Posted on 08/14/2015 7:56:37 AM PDT by xzins
4:00PM EDT
A former Southern Baptist Church has decided all are welcomed in their pulpit, going so far as to ordain gay and transgender ministers.
First Baptist of Greenville, South Carolina—the church home of the first Southern Baptist Convention president—has taken a bold move in "embracing the complexities of gender identity."
"What I heard was, 'We need to do the right thing, regardless of what anybody thinks or says about us,'" Senior Pastor Jim Dant tells Greenville Online. "There were a few people who said, 'Are they going to start calling us the gay church in town?'"
After a six-month exploratory time, Greenville asked their members to affirm the acceptance of same-sex couples. According to Greenville Online, those who didn't affirm the church's decision still remained in the congregation.
In moving forward, the church ministers can perform same-sex unions and ordain any person, regardless of sexual orientation and lifestyle, to serve in a leadership role.
Greenville split from the SBC in the early 1990s, and is now a member of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. Before leaving the original denomination, however, Greenville was home to William Bullein Johnson. Johnson not only served as a minister at Greenville, but was inaugural president of the Southern Baptist Convention.
On their Facebook page, Greenville received several positive comments about their move.
"Thank you FBC Greenville. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 1 John 4:8," one commenter wrote.
Another: "One day very soon, the Southern Baptist Convention will find themselves marooned on a bigoted island of their own making, while the civilized world of sound, modern biblical exegesis goes on around them."
The SBC, however, has no plans of the sort. President Ronnie Floyd told the Christian Examiner that the SBC stands by their biblical definition of marriage, and are in prayer for Greenville.
"We pray that this church will one day return to be biblically driven in their belief about marriage and family, rather than culturally driven as they have testified in the reported story."
I was raised Baptist, and am not now, but half my family is. It’s a shock to see these former SBCs and independents fall. I would never have thought it possible.
Apostate church
“Are they going to start calling us the gay church in town?”
You should be so lucky....
Another: “One day very soon, the Southern Baptist Convention will find themselves marooned on a bigoted island of their own making, while the civilized world of sound, modern biblical exegesis goes on around them.”
I find this hard to believe. We who don’t subscribe to homosexual marriage or the whole LGBT sex change thing, will find ourselves marooned on a bigoted island??? Really???? while the civilized world goes on??? Implying that those of us on bigotry island are uncivilized???? What sort of liberal pap is this?????
Still don’t know any Christians - churches or congregations - that ordain gay & transgendered confused individuals. Only secular churches and congregations do that.
1 Thess 4:1-8 says they have rejected God.
They don’t have to worry. I would never call them a church.
The operative word is “former,” as in “former SBC church.”
Please do not use the word “Independent” when discussing that church. The Independent Fundamental Baptist churches would tar and feather anyone in their number who pulled that stunt. They left the Convention over music and dancing, what makes anyone think they would stand for a second this kind of apostasy.
I would change the name to: The First Church of Judas.
They will collapse within a few months.
Same here.....Back home all my relatives are Southern Baptist
I’m now ReformedPresbyterian.........
They don’t know what to do with me :)
“A former Southern Baptist Church...”
Operative and explaining words.
And considering the beginnings of this particular Baptist church, it encapsulates and pinpoints what happens when neither God nor adherence to the Word of God are invited and welcomed into a congregation of misled Christians.
This could only have happened after many many members of FBC-Gville had died and been deceased for a while.
There are other congregations of Baptists in Greenville-Spartanburg that might be good for presently-dissatisfied FBC-G members to visit. Time is short.
No wonder so many people are leaving the established so called churches and seeking out the churches that teach strictly from the Bible, that is if they can find them. Some time ago I went to the office of a church near where I live and asked what their stand was on Israel.....the receptionist couldn’t even answer that. Needless to say, that was not the church for me. Obviously, one of the 5 virgins who do not trim their lamps. I watch J. D. Farag over in Kailua, Hawaii each and every week, he teaches chapter and verse from the Bible.
What about what God says about it, Pastor Dant?
Thanks for the tip. I'll check J. D. Farag out. I like Charles Stanley's preaching, btw.
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