I am a flippant man. I have no care what you believe of me. I know who I am and where I stand. Please save judgement for another day. As for courage, it is easy to have courage on line. What courage do we exhibit in our lives to serve God and walk humbly as we care for the poor.
Blessings to you Matt.
Your brother in Christ, Ryan

I’m sorry to hear the sarcasm in your reply. I, however, was being serious. Are there any sexual behaviors that are not heterosexual that you would not support, even if they were not promiscuous? Do you have no response to my concerns about ordained people having sex outside of marriage? These are deeply serious matters that require more than courage and flippant remarks.

It is my hope to remove the stigma of sexual behavior that is not heterosexual. I do not support the promiscuous use of sex.

It is careful pursuit that has castrated Christianity in America. When will we get courage enough to live a faith that is not tethered to money and the need for power.

However, I take a different tact in terms of process. Ryan asked, “Are we humane in our exclusion of our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters in freely serving te church with their gifts?” I question the premise of this question. It’s actually demonstrably true that our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters *are* serving the church with their gifts, both in ordained and (to a much greater extent) non-ordained capacities. Adam followed Ryan’s question with his hope for BoO changes that make sexual orientation a non issue. I believe what you meant to say is that we should make GBLT sexual practice a non-issue.

Now we’re talking about sexual activity outside the covenant of Christian marriage. If the PC(USA) puts in print that we will ordain persons with GLBT orientations who are sexually active, then we’ve created a real problem: This thing called the covenant of marriage that is affirmed from Genesis to Revelation has been totally sidestepped for the sake of being missionally progressive. That denigrates the meaning of my own marriage vows with my wife. That’s not okay. The first issue that must be addressed by the church, then, is homosexual marriage. We should not be ordaining people into ministry at any level who are not practicing their sexuality within the bounds of covenant marriage, because that is categorically condemned in our Scriptures.

A further note concerns Ryan’s comment that he looks for “…a community of women and men of all ages, races, and conditions [sexuality in any form arrives here]…” Really Ryan? Sexuality in any form? What about pedophiles? What about bestiality? What about promiscuous behavior under any orientation? Certainly none of these classifications places a person beyond the grace of the living God, but we would be abrogating our calling as God’s people if we told the world that it was okay to have sex with kids and dogs. I want to minister to pedophiles in my church, but including them in the body doesn’t mean affirming their sexual desires or practices.

Please help me out if I’ve misunderstood anything you’ve said. I truly long to love and walk with all of God’s children, and for all people to participate in the mission of God. But we must be careful in how we pursue that.

Amend Rejected (1998, 163, 16.0171, 623): Rejected adding language affirming openness to diversity of ministries of Presbyterian groups and relationships between church structures and such groups. Part of report of Special Committee on Relationships of Accountability.

I wonder if that rejected amendment was an attempt to restore “Chapter IX Groups” (now called “Affinity Groups”) to the BOO? Regardless, it sounds to me like the 1998 GA commissioners placed an intentional limit on the degree of openness with which they were comfortable.

Something doesn’t seem right, here, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. I’m disturbed by the whole notion of there having been a Special Committee on Relationships of Accountability. Fear and distrust have been bywords in our denomination for too long.

This combined with my understanding of the ECM as a missional related posture (asking ourselves, how can we serve in ways that we are not today?) demand us to encounter a new openness to the presence of God in the Church and in the world, to a more fundamental obedience, and to a more joyous celebration in worship and work. This also reveals a new openness to the churches own membership, by affirming itself as a community of diversity, becoming in fact as well as in faith a community of women and men of all ages, races, and conditions [sexuality in any form arrives here], and by providing for inclusiveness as a visible sign of the new humanity [ergo, the Kingdom of God]. When we seek to live in this fashion
Hope is alive in the endeavor to be Christ to each other in the midst of the difficult issues. The ECM does not seek to make easy the tension that exists between grace and judgment, sin and forgiveness, divine and profane. Can hope be bypassed when God is present? I do not think that demanding justice for GLBTQ brothers and sisters is at all a vehicle for “despite” anything. Justice demands that the human condition be overridden by the divine judgment of grace and forgiveness. Love and acceptance does not breed tolerance. Rather love and grace breeds transformation and it is transformation that Jesus the Christ offers to the church. The PCUSA proclaims Jesus as the head of the church and the ultimate authority. Therefore love and grace be the ruler of the ECM. Openness be our plea. Service be our answer. Service absent judgment and pride. We are all in the same boat…
On a side, it is foolish to seek to end conflict. We must mediate conflict and dialog to find consensus and seek to serve all, strive to love all.

If members of Presbymergent are quick to jump into the multi-decade sexuality-ordination fray, that would seem to bypass the hope that emergent relational thinking brings to the party for loving each other despite these contentious issues.