Posted on 04/05/2016 6:30:50 AM PDT by xzins
In little more than a month, the United Methodist Church will know if it is still a church within the classic Christian tradition, or if it has lost its candlestick and is now wandering in the wilderness as just another religious caricature of a homosexualist culture.
This year is a tipping point. Many devious plans have been offered for the delegates to General Conference to consider, the most celebrated of which is a so-called unity plan that 'allows' each individual church to 'make up its own mind' where it will stand. That sounds good to those who want some comfortable way out, but for those with any perception at all, they know that means that a sophistry of verbiage will have permitted open homosexualism within our denomination.
Where will the Conference come down? It's up in the air. It's 50/50. It depends on the size of the African delegation of conservatives who strongly desire a biblical, holy stance. It also depends on the millennials, youth delegates, and fatigue of everyone else with fighting this issue decade after decade. The culture is homosexualist to a large degree, the younger element of the culture reflects that acceptance of homosexualism, and their vote is up in the air.
ping
Pay for it yourself, commie filth.
The horse left the barn long ago regarding this denomination.
Yes it did.
Pay for what?
As someone in the middle of it, we could discuss the standard impression, but it so hard to point out the difference to people of those faithful evangelical churches that exist by the thousands in the denomination AND the other thousands that are not.
Despite Rev 2-3, most think denominations/churches are 100% pure or not in existence. That doesn’t really reflect the reality of the bible.
I do not own myself
I am part of the Body of Christ
I have (begun) the process of surrendering self to Christ
“My Ordination” - I've no words for that Abomination
It is not hers, she does not "Own It"
Willful and Public unclean acts
Teaching filth as Good, Wise, and to be Commended
Matthew 5:19
“Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
Abomination
Yep
What kind of “church” can discard the Bible on a majority vote?
“bc”
The view of scripture is definitely at the heart of all of this.
The church articles of religion are violated by all of this, but the ‘process’ has overcome history is how I’d see it.
How do heretics creep into any church and take over?
2 Peter: 1But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. 2Many will follow their depraved conduct and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. 3In their greed these teachers will exploit you with fabricated stories. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping
birth control....ok. Get it now. Thanks.
The gibmedat attitude that pervades society is sickening.
Yes. I agree.
I can’t believe insurance companies bought into it. They don’t pay for my oil changes on my car insurance.
The lavender mafia infiltrated UMC HQ’s in Wash., DC, many moons ago, and it’s been down hill ever since.
The UMC follows the laws of the General Conference instead of the laws of God.
I ran across a pamphlet at a local Taco Bell while living in Illinois, left behind by a UMC teen. The youth leader of the local UMC church was instructing the youngsters as to the social injustices taking place against tomato pickers due to their low wages and working conditions, and what they could do about it... there was something about boycotting a soup manufacturer and a letter writing campaign. For some peculiar reason the social justice wing of the UMC makes my blood boil.
I walked in the March For Life in Wash., DC, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox faithful. I asked myself- where were the busloads of social justice warriors from the UMC?
For me- I left the UMC or I should say the UMC left me. No thanks. Do not want.
Sorry, but Christian teaching on sexual morality is not an optional extra. You toss it out, you are no longer a Christian. We all sin and fall short, but that does not mean saying sin is not sin and celebrating it. What would Charles Wesley say?
‘it has lost its candlestick and is now wandering in the wilderness’
I left the UMC 15 years ago, after my pastor proclaimed that ‘9/11 was due to World Hunger and we MUST redistribute the wealth so that everybody has enough’. The UMC is now a political organization, not an instrument of Christ.
I am a member of the UMC unless they’ve kicked me out for non-attendance and non-support, after seeing the kind of deterioration of the traditional culture described here. A UMC church a few miles from me now proudly displays a rainbow sign and lets it’s fag flag fly. No thanks. And no money from me.
> “So this is what it has come to: a pair of would-be UMC ordinands inviting us to celebrate their premarital sexual intercourse. Just when I thought I’d seen it all, I realize I hadn’t.”
Infiltration seems a radical supposition when supported by a mere thought based on soft observation.
But in my own experience, Seattle Pacific University had a cadre of theology students who were pushing homosexual normalization based on a civil rights pretext.
I was at an informal gathering of a part of this cadre at the home of my babysitter who had been a preschool teacher to my child. Her husband was a theology student. I hadn’t seen her for about a year but I always remembered she was a warm and positive influence on my young child. She’d been let go from the preschool and her husband who had substituted at the preschool was made persona non grata. I never inquired of the reasons why.
He was affable enough but held an inner edge of hostility to corporate structures. He had been fired from a job at Trader Joes for personal attitude problems and he seemed reasonable in his explanation of it to me. As an aside, I imagine Trader Joes is not a top corporation to work for but it’s often a first job situation for many college kids, and it does advance selected workers to management if they want to go there. I have sometimes detected an undercurrent of dissent as I’ve shopped there.
But nevertheless, I had always found my young theological student friend to be intelligent and quite knowledgeable about theology studies. I am a good listener in person and usually encourage people to be open, so I was considered as non-threatening in such a setting. There was never any outward deliberate sign of my conservative credentials as such outward appearances were not worth engaging in at this setting. Instead, I usually pose questions that make people think but which may sometimes reveal my inclination just by my asking the question. (We’re talking about being in the thick of progressives here, who happened to be associated with a Christian university)
I was somewhat put off by the pins in the nose and tongue, the multiple rings through piercings on the upper rim of the ears, the tattoos and the unwashed hair, all of which had seemed to have accumulated to my young friends in the last year since I had seen them. It was obvious the couple I knew had taken a different turn in life.
So the above describes the setting. Oh, and the gathering was at a student housing home as the couple I knew had had a child. So my meeting with them was also in celebration of their new child.
At the gathering was a woman with black ‘Goth’ type hair, a bit overweight and guarded. It could have been a man dressed in drag but it wasn’t. She was obviously intelligent but very guarded. She started to talk about how it was that ‘gays’ could not enjoy the same rights and privileges as ‘straights’ (I use the more accurate ‘homosexual’ and ‘heterosexual’). There was some discussion as to a recent decision by the college Board of Trustees disallowing homosexual ministers. As the discussion continued, I heard the ‘Goth’ woman say that blacks had suffered in civil rights demonstrations in the 60s, and she suggested that students might have to suffer similarly.
I then interjected and asked if the homosexual movement was extrapolating from the Black Civil Rights movement of the 60s and she looked at me and repeated the word ‘extrapolating’ as if I had revealed a bit about my inclinations. She accepted the word ‘extrapolating’ and agreed it was suitable to say that. But her gaze at me let it be known that I was like an ‘antibody’ inside the group.
To project some age authority and wisdom on the group, I declared that I would not pick sides because in my view many movements are taken up by people that don’t know what they are doing and don’t know where they are going and that it’s sometimes best to wait and see how things unfold. I noticed I got the attention of my babysitter who often sided with reason. I declared that many movements are led by people that are content on marching others off the face of a cliff. I ended by pointing out that America was not homogeneous and this fact added to its strength because its variability allowed for innovative approaches to prosperity.
That was like too much for this group. My young theological student ‘friend’ said it would be good to have ‘variability’ on the college’s Board of Trustees. He was indeed intelligent. I wasn’t going to convince or persuade this group of a damned thing. I had been willing to engage against my better instincts because this was a fricken Christian university setting and I thought there might be a reasoned discourse among a small gathering of the body of Christ, or so I hoped.
But these were leftists at very stages in development, some still malleable, some hard-core.
I left and decided against using the former preschool teacher as a babysitter in the future.
The last I heard of the couple was that he had left the university, not completed his studies for his degree, the couple had moved out of university housing and had started an in-home preschool at a rented home.
But I was a bit surprised to see that students at a Christian university become so embedded in hard-core leftist culture. I expect the college faculty put these leftists out and that’s just fine with me.
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