A Disappointing Day - and a Promise

     Last time General Conference met, I wrote a blog that went semi-viral entitled Thank God General Conference Is Not the Church. The Church really is the Church back home where you know and love, where you hurt and laugh and carry on.

     When General Conference meets, we are more ambitious, and way less successful. Standing in the long security line yesterday (it's a football arena we're entering!), one woman dinged me for supporting our "One Church Plan," as it leaves room for people who would not condone her as a Lesbian pastor. Another guy who's been a friend forever, after I said Go Gamecocks! (knowing his and my football loyalties), he responded, "Well, I guess we do have that one thing in common." He's in the not-condoning homosexuality camp. I started to ask, "Uh, what about Jesus?" but let it go.

    Both of them, like me, are in the Church in Jesus' heart.  Can they be together in the Church here? Probably not back home - at least not in our still divided, not-entirely-converted selves. Here? What's a denomination anyhow? We join hands primarily to be in mission together - and Methodists still do this quite well.  Many of us want to stop all this fussing and move on in mission together.

     Why do I bother with this struggle? First: Church should do no harm, and with a long-standing judgmental viewpoint against our members who aren't straight, and those who love them, we have heaped guilt and worse on thousands and thousands. There's also the futility of this long-standing "We do not condone the practice of homosexuality." Our not condoning has not prevented one person ever from being gay.  You're just gay, or not, or you're something else - but all the Church teaching doesn't make you straight.

     I get that some people we all know and love feel harmed if people who are different sexually are in the church. But this is interesting: if they "lost" (who wants winners and losers in Christ's church?), they would be angry (at least as I hear them speaking of it) - but if the LGBTQ "side" (who wants sides in Christ's church?) loses, they will be wounded.  I am not smart enough to diagnose why this is, but it seems important.

     And I am in this struggle because of the way I read the inspired Word of God. Long story...

     Yesterday was sad - for me, and not my Gamecock friend. We took sort of a straw poll to gauge which petitions should get attention, and in what order. Tops was our pension fund issues - which we are all interested in, so that's sensible. Keeping "we do not condone" and then two petitions to dissolve the whole denomination were next, and only then the One Church plan was ranked 5th - a shocker, as that was the official one we sent out a commission to bring back to us. We will see what today brings.

     Last night a bunch of us met to think, pray, plan, hope, grieve, worry, and love. How odd - a little improvised Church in the thick of the big Church. As Jesus intended it, I suppose.

     However it pans out, I will always and forever stand with all of God's children, including those who aren't condoned by others in the Church. You are loved. You belong. You are beautiful. We all are. We are all demeaned when we don't embrace everyone in God's Church. That's the one thing we should never condone for a nanosecond.