Dear Matt’s Minister,
Last week I watched with interest as a new bishop was elected for our jurisdiction. (Church politics have become so interesting to me. Just understanding the inner workings of the conference system of the United Methodist Church is a challenge.)
Judging from the vote counts throughout the two days, it’s petty clear that the issue of human sexuality played a major part in the deliberations, at one point leading to a standoff between supporters of Greg Stover (on the board of directors for the so-called Confessing group) and David Bard (pastor of a Reconciling Congregation). While neither of them was elected, the election was marred by the struggle for a statement about homosexuality.
It seems like I’m always giving you a reason to sweat, but…
Several weeks ago you preached on Ecclesiastes 3, including the verse that says that there is “a time to be silent and a time to speak”. Dr. Bard lost because he wore my colors while I sat quietly in my pew. My time for being silent has past. I’m not about to disrupt worship services, but beginning Sunday I’ll be wearing this lapel pin whenever I’m at church and will engage people if/when the question arises.
Just an FYI in case you get some backlash.
-Matt
As I was getting this post copied in from my email (yes, I really did send it to him, and no, it’s not enough), my rss reader served up a new post from the Reconciling Ministries Network Official Blog.
All is not lost. All is not well, but it’s not lost either.
(Note: I’ll be starting a separate blog for these kind of posts in the very near future. I’ve been thinking about doing that, and I have five or six unpublished posts that don’t fit here ready to go, so it’s time to get it started. We’ll return you to your regularly scheduled blog shortly.)
