Month: March 2014

The Gospel Is Not At Stake. It’s Just Not.

YoRocko!

I’ll finish up my NEXT Retrospect series tomorrow, because today I want to say something about the World Vision controversy.

If you haven’t been following, World Vision announced earlier this week that it would lift its ban on hiring Christians in legal same gender marriages. Supporters reacted swiftly and vigorously, accusing World Vision of everything from harming children to not believing the Bible to trivializing the cross. Many supporters either threatened to pull child sponsorships directly or speculated that lots of people would (in one of those predictions meant to bring about the thing it predicts).

Amid that wash of evangelical furor, bloggers like Rachel Held Evans defended World Vision and gaped at the pitch of its now disillusioned supporters. Evans even urged people to sponsor a child through World Vision who never had before.

Now World Vision has reversed course and asked for its supporters forgiveness for what it is calling…

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Revisiting Wealth

 

Good Read!  Excellent article from Bob Lupton (FCS, Focus Community Strategies) on wealth and power and the need for those with wealth become a “catalyst of just and fruitful economies.  Might this be a turning point when the wealthiest church in history awakens to the reality that their job creators are the very ones gifted by God to bring economic wholeness to struggling souls too long resigned to unending poverty?”

 

 

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Marriage: A Sacred Vocation

Marriage:  “A Sacred Vocation”

 

I found myself re-reading the Andy Hoag article in the Saginaw News (3/16/14) that quotes Bishop Todd Ousley of the Episcopal Diocese of Eastern Michigan on the issue of “same sex marriage”.  As a proponent of same sex marriage, I thought it was worth pulling a few of Bishop Ousley’s quotes that speak for themselves:  

 

Bishop Ousley[1]:

 

“My own experiences with same-sex couples and the experiences in communities and congregations across our dioceses have shown that there is holy goodness in the lives and love of gay and lesbian couples and their families.”

 

“Surely, extending justice and equality to all of God’s children will not only serve the common good but also further the advance of God’s reign marked by respect for the justice and dignity for every person.”

 

Marriage is a “sacred vocation” that should not be “limited to persons of opposite sex” and “encompasses all of God’s creation.”

 

“Therefore, I believe that the faithful, loving and life-long union of two persons—regardless of gender identity –is capable of signifying the never failing and gracious love of God in Christ for the church and the world.”

 

“In the Dioceses of Eastern Michigan, priests and congregations are currently authorized and encouraged to exerciser their own sense of Christian vocation and to utilize the Churcher4’s published resources to offer a generous pastoral response to those persons of the same sex who desire the Church’s blessing of their covenanted and faithful lives.”

 

“I look forward with hopeful anticipation to the day when the great state of Michigan offers all couples equality.”

 

In my mind, it is not a question of whether same sex unions will be recognized but rather, when.   I wish for the day that the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) will open mind and heart to what Ousley calls the “sacred vocation” of marriage. 

 

 

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