Last night our little church participated in a district meeting to hear a deliberation from our Regional Bishop concerning disassociation from the Global Methodist Churches. We have to vote someday soon whether to leave or stay put. The main issue was that the organization wants to change the Book of Disciplines and accept the LGBT Community. Most of our elders favored a disassociation. That would mean a penalty that we would have to pay for those actions. I am in favor of remaining with the Global Churches and welcoming the LGBT community in to become active members and be married in our church, to the dismay of our elders.
I am not gay, but I sympathize with those who are. Everyone is created from the grace of God. Their sexual preferences are private and inflexible. If they are forced to have warm feelings for the same sex, it is ingrained in their being; therefore, it is not their fault. So they shouldn’t be discriminated against.
They are all disciples of God, to spread his love to everyone. That love is to be reciprocated. But if it isn’t, it defies what love is supposed to be; an un-interrupted universal grace. Any biased opinions about it that try to disrupt its flow, goes against its intentions.
When love is meant to be expressed between two people, the disruption in its flowing would lie in its non-reciprocation, whether it is between man and woman, man and man, or woman and woman. If it is sinful, it is in defiance of what love is, a mutual desire to nurture it and keep it flowing.
In church is where the flowing has to be continuous. It is where God’s love cannot be interrupted by biased judgments. Only God is capable of being judgmental; but since love is the focus of his teachings, it is in the preservation of that love, that non-discriminate universal grace. The church has to be the first place to receive and spread his love. It cannot be where love stops. The place where it stops is in the Methodist Book of Disciplines.
Should I tell a lie and support the disassociation or tell the truth and lose my dear friends that I made in the past twenty nine years? If we split from the Global Methodist Church Organization, that would probably be the end of our 129 year existence. That’s going to be a tough decision. I’m not looking forward to it.