their lives and eternal life can be changed forever if they understand and accept that. It’s a shame that there are churches that aren’t preaching the Gospel.
But there’s something else that’s a shame. It’s a shame they weren’t listening.
If you ask most people who say they’ve been in church their whole lives without really hearing the Gospel: “Did your church ever say the Apostles’ Creed?” Many would answer, “Yes.” Some would even say: “We said it every Sunday.”
If that’s the case, then it’s a shame they weren’t listening. Because not only did they hear the Gospel, they actually said it with their own mouth.
Here’s the gift of this Creed to the Church: No matter what kind of church you are in, no matter who is preaching or what they say or what they don’t say, if you are in a church that is at least faithful enough to say the Apostles Creed, you hear the Gospel.
Sadly, there are some churches that have even strayed beyond these basic bonds of belief.
A friend of mine moved to New England several years ago and found a church that she felt was the right fit for her. She like it that it was a church that labeled itself “progressive,” valuing tolerance and openness to all beliefs instead of proclaiming one set of beliefs in particular.
The church had few members and wasn’t growing, so they decided to put together a brochure to put the word out about who they were. The committee tasked with writing the brochure agreed that the cover should say who they were. So they began by writing:
“We are a church that believes that…” And that’s where they stopped. They couldn’t agree on what to say next. They thought about putting the name Jesus on there, but they knew that might offend some people. They thought about saying something more generic about God, but they were concerned that might turn some people off.
“We are a church that believes that…” Wait, someone said, we can’t really say that we all believe the same thing. So they backed up: “We are a church that…”
Wait a minute, someone else said – should we even use the word church in there? Someone might have had a bad experience with church, and be put off by that word.
“We are a…”
They had to disband the committee. They couldn’t even agree on what to call themselves.
My friend left that church. As progressive as she was, she knew there was no life in a church that cannot even express what it believes.
Where the Church is letting go of its ties of belief to Christians through the centuries it is slowly withering, cut off from its power source. But where the words of the Apostles’ Creed are believed with sincerity, proclaimed with feeling, lived out with fervor, there is where the Church is thriving. Answering again and again to the question of faith with the response: “I believe… I believe… Yes, I believe.”
Jessica LaGrone is the Pastor of Worship at The Woodlands United Methodist Church near Houston, Texas. She is a guest speaker at churches and events around the country, and her new Bible Study, Namesake, was recently released by Abingdon Press. Her blog, Reverend Mother, covers the daily life of balancing pastoring and mothering, at www.jessicalagrone.com.
by Steve | Feb 25, 2013 | Front Page News
February 19, 2013
Wayne Brock, Chief Scout Executive Boys Scouts of America
P.O. Box 152079
Irving, TX 75015-2079
Gil Hanke. UMNS photo by Mike DuBose
Dear Mr. Brock and the voting Delegates to the BSA Annual Meeting,
For decades, General Commission on United Methodist Men (GCUMM) has had as a primary goal, a core value, to expand scouting ministries throughout the UMC. For many youth the UMC is the entry point for an exciting journey to discipleship. There is no argument within the UMC that scouting as a ministry is a mark of vitality.
Since BSA announced a possible change in their membership policy dealing with homosexuality, our office has received many phone calls and emails. We realize in the United Methodist Church there are people who have differing opinions on this issue. There are many questions of legal implications, and questions about how this new rule would be managed in our local churches. Many see this change to be in conflict with their understanding of Scripture. Many have stated they will terminate their relationship with BSA, as a leader and as donors. Many have expressed anger that our church was not brought into this discussion as this change was being considered. A few have told us they support this proposed change by BSA; however, overall, the responses have been overwhelmingly against the proposed change.
This potential shift from BSA places GCUMM s primary goal, our core value- expansion and retention- at risk. If approved, scouting programs would decrease, and new programs would be harder to begin due to the uncertainty this proposal has generated. There has not been adequate time for GCUMM or individual church/charter organizations to fully explore the legal and spiritual consequences of these proposed changes. For these reasons, on this date, the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of the GCUMM affirmed unanimously these two requests of BSA:
1. We would ask that these new membership proposals being considered at the May, 2013 Annual Meeting of BSA not be implemented at this time. More time is needed for the 50 United Methodist Annual Conferences and the thousands of United Methodist churches to research in a thoughtful and prayerful manner exactly what this change might mean.
2. We would further ask that this be the beginning of a new relationship between BSA and the faith communities that provide over 70% of the units and 62% of the membership in BSA. Ongoing work must grow from this experience as BSA and their ministry partners seek ways to implement a new, strengthened, faith-filled response to the Scout Oath and Scout Law.
Mr. Brock, please forward this letter to all voting members of the upcoming Annual Meeting. Feel free to contact our Nashville office if you have questions. In His service,
Bishop James E. Swanson, Sr. Gilbert C. Hanke
President, GCUMM General Secretary, GCUMM
1000 17th Ave S ı Nashville, TN 37212
Phone: 615.340.7145 ı Toll Free: 866.297.4312 ı Fax: 615.340.1770 ı E-mail: gcumm@gcumm.org
by Steve | Feb 21, 2013 | Front Page News, Uncategorized
By Rob Renfroe and Thomas Lambrecht
In a recent column in The Washington Post, the Rev. Adam Hamilton, pastor of Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kansas (the largest United Methodist congregation in the U.S.), stated that Bible verses that prohibit same-sex intimacy “capture the cultural understandings and practices of sexuality in biblical times, but do not reflect God’s will for gay and lesbian people.” This is not a new position for Rev. Hamilton to take. He came to the same conclusion in his 2010 book, When Christians Get It Wrong. (Links are provided at the conclusion of this article.)
Adam Hamilton, UMNS photo by Mike DuBose
Good News has great respect for the ministry and leadership of Adam Hamilton. His ministry is biblically based and effective. His written resources for congregational study have helped hundreds of churches engage Scripture and grow spiritually. We consider Hamilton to be an orthodox believer who affirms United Methodist doctrine—a brother in Christ. On this issue, however, we believe that it is the Rev. Hamilton who gets it wrong.
Not all interpretations of Scripture have equal validity. It is important to examine the supporting evidence for a particular interpretation of Scriptural teaching. Hamilton’s question, “Are the Biblical passages forbidding same-sex intimacy culturally bound and thus not applicable to us today,” is a fair and valid question. The biblical evidence, however, does not support his answer.
The Rev. Hamilton compares the Bible’s teaching on sexual morality to the teaching on slavery. He maintains that the Bible’s teaching that “tacitly approved” slavery was culturally conditioned, even though at times in church history those same teachings were used to justify the practice of slavery, which we now believe to be unjust and immoral. In the same way, he says, it is possible to read the Bible’s teaching on same-sex intimacy as reflecting the cultural conditions of Bible times and not representative of God’s will for today.
Rob Renfroe
However, the comparison between the Bible’s teaching on slavery and on same-sex intimacy breaks down. The Bible never commands the practice of slavery, but regulates (in the Old Testament) a practice that was already embedded in the culture. As a matter of fact, the most memorable image in the Old Testament is Moses standing before Pharaoh on behalf of the enslaved Israelite nation, announcing God’s demand, “Let my people go!”
In the New Testament, the apostles advised slaves how to live as Christians in a circumstance that they could not change. But the most compelling image in the New Testament is Jesus speaking in the Nazareth synagogue proclaiming “freedom for the prisoners” and “release to the oppressed.”
By contrast, the Bible’s teaching clearly forbids same-sex intimacy. It is not simply acknowledging a practice in existence, but actually commanding Christians not to engage in it. There is no ambivalence about this teaching throughout Scripture. That makes it less likely to be culturally bound.
Thomas Lambrecht
The Bible’s teaching on slavery contains within it the seeds of slavery’s demise. The Old Testament regulations of slavery made the institution more humane than the ways it was practiced in surrounding cultures. In the New Testament, Paul encourages slaves who have the opportunity to become free to take that opportunity (I Corinthians 7:21). Paul also subtly encourages Philemon to free his newly-converted slave Onesimus (Philemon 15-16). Most importantly, the New Testament asserts that in Christ all are equal—there is no slave or free (Galatians 3:28). Paul reminds masters that they are subject to a Master in heaven, who will not regard them more favorably than their slaves (Ephesians 6:8-9). The reason for the apostles’ advice that slaves should serve their masters “with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ,” is to maintain a winsome Christian witness—“so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive” (Titus 2:10, also I Timothy 6:1-2).
All these qualifications and tempering of the Christian view of slavery show it to be culturally conditioned, and these qualifications eventually led to the ethical conclusion that slavery is immoral, not in keeping with the timeless will of God. There are no such qualifications or softening of biblical teaching regarding same-sex intimacy. Therefore, it is far less likely that such teaching is culturally conditioned.
In his book, the Rev. Hamilton uses an interpretive lens to determine which Scriptures are applicable to today: love for God and love for neighbor. Hamilton believes any Biblical teaching that is inconsistent with those two commands is not currently binding upon us. We do not agree with the approach of taking one passage of Scripture as a filter by which to evaluate all the rest of Scripture. Instead, it is best to take each passage in its own historical and theological context. However, even using Hamilton’s approach does not necessarily yield a definitive answer on this question.
Is it loving to use gay slurs or “jokes,” hateful language, or even violence against gays and lesbians? Of course not, and we condemn such hateful behavior in the strongest terms. Is it loving for the church to place its stamp of approval on any behavior that people feel attracted to, as long as it doesn’t “hurt” another person? That is a weak definition of love, inadequate for our calling to “transform the world.” Is it loving for the church to condone what God has forbidden? John describes love this way, “This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands. This is love for God: to obey his commands” (I John 5:2-3).
The Rev. Hamilton mentions “a handful of Scriptures (five or eight depending upon how one counts) that specifically speak of same-sex intimacy as unacceptable to God.” But we believe the Bible’s teaching on sexual morality and God’s intention is based on far more than a few isolated verses. The thread of heterosexual monogamy runs throughout Scripture. (We recognize the presence of polygamy in Scripture as an aberration from the New Testament norm and God’s ideal.)
God created male and female for each other (Genesis 1 and 2), resulting in the two becoming “one flesh” and representing the image of God in their complementary maleness and femaleness. Jesus reaffirmed God’s original intention (contrary to the law of Moses’ accommodation to the people’s hardness of heart) in defining marriage as the exclusive permanent union of a man and a woman (Matthew 19:1-12). God designed the union of man and woman in marriage to symbolize for us the union of Christ and his church (Ephesians 5:21-33). The culmination of God’s plan is pictured as the great “wedding supper of the Lamb” (Revelation 19:9).
This constant thread of heterosexual monogamy throughout Scripture, along with the specific prohibitions of certain sexual behavior (adultery, prostitution, promiscuity, same-sex intimacy) give us the basis for determining God’s timeless will for expressing our human sexuality. New Testament scholar and Anglican Bishop N.T. Wright puts it this way, “When you look at the grand narrative about male and female, from Genesis right through to Revelation, this isn’t just one or two arbitrary rules about how to behave with bits of your body. This is about something woven into the deep structure of what it means to be created in the image of God, what it means to be citizens of this God-given world. And until we learn to see ethics in that way, we haven’t actually got to first base.”
There are only a couple verses in the New Testament that explicitly criticize polygamy, which is otherwise “tacitly approved” in the rest of Scripture. Yet, based on the thread of heterosexual monogamy, along with some of the adverse consequences also recorded in Scripture, the church has come to see polygamy as contrary to the timeless will of God.
There are only a few passages in Scripture that explicitly address sex before marriage (rather than adultery or promiscuity). Yet, based on the thread of heterosexual monogamy and on religious traditions carried over from biblical times, the church has consistently affirmed that sexual relations ought to be reserved for marriage alone.
In our current culture, it is tempting to want to lower the bar of Christian expectations. Recent surveys have shown that 63 percent of young adults believe same-sex intimacy should be accepted by society. This is part of an overall trend in which another recent survey found that 44 percent of single women and 63 percent of single men have had one-night stands and that 42 percent of single adults would not date a virgin.
Good News believes that it is the wrong course for the church to abandon its teaching on sexuality in the face of the rapidly declining moral standards of our society under the guise of attempting to make the Gospel message “more attractive.” The Gospel message and the ministry of Jesus Christ will only be attractive to the extent that they demonstrate the power to transform lives and elevate human behavior to the original intention of our Creator.
Eminent theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg summarizes Good News’ perspective: “The reality of homophile inclinations, therefore, need not be denied and must not be condemned. The question, however, is how to handle such inclinations within the human task of responsibly directing our behavior. This is the real problem; and it is here that we must deal with the conclusion that homosexual activity is a departure from the norm for sexual behavior that has been given to men and women as creatures of God. For the church this is the case not only for homosexual, but for any sexual activity that does not intend the goal of marriage between man and wife, [including] particularly adultery.
“The church has to live with the fact that, in this area of life as in others, departures from the norm are not exceptional but rather common and widespread. The church must encounter all those concerned with tolerance and understanding but also call them to repentance. It cannot surrender the distinction between the norm and behavior that departs from that norm.”
We understand the pastoral dilemma that causes Adam Hamilton to wrestle with the Scriptures over this contentious issue. Many of us have wrestled with the need to be pastoral, while also being faithful to Scripture, in leading people to the most important reality: a saving relationship with God through Jesus Christ. We are ultimately unconvinced that surrendering God’s ideal for human sexuality in the face of cultural pressure will result in faithful, world-changing disciples of Jesus Christ. Presented with love, understanding, and compassion, we believe Christ’s call to holiness of heart and life is the way to invite a fallen world to follow the “Author and Perfecter of our faith.”
Good News hopes that, as we continue to discuss the crucial constellation of issues around sexual morality, Scripture, and the church’s teachings, we will do so with grace and respect for each other. We encourage clergy and laity alike to delve more deeply into the interpretation of Scripture, including resources available on our website and others, so that we can move toward a common understanding of the church’s proper ministry in this age of sexual chaos.
The Rev. Rob Renfroe is the president and publisher of Good News. The Rev. Thomas Lambrecht is the vice president of Good News.
Links
• “On homosexuality, many Christians get the Bible wrong,” by the Rev. Adam Hamilton in The Washington Post
• Chapter 5 of “When Christians Get It Wrong” dealing with homosexuality
• Adam Hamilton’s sermon on “The Bible and Sexuality”
