Posted on 08/20/2016 5:30:42 AM PDT by Gamecock
On a cold Sunday in January, Cynthia Meyer, pastor at Edgerton United Methodist Church, came out to her congregation.
She did so with hope that change regarding the denomination’s stance on homosexuality was coming. But eight months later, that hope, for now at least, is gone. And after the end of August, Meyer will be gone as well.
To avoid a church trial, Meyer and Methodist officials agreed that she would give up her duties and go on involuntary leave. Her final sermon in Edgerton in Johnson County will be Aug. 28.
(Excerpt) Read more at kansascity.com ...
I understand you sentiment, but honestly, I am not going to complain about that.
God has been putting up with my nonsense for a long time.
Not that I don’t want to get rid of it. I do, but nevertheless, I’m glad God isn’t like me.
You can stop right there. The buck passes to the Bishop, who ordains a candidate first as a deacon, then later as an elder, and has primary accountability for the minister's assignments and advancement. It is the District Supervisor's job to be alert to warning signs, and put the brakes on. The local congregation has a say, but not the ruling one.
At least, that's the way it was at least from about 1745 until about 1965; presumably also now.
Whoa! I’m going to have to revisit that link. No wonder homosexuals think they’re born that way: their brains are rewired. Whoa! I can’t imagine the work required to undo that rewiring.
Yeah, the Bishop knew all along.
You expressed it very well. I was reading that sexual relations between biblically married couples can lead to levels of connectedness that are other-worldly. In other words, soul-level connectedness.
Agreed! Churches will become government institutions where the clergy are paid by the government. The end times.
Why on earth any congregation needs to be told of its pastor’s sexual orientation is beyond me; or, for that matter, why we at large need to know it about anyone. And it’s only the gays who impose this stupidity on their parishioners. It reinforces the impression that gays are basically all about themselves.
Ah, now here we get into another bugaboo that I’ve been occasionally squawking about.
When a Christian is tempted we have, essentially, two responses besides give in.
The first is to deal with temptation by the strength which God supplies by His Holy Spirit: that way out that He promises to provide.
The second is to try to deal with it yourself in your own strength. Essentially telling God “I got this one!”
The second probably happens far too often and, if you think about it, is kinda dumb on our part.
I guess I should back up here all the way to the beginning of humanity.
He created them as holy beings: they traded that for being merely moral beings.
Which is to say: mankind on the whole doesn’t have a morality problem but has a holiness problem.
Saint or sinner can be moral in their own strength ... but these do not result in fruits of the Spirit, or so I’m persuaded, because when we are moral in our own strength we are not relying on God.
Now, there is clearly an area when people set their standards of right and wrong by what His word tells us, which would fall under the not turning our feet to the left or right because of His commandment (Proverbs 4:27). So there is to us this fuzzy area of when we are trying by our own strength and when we are obeying Him that needs to be considered, for obedience is relying on Him ... except when it’s not.
I know that sounds confusing but consider...
Knowing His commandments can also be a cultural thing, a matter of what others expect of us, and it is possible that someone may seem to be obeying Him when, cut to the chase, they are obeying them.
And of course it can be, and probably usually is, mixed: a fellow may resist temptation one day because “it’s against God’s will” and the next “mom and dad will really be disappointed” and yet some other day push past it going “Ah ha, I’ve got this beat!”
But whatever men think about the outward result God is not mocked.
If a person has gotten so moral in their own strength I’m persuaded that He sometimes lets us be sifted as Peter was so that we should learn to rely on Him rather than ourselves.
Which is where your post leads to this one.
As you and I are all too aware there have been infamous incidents where some supposed servant of God has made a wreck of their testimony because of some long concealed sin that can no longer be hidden.
I consider it likely that these sort of incidents, here used as an example, come about because God is letting such men be sifted to prove what they are. There seems to be three end results.
The first is to be like Peter and be brought to a place of real reliance on The Lord and humility before Him. With such persons their restoration proves that they were always Christians.
The second is to fall away and depart, to be like those Paul mentioned as having departed because they were never really repentant in the first place. This doesn’t mean such a person is beyond saving, just that they no longer claim something from the past that was never the case with them.
The third, and worst, if for the unrepentant person to shed some crocodile tears, or whatever seems necessary to reenter the congregation, and then work to bring others around to their way of thinking.
This last is something like the situation that the OP was about.
So what you wrote is certainly true: a Christian’s identity, who we really are, is “Christian” ...
... if there is sin in our lives it gives way to Him ...
... we do not serve two masters ...
... and though others might claim the title of “Christian” if they come to a point that they define themselves by some thing that they do, so that it has priority to understand who they think they are ...
... which will mean they will start demanding God and His word stand aside rather than this thing ...
... Then they too are not serving two masters, they are just not actually repentant and sin is their master.
But the world often sees and acknowledges their claims, even if they are not true. That is because it rejoices to seem to discredit the Faith.
And actually, the greater the shipwreck of the faith of someone, especially those that never had a genuine faith to begin with, the louder the world will broadcast it back at genuine saints for by excuse of these do the peoples blaspheme (Romans 2:24).
Ah ... the last edit I do WAS one edit too few.
When I wrote “The last is something like the situation that the OP was about.” ...
I did not mean that she was only recently revealed because she had been sifted and found to be a tare.
She obviously revealed herself because she thought the church should change to accommodate her.
Rather “like” should then be read pretty loosely ... not as if it were really similar, just not entirely dissimilar.
She was like she has shown herself to be long before now — in the class of persons trying to sneak their thing into God’s family, if possible drawing any saints she might after her and away from Him.
That said, right now in that congregation there may be some real sifting going on, and while it may not be all that dramatic, given the history of progressive “churches”, I’d be concerned that at the end of the day that subversive-sneaky unbelievers don’t seem to carry the day ... and she stays.
I guess I should just allow that sometimes real Christians should be proverbially, if not literally, willing to run screaming into the night rather than stay a moment longer in a congregation that has flatly departed from even a semblance of the faith.
Why does she still have a congregation? If my pastor came out as gay I would walk right out of that church and never go back until the until the situation was resolved.
They don’t truly believe in the Word. They think their feeelings are more important that the Word, the Logos.
Perhaps the problem lies in the seminaries. Surely her “bent” would have shown itself before this.
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