Go home? We aren’t going anywhere!

September 7, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

Weeks after the ELCA’s churchwide assembly, I am still having mental arguments with people who spoke there in opposition to reforming the church’s anti-LGBT policy. As different voting members came to the microphones to argue against any change in the policy, it frustrated me over and over when they used manipulative scare tactics.

One speaker made an obvious threat, that “hundreds, if not thousands” of ELCA congregations might leave the church body over this issue.

Speaking from the “left coast of America” all I can say is that we aren’t leaving. We are dedicated to the ministry of Jesus Christ and the mission of the church in our place. If we haven’t “left the church” after 18 years with negative policy, if we haven’t left after being removed from the clergy roster and written off by the hierarchy, we’re not leaving. Period. We’re going to keep on doing our ministry until Jesus comes.

So who are these “hundreds if not thousands of congregations” that might leave if the policy is liberalized?

Aren’t they in fact the “Bible-doubters” who “utterly disregard the Word of God”—a phrase I overheard from the lips of a Lutheran Core spokesperson—? For they certainly disregard the prayer and command of Christ that we all be one, even as Jesus and the Father are one.  They certainly disregard Jesus’ counsel to forgive one another, even up to 70 times 7 times.  They disregard his instruction that they should go first and reconcile with a brother (or sister) before bringing their gift to the altar (that is, before coming into God’s presence). They disregard the teaching of the apostle Paul that “the eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you.’”

Whoever they are—these congregations and their organizers, spokespersons and threat-mongers—they seem instead to be saying, “we will pick up our marbles and go home.”

Of course, our home is in the Lord, and when they get home they will still find us there, also at home in the Lord! We aren’t going anywhere.

Sadly, this is an oversize version of a dysfunctional family, in which some family members won’t talk to other family members, even though Mom or Dad sincerely hopes that the rest of the family will get along with each other.

We desperately need dialog in the whole church of Christ. But when bishops like Anglican Primate Peter Akinola in Nigeria throws an international tantrum over Bishop Gene Robinson, or when Lutheran Core or Word Alone or Solid Rock Lutherans count up their marbles and, instead of reconciling with us, they talk about us in order to organize themselves against us or apart from us, I get the feeling that dialog is not going to happen any time soon.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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