Pastor Bill wrote:I believe there is already a "Gay Friendly" Pentecostal denomination, I don't remember the name of it, and it's a smaller group that most haven't heard of, but it's out there.
Honstely we already have a statement on marriage, it addresses same-sex marriage and divorce as not the will of God, but does allow for forgiveness of divorce (and I see nothing that would exclude forgiveness for past homosexual sin in our teachings either) but it does recognize God's Perfect Will is Marriage as one man, one woman for life.
Mark me as one of those who's unsure about the usefulness and benefit of "statements" on every hot topic. The Bible is the Christian "statement" because it is God's statement. He said God created male and female in His image, that a man leaves his parents and cleaves to his wife (a woman), and that what God has joined, people are not to split with their own rules/laws/excuses, and that adultery is a sin in the heart, mind and body, and that fornication is as well.
How does that not also cover same-sex sexuality? How can that not mean that homosexual relationships are off the mark and are, therefore, sinful? Yesterday at lunch, I read some stuff a Church of God pastor in Cleveland wrote online from a symposium at Harvard or Princeton last year about pentecostalism and homosexuality. Like everybody else these days, it seems, all he wants to do is "have a conversation" and gain "understanding" about one another's "faith tradition". I cut my lunch short from it. Disgusted me, although he was very careful to state that he viewed homosexuality as a sin.
I may be as crazy as a football bat, but I don't see the apostle Paul blogging in his epistles about angst and the subtleties of culture and how that would cause him to tiptoe around the truth and then dance hard on the edges of non-core issues. I don't see him writing to the churches to have conversations. What I do see is be instant in season and out of season -- to be ready with the gospel no matter what the culture or the times may present. What the world needs is Christians who live the gospel with the purity of heart and life that Jesus commands, with the dedication to disciple-making that He states is necessary for His mission on earth to happen. What the church does not need is more "conversations" with the world to understand its own gripes about the church with an eye toward the church getting a grip about the world. We are preparing to handle the Word of Truth, not the world. We don't need a grip on the ways of the world. We need to hold fast to that form of faith and doctrine that the apostles delivered to us. Now, if that sounds hard-core, so be it. I'm not on a soap box. But, we are so easily beset by the world's questions about ourselves simply because we either don't know what it is we're supposed to know biblically, or we aren't doing what it is we're commanded to do biblically. I don't need a conversation with a homosexual activist group or some LGBT so-called "pentecostal church" to tell me what they need. They need to crucify themselves and live unto Christ is what they need, and if they don't do that, then there is a certainty of judgment that awaits them. What I need to do is LOVE THEM, even if they don't like my kind of lovin', with the love of Jesus. Jesus did not go around forming focus groups and creating pools of advocacy for points of view. He did and does lead people to be like Himself, to do what He said and what He did as shown to us in the Bible. And, to obey and seek the Holy Spirit of God by moment-to-moment dying to our own selves and all we want to do, have and be.
If I've lost my mind, somebody tell me. Do we need a statement? Do we really need to craft a call to arms on this? Are we not already equipped? Are we not already called? Sent? Well-put for words? Because, seems to me the Bible pretty well covers it.
Unless, that is, the goal is to make a statement for the purpose of making a statement. Unless there is some goal not central to the church's mission and calling here. I'm blind to the need for a statement. Someone tell me.
Human government bears the same relation to hell as the church bears to heaven. (David Lipscomb, On Civil Government, 72).
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