One cannot serve two masters

From The Washington Post:

A disciplinary committee of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America ruled yesterday that a gay pastor in Atlanta must give up his pulpit, saying it was reluctantly enforcing a "bad policy."

Following a five-day church trial last month, seven of the committee's 12 members voted to remove the Rev. Bradley E. Schmeling, 44, from the clergy as of Aug. 15.

The committee set that date to give the denomination an opportunity to reconsider its policies on homosexuality at its next churchwide assembly, Aug. 6-12 in Chicago. Activists on both sides of the issue predict that Schmeling's case will stir vigorous debate at the Chicago session.

[. . .]

Parishioners at St. John's Lutheran Church, a 135-year-old congregation on the edge of Atlanta's historic Druid Hills neighborhood, have strongly supported Schmeling. Since he arrived as pastor in 2000, the congregation has grown steadily, while the ELCA as a whole has been shrinking. "We always knew he was gay, and we called him because he was the right pastor for us," said Laura Crawley, the congregation's president.

There is an old saying that if a church is growing that it is either doing what God wants it to do or what Satan wants it to do. The reason that St. John's is growing is that they have provided a place where unsaved, but politically correct, persons who wish to cloak themselves in a veneer of "Christian" religiosity can go to fool themselves about their lost condition. The Bible refers to this as "having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof", 2 Timothy 3:5 (KJV), and advises us to turn away from such.

The reason that the ELCA as a whole is shrinking is because they are attempting to have it both ways. They have retained, if only just barely, a Biblical standard. However this causes them considerable embarrassment and is rebelled against by many in positions of leadership and in the laity. This causes pressure for true Christians to seek spiritual sustenance elsewhere so they leave or decline to join.

However they have not completely and publicly abandoned the Biblical standard so those who desire to have the imprimatur of Christian acceptability placed on their sin do not receive the full vindication that they crave. This leads them to leave or decline to join.

In other words they are neither hot nor cold and both Christ and Satan spew them out of their mouths.