Framing the Church’s homosexuality debate appropriately

HomosexualityRecently, I’ve seen more discussion than usual about the homosexuality debate in the church. Several sub-debates seem to rage on within this larger debate. I think many of those are doing more to distort and confuse the issue than they’re doing to help. They lead to a lot of talking past each other.

Though they break down into many smaller camps, there are generally two camps in the discussions I see: those who believe the church should be fully open to homosexuals, and those who don’t. I dislike all the typical terms used for these two groups, so here I’m going to refer to these groups as the Openness Camp and the Holiness Camp, respectively, based on the primary arguments I tend to hear from each side. [I’m trying to be neutral with these two identifiers. I’m open to suggestions of better terms and not trying to make any larger statement with them.]

Let’s try to properly frame the issues here.

Sexual orientation

Holiness Camp, you need to quit talking about sexual orientation in negative terms. Quit debating whether someone can be inclined to homosexual attraction from birth. And for Christ’s sake, don’t even think about excluding anyone from the church or Christian fellowship because of sexual orientation!

You begin with the premise that homosexual behavior is sinful. We’ll get to that later. But you’re doing incredible harm and creating a logical inconsistency for yourselves when you assume that anyone of LGBT orientation needs to be “fixed” or should be excluded from church membership or leadership based on sexual orientation.

Attraction isn’t the issue here. If you exclude everyone who is attracted to someone whom they shouldn’t have sex with, you’ll just about empty the church. Nor is the issue about an inclination to do something you believe is sinful. Some people are born inclined to compulsive consumption of alcohol. We call that alcoholism. Some are born with a unique urge to steal. We call that kleptomania. Surely the church doesn’t exclude anyone with these inclinations. Inclinations and sexual orientation aren’t the issue.

Hospitality

Openness Camp, you need to drop the hospitality rhetoric. Stop saying things like, “The church should be open to all people.” You don’t mean it, and you’re going to back yourselves into an uncomfortable corner.

First, if being open to all people means “regardless of sexual orientation,” then I think we should all be able to agree. Yes–full membership and leadership in the church should be open to people of all sexual orientations. See above.

Second, if being open to all people means “regardless of sexual behavior,” then I don’t think you really mean it. Will you allow full membership and leadership rights to someone who openly has one-night stands every week? Yes, we believe God still loves this person. Yes, we believe final judgment belongs to God alone. Yes, we believe Jesus called us to love and hospitality and gave an example of such. But still, you probably won’t give this person full membership and leadership rights. You have lines, too. The “hospitality” and “love” arguments don’t hold up for you. It’s time to drop them (except when the Holiness Camp is violating what I asked them to drop above).

A pastor in the UMC just asked in a Time Magazine article, “If what you understand to be an act of love is declared a sin by the Church, what does that do to your soul, your understanding of morality and salvation?” This is a deeply flawed and unserious question. The Church would say that many things dubbed as “acts of love” are sinful. Extramarital affairs, polygamy, incest… Yes, many people engaging in these things may deem them “acts of love,” but does that mean the Church should be silent about them, or endorse them?

The Real Issue

Openness Camp, some of you were just offended that I used one-night stands in analogy to homosexual practice. That’s likely because you don’t believe homosexual behavior is sinful (many of you would qualify that to say, “if it’s in a committed, monogamous relationship”), but you believe one-night stands are. And that leads us to the two real issues–how the church handles sin and whether homosexual practice is sin.

Let’s handle the easier one first. The church cannot be fully open for membership and leadership to those who don’t earnestly repent of their sins. Persistent, willful sin can’t be ignored. There are thousands of sub-debates that can ensue. “What makes one sin worse than another?” or “Who made you judge?” or “Sounds like a witch hunt.” Yet I think those are mostly red herrings. Go back to the example above of the promiscuous person. Will you allow that person to be your pastor? That persistent, willful sin was judged problematic enough that almost everyone will exclude that person from leadership, possibly membership (an issue to get into more later). So I think we’re nearly all on the same page here. Persistent, willful sexual sin should at least prevent someone from being in leadership in the church. Yes, I said “sexual sin.” I say that because I know of no churches that will stand for their pastors committing obvious sexual sin (e.g. one-night stands or adulterous relationships). My hope is that we’ll go well beyond “sexual sin,” but it seems there’s at least already a line in the sand here.

This leads to the more difficult issue: is homosexual behavior sinful? And for this, we have to do the hard exegetical and hermeneutical work. We need to look at Scripture and the Church’s tradition. I’m not attempting that in this post. But I believe this must be the framing issue for the discussion.

If we call homosexual practice sinful, then the arguments about hospitality and God’s love only come to bear in determining how we remain hospitable and loving in the face of sin. And the Openness Camp must admit that they don’t fully open membership and leadership rights to everyone, regardless of sins they are committing.

Openness Camp — you’ve got to quit accusing others of lacking love or hospitality. You disagree on an exegetical issue, not on love. And your demeaning attitude toward them is, well, less than loving.

If we don’t call homosexual behavior sin, then all the rest is void. If this is acceptable behavior in light of Scripture and the orthodox faith, then it should have no bearing on full membership and leadership opportunities.

Holiness Camp — you’ve got to quit accusing others of turning a blind eye to sin. You disagree on an exegetical issue, not on whether sin is a big deal. And your demeaning attitude toward them is, well, sinful.

For any of you who really are doing what you’re doing because you don’t care about love or hospitality or sin… you’re wrong. But I don’t think many of you will claim that as your position.

This may all strike you as rather obvious. Yet I think it’s necessary to emphasize a proper framework here, since it seems that the discussion keeps ending up chasing the rabbits of hospitality and sexual orientation–or even worse, making appeals to what our culture thinks is best or arguing about how our secular government should rule on gay marriage.

I’d like to hear your thoughts on whether I’m framing this correctly.

BIG NOTE: I don’t want the comments turning into a fight over whether homosexual practice is a sin. I want to know what you think about the framework. I will DELETE any comments that turn the argument here into the question of whether this is sin.

Related articles

  • Why The Church Is So Concerned With Same-Sex Marriage and Homosexual Ordination – Tim Tennent wrote this excellent article to people who already believe that homosexual practice is incompatible with Christian teaching, explaining why the debate must be a big deal for them in the church, even if they don’t want it to be. You really should go read it if you’re among those who believe homosexual behavior is sinful.
  • Stealing – an attempt to show that whatever the issues are here, I don’t think they are about bigotry or inhospitality. At least, they shouldn’t be.

When “Missional Church” gets too outwardly focused

“Missional church” has been a big movement and buzz word in recent years. The thrust of the movement is to recall the Church’s identity as a sent community, one that reaches out to those around them. It serves as a critique of the “attractional church” that attempts to attract people with great product offerings and marketing. (Less corporate words may be used, but the idea is the same.) Want a helpful 2-minute video primer on “missional church”? Try this.

I’ll start with this. I think the missional church’s critique of the attractional mindset is good and needed. See my posts, “Attracting with Buildings” and “Offer the Gospel!” And I think the missional church folk have generally had a good message for us: the church must get outside the walls of its own buildings and its programs for members.

But I’m also concerned that some of those influenced by missional church ideas have gone too far and are misunderstanding the church. An example comes in this blog post that was just sent to me. The post is actually very good. A helpful assessment with some great points. You should read it. But this statement in it made me cringe:

Theologically, I’m convinced that the Church is in the business of putting itself out of business. The mission of the Church, after all, is not the Church but the coming reign of God (emphasis mine).

This statement comes from an understanding of the Church that has an entirely outward focus. It calls on the Church to go into the world in outreach and witness until no more outreach and witness are necessary. If those goals were accomplished, the author reasons, there would no longer be a need for the Church.

Some use this mindset to say that the Church can and should bring the kingdom of God on earth by ridding the earth of all social evils. We’ve seen that before. In one of its most popular and recent manifestations, it was called the Social Gospel movement.

Others have rightly said that the kingdom of God and the defeat of evil will only come at Christ’s return. Still, they have argued that the Church’s sole purpose should be to work toward those goals. Even if we can’t “put ourselves out of business,” we should still work as if that’s the goal.

But for the Church to try and put itself out of business tragically misunderstands the nature of the Church. This kind of understanding assumes that the Church’s only calling is outward in witness and outreach. That understanding forgets that the Church is the bride of Christ, that Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her (see Ephesians 5:22-33). That understanding likely assumes that corporate worship is only for equipping people to go back out into the world in mission. It would see the only purpose of Christian fellowship as a form of preparation for the mission.

This article by John MacArthur – “Inward, Upward, or Outward?” – illustrates that mindset well.* I saw the article’s title and thought someone else was making my point. Instead, I found MacArthur proving the problem. In the article, he makes it clear that the Church’s “inward” and “upward” activities are fine and good, but the Church’s real purpose is “outward.” His concluding words:

Fellowship, teaching, and praise are not the mission of the church but are rather the preparation of the church to fulfill its mission of winning the lost. And just as in athletics, training should never be confused with or substituted for actually competing in the game, which is the reason for all the training.

I think MacArthur is totally wrong. I was excited to see his title, thinking he was going to argue that the central calling of the Church is inward, outward, and upward. They can’t be teased apart. One can’t be favored. And all three are essential. I was disappointed to find him making the opposite point.

Fellowship, teaching, and praise are not training – they are the very being of the Church! If we call our worship, our fellowship, our prayer, our sharing in communion, and our study of Scripture simply training, we take the typical pragmatic, man-centered turn that seems to plague most of the American Church’s thinking today. We make all of these into pragmatic steps toward accomplishing the mission and miss the deeper point of these actions.

The Westminster Catechism famously asks, “What is the chief end of man?” and famously answers, “To glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.” In all, I’m concerned that some influenced by the “missional church” movement have a new response to that question. They want to answer that the chief end of man is to glorify God by outreach and witness. All else is just training.

Why do we worship? Not primarily to be equipped for mission, but primarily because we are the people of God. 

The central purpose of our worship is to worship God – to praise and enjoy him. And that’s enough! I hope it prepares us for mission, but that’s a secondary purpose.

The central purpose of our prayer is to pray to God. And that’s enough!

The central purpose of our fellowship is to share deeply with each other as the Body of Christ. And that’s enough!

And the central purpose of our outreach and witness? To show compassion, to fight for justice, to advocate for the oppressed, and to testify to the gospel. And that’s enough!

All of these works are an end unto themselves. They don’t need to lead to another point. They are the point. Or if we insist, we may say they all lead to glorifying and enjoying God. But let’s make sure we keep that as the chief end of man and the Church — inward, upward, and outward. The business of the Church isn’t to put itself out of business. It’s to glorify and enjoy God, to be prepared as a radiant bride for Christ, to live in fellowship and mission as the body of Christ.

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* Note: MacArthur is no figurehead for the “missional church” movement. But I find his statement here reflective of the mentality that I see sometimes coming from that movement.

Related articles

Multi-site ministry done differently

The United Methodist Reporter just posted an article I wrote on how and why First UMC Lexington is doing multi-site ministry. See it here.

That article is an adaptation of the letter I wrote to our congregation about our structure. Several people asked good questions about other parts of that structure. I plan to write more about it soon.