CHARLOTTE, N.C. (ABP) — Fifteen years after the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship adopted an organizational value prohibiting the funding of organizations that affirm practicing homosexuals, a large crowd packed a workshop June 25 on what it means to be the “presence of Christ” among persons of same-sex orientation.
Convener David Odom, executive vice president of leadership at Duke University, said CBF evaluation forms for several years have asked the CBF General Assembly to address a topic on the minds of many religious organizations.
David Odom
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“To be a disciple of Jesus Christ in these days means having a way of answering a question of how to be a witness to a lot of people,” Odom said. “This happens to be the most difficult of the conversations we address, because it is so scary. Some believe that they have all the answers and others believe they have none of the answers. Most of us are terribly confused and leave the people in the pews in worse shape.”
Joy Yee, pastor of Nineteenth Avenue Baptist Church in San Francisco, said homosexuality is not what she would call “God’s Plan A.”
“But not much of the human journey in history or even in the Bible has followed Plan A,” she observed. “I have seen a lot of redemption in all of God’s Plan B or C or D.”
“There are people in my life who are very dear to me and active in the homosexual lifestyle who have been and are the presence of Christ in profound ways,” Yee said. “Sexual orientation is not a litmus test for salvation. We are saved when we confess our need for God and accept his love for us.”
George Mason, senior pastor of Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas, said his views on the subject are still evolving but have changed.
George Mason
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“When you read the passages of Scripture that deal with this subject, over time I’ve changed my mind,” he said. “It seemed to me that the weight of the evidence is clear that there was no room to engage this question at all. It does seem to me now that none of the passages that speak directly to the matter speak about orientation. They speak to things like rape and pederasty and prostitution. They are more narrowly construed, and they are used sometimes for larger purposes rather than specifically that issue.”
Mason said the conversation about sexual orientation in the church comes at a cost.
“As a pastor, I have known the pain of people who have left the church that I pastor because I was too conservative about this matter, and I have known the pain of people who have left the church because I was too liberal on this matter,” he said. “It does not seem to matter which position you take. You are going to have that kind of pain about this.”
Mason said he sees parallels in changes in attitude during his time in ministry toward divorce. While the Bible strongly condemns divorce, he said, many churches that formerly treated divorcees with scorn found new ways of interpreting Scripture to allow them in good conscience to include and extend grace toward those who have experienced divorce.
“My suspicion is we are trying harder than we ever have been now to be faithful to the gospel, to read the Scripture, to try to understand this matter in a way to create space for people who are gay among us to have life with us and fellowship with us,” Mason said. “For some that goes to the full extent of ordination and full embrace to be welcoming and affirming congregations. Some of those folk are going to model for others what it’s like for that to be the case, and some of us will be watching, because we are concerned about the consequences of all these decisions and our life together and how we will restructure our life together. Others are more reticent. I would hope that we would be patient with them, because they are trying to be faithful to the gospel, too.”
In a question-and-answer session, Yee said she has addressed the issue of sexual orientation only a couple of times with her church, and never from the pulpit.
“I prefer not to do it from the pulpit,” she said. “This is a conversation and dialogue that needs to happen among people of God. I prefer to have it happen in the Sunday school classroom or some format where people can talk. Preaching is a very one-directional kind of thing. Preaching format is a little bit limiting. I would rather have that conversation like this.”
Mason said there is a role for prophetic preaching, but he added: “I think maybe we should have a moratorium on declaring ahead of time that we are being prophetic about this. There are a lot of things it seems to me that over time we’ll be the judge as a church about whether something was prophetic or not.”
Yee said not everyone in her congregation agrees with her about homosexuality. “For me to be the presence of Christ means walking compassionately with each other, regardless of our sexual orientation,” she said. “It does not mean that we have to agree completely about everything with each other on every single thing. I don’t know about you, but I don’t know any human being on this planet with whom I agree completely on everything.”
Some questions, written on slips of paper in a controlled format that a CBF leader said was designed to allow audience participation without creating a forum for “making speeches,” asked what the CBF was going to do about the issue.
“The question of what CBF is going to do is going to be answered by CBF, the CBF community,” Yee, a former CBF moderator, responded. “It is not going to be dictated.”
Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.