What is Sunday's Vote Actually About?

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Tuesday, October 8, 2013   
Jeff Lampl

REMINDER:     Only one worship Service this Sunday only!   It begins at 9:00 am!
                         After worship we vote. A review of what the vote is all about follows.  I
                         hope that you take time to read, pray and reflect on the following summary
                         before the vote takes place on Sunday.  

The Christian Life Center is the Saginaw road site of the New London Presbyterian Church and as such we are therefore a member of the Presbyterian denomination called the Presbyterian Church USA.   There are other Presbyterian denominations but the PC(USA) is the largest.  

As always in a large denomination with thousands of churches there will be differences about how to read the Bible,  what kinds of things to advocate, and more.   Some of the debates over the years in various corners of the Presbyterian family have concerned, among other things, the nature of salvation, the sanctify of life, how to understand the deity of Jesus and how to understand biblical authority.    I do think that all involved in all these discussions, regardless of the position taken in these debates, argue from a sincere desire to love God and love others.  It is important to note, however, that throughout these debates our constitution remained unchanged which meant, in my mind, that whatever debates occurred, the voice of the denomination still remained squarely within the bounds of Christian orthodoxy.  

In 2011 things changed.  The General Assembly of the PCUSA which is the highest governing body of our denomination (something like the representative congress of the United States) voted to put new wording into our constitution, the actual wording of which comes across to the reader as biblically sound.   However the definitive interpretation (that of  the denomination’s highest court) of this wording, and, I think I am correct in saying this, the purpose of this wording is that congregations are now free to ordain men and women as pastors, elders and deacons who are engaged in the deepest sexual intimacy outside of the bonds of marriage.  

This became a tipping point for us.  It seemed to us that PC(USA) elevated this particular practice  from among all the others standards of Christian behavior as the one that needed altered.  The denomination did not choose to redefine other standards for leadership such as dishonest ethical practices in the work place, or lying or stealing or any other breaches of Christian ethical behavior, rather it appears to us that the denomination has agreed to change our constitution so that this particular, specific standard for leadership has been singled out for change.   In the end it looks to us like the stated “definitive interpretation” of this new standard provides permission to read  the Bible in this one area in a way that is beyond the parameters of biblical orthodoxy.      

It is therefore now the case that our constitution, although not coercing us to ordain men and women who are sexually active outside of marriage (we are free not to do so) nevertheless permits individual congregations to do so.  

For us, the question became this:  “is this constitutional change, allowing for a new reading of this part of the Bible, significant enough that we make the determination that we are members of a denomination that has altered the essentials of what it means to be a Christian?”  

Our elders and staff studied the issue and have communicated our conclusions to you over a two year span by way of meetings, sermons, web, availability of elders and pastors, and personal meetings.   

Here is the crux of our thinking.   It was very important to Jesus that Christians be unified (John 17:21).   Oneness among Christians is a crucial witness to the world demonstrating that God actually came to earth personally in Jesus Christ.  On the other hand oneness has to be around some essential.   Our conclusion is that this new reading of the biblical teaching around sexual practice does rise to the level of altering an essential.  That essential is the image of God and how God relates to his people  

In the Bible the image of God is first applied to the creation of both men and women (Gen. 1:26,27).  This image of God is then pictured as a oneness in marriage with procreation implicit (Gen. 2:23, 25).   The Bible further uses the metaphor/word picture of marriage throughout both the Old and New Testaments as  the primary image by which God’s covenant relationship to his people (Hosea for example) is conveyed.  In fact the Bible concludes with the consummation of all things pictured as a  “marriage of Heaven and earth” (Rev. 19:9, 21:2) and that marriage produces, one could say procreates, the New Creation when all things are made new.   

All of this added up, in our minds, to the conclusion that our new ordination standards allow for the ordaining of pastors, elders and deacons who remove the almost sacramental nature of the coital union between a man and woman from marriage (for Roman Catholics marriage is a sacrament), which is a primary biblical picture of God and of God’s relationship to God’s people.    

I want to therefore emphasize that our recommendation to be dismissed from PC(USA) to the Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians (ECO) is not really about sexual orientation.   We seek a church of diversity, one which is filled with of  every kind of sinner (the only kind of people who exist) possible, red, yellow, black, white, old, young, every nation, every language, gays, straights, lesbians, divorced people, married people, rich people, poor people, whoever.   God excludes no one.   Furthermore God does not select leaders based on any of those things, rather on a repentant and obedient heart as well as on the skills and gifts for a particular leadership role.  

Instead, it looks to us that by removing the exclusivity of sexual union from marriage the PC(USA) has altered, reduced and weakened the meaning of marriage which is the Bible’s primary word picture/metaphor for God and God’s covenant commitment to His people.    We have therefore concluded that the image of God around which Christians are told to be one has been altered and therefore reconfigured.  We are told in the Bible (Romans 1) that worshiping an altered image of God is idolatry, which is indeed the worshipping a different god.  

Therefore it is the recommendation of your elders that we vote to be dismissed from the PC(USA) to the Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians (ECO), also a Presbyterian denomination, but one which we think is more reflective of biblical orthodoxy.   

I must add at this point that everyone involved on both sides of the issues is simply doing his or her own best to get loving God and loving others right.   It could be that the PCUSA is wrong and we are right in our discernment.  It could also be that the PCUSA is right and we are wrong.  It could be that the essentials around which God wants us to be unified doesn’t include what we think they include.   It could be that our discernment around the altering of the biblical picture God and God’s relationship to his people is correct, but that it does not rise to the level of “trumping” John 17:21.      It could be that the PC(USA) and we are both wrong.   We are a lot of sinful people just doing our best.    We come to you with this recommendation humbly and sadly, and hopefully obediently.  

If we vote today for dismissal there will then be a second round of meetings between our church’s representatives and representatives of the Donegal Presbytery to determine what a fair financial settlement would look like.   We will then have a second vote which will concern how much money we would agree to pay to the presbytery as our part of our dismissal obligation.  

A few comments about the Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians (ECO), the Presbyterian Denomination to which we seek to be dismissed:  

What I personally like about ECO is their emphasis on the life of the mind, getting the bible right and getting Christianity right from within a settled orthodox and evangelical perspective.   (It’s cool to me to be among thinkers who produce and use great scholarship which does not result in what so often appears to me to be an inevitable need to alter the Biblical witness).   

ECO is evangelistically focused.   It is spending its energy in reaching communities and the world for Christ rather than spending great amounts of energy around the endless theological debates which push the boundaries of orthodoxy.   In the short term at least there will be no debates around the necessity of Jesus for salvation, his deity, the meaning of his resurrection, the sanctity of all of life, or the sanctity of marriage.  

       ECO is all about reaching our communities, but not without the end goal that all meet
       Jesus. Their polity has sought to streamline processes and procedures and there
       appears to be more freedom around getting qualified people ordained as pastors,
       elders and deacons within the denomination.  In addition I love the idea that group
       leaders can be ordained with the incumbent power to serve communion to their groups
       and to baptize group members and their families. I love that. 

 

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