Come out from among them. . .

From The New York Times:

ATLANTA — When the Rev. Dennis Meredith of Tabernacle Baptist Church here began preaching acceptance of gay men and lesbians a few years ago, he attracted some gay people who were on the brink of suicide and some who had left the Baptist faith of their childhoods but wanted badly to return.

At the same time, Tabernacle Baptist, an African-American congregation, lost many of its most loyal, generous parishioners, who could not accept a message that contradicted what they saw as the Bible’s condemnation of same-sex relations. Over the last three years, Tabernacle’s Sunday attendance shrank to 800, from 1,100.

The debate about homosexuality that has roiled predominantly white mainline churches for years has gradually seeped into African-American congregations, threatening their unity, finances and, in some cases, their existence.

In St. Paul, the Rev. Oliver White, senior minister of Grace Community Church, lost nearly all his 70 congregants after he voted in 2005 to support the blessing of same-sex unions in his denomination, the United Church of Christ.

In the Atlanta area, a hub of African-American life, only a few black churches have preached acceptance of gay men and lesbians, Mr. Meredith said. At one of those congregations, Victory Church in Stone Mountain, attendance on Sundays has fallen to 3,000 people, from about 6,000 four or five years ago, said the Rev. Kenneth L. Samuel, the senior pastor.

This should not be difficult. The state of finding oneself sexually attracted to persons of the same sex is not in and of itself sinful. Not any more than being attracted to persons of the opposite sex to whom you are not married. The sin comes in what you do with the temptation.

For a church to turn someone away because of the kind of temptation he or she is struggling with is wrong. It is a negation of the purpose for which the Lord created the Church in the first place. He came to seek and to save sinners.

When criticized by the self-righteous religious leaders of his day Jesus told them that he was the physician coming to treat the sick, not the healthy, to call sinners to repentance not the righteous. Since the leaders thought that they were spiritually healthy and righteous they refused the Lord's help.

Many homosexuals today are like the chief priests and Pharisees of Jesus' day. They are sinners in need of salvation, but they will not admit it. They demand that the Lord accept them on their terms, not his. They elevate their own judgment above the divine will and substitute their own desire for God's express commandments.

These pastors who are opening their church's membership rolls to unrepentant practicing homosexuals have substituted their own word for God's Word and are preaching another gospel. The people of God are rightly fleeing from them.

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.

Painful, but necessary

From The Washington Post:

At least seven Virginia Episcopal parishes, opposed to the consecration of a gay bishop and the blessing of same-sex unions, have voted overwhelmingly to break from the U.S. church in a dramatic demonstration of widening rifts within the denomination.

Two of the congregations are among the state's largest and most historic: Truro Church in Fairfax City and The Falls Church in Falls Church, which have roots in the 1700s. Their leaders have been in the vanguard of a national effort to establish a conservative alternative to the Episcopal Church, the U.S. wing of the 77 million-member worldwide Anglican Communion.

[. . .]

The votes are fresh evidence of an increasingly bitter split within the U.S. Episcopal Church. Seven of its 111 dioceses have rejected the authority of Presiding U.S. Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, installed in November as the first woman to head an Anglican church. Schori supports V. Gene Robinson, an openly gay man elected bishop of New Hampshire in 2003.

"I grew up in the Episcopal Church. I hope I don't cry when I talk about this," said a shaken Katrina Wagner, 37, an accountant and member of Truro's vestry, after the congregation's vote was announced. "But the issue is: Are we going to follow Scripture?"

That is exactly the question. Are you going to follow Scripture? If not then don't call yourself a "Church". There are all sorts of ways that a group of people who wish to do good in the world can combine to do that good without pretending to be a Christian religious organization.

The Christian Church exists for one purpose, the fulfillment of the Great Commission to spread the gospel (good news) of eternal salvation through faith in the sacrificial death and bodily resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Christians are told to "love God with all their heart, soul, mind and body" and that the only genuine way of demonstrating that love is in keeping His commandments.

If you "cherry-pick" the parts of the Bible which you like and delete or downplay the rest you are not worshiping God and following his Word. You are setting yourself up as the final judge of right and wrong and attempting to knock God off his throne and take his place.

Martin Luther said, "If I uphold and defend all parts of Scripture except those parts which the world and the Devil are currently attacking I have not confessed Christ no matter how loudly I have professed Christ".

Luther was correct. The modern Episcopal Church, save those congregations which withdraw, is no longer a Christian Church no matter how many crosses top their buildings, no matter how many beautiful stained glass windows they have and no matter how many bibles they place on their pulpits.

And as for the homosexuals who will be made to feel warm and loved and accepted and affirmed in the new Christless Episcopal "Church"? Those warm fuzzies will not help them in hell - which they will go to not because they are gay, but because they reject the Lord that IS in favor of a fantasy god who doesn't say anything that makes them feel uncomfortable.