A Loose Sketch of Recent, Sometimes Cynical, Thoughts

The following strands and sketches of thought could each be developed into several paragraphs on their own, had I the patience and inclination.

Mennonites and Homosexuality

There was an article run in the Intelligencer Journal at some point during the past two weeks which covered a demonstration, by "Pink Mennonites", outside of the 2009 Mennonite Church USA conference in Columbus, OH. Roughly 100 "Pink Mennonites" gathered outside the conference to protest the "exclusion" of GLBT people from full membership within the Mennonite church. They wrote an open letter and, like a small snowball, it gathered ~1,400 signatures. Their position and approach are disturbing. The open letter that they wrote is vague, but in a further explanation of the letter on their website, it is clear that they want full rights within the Mennonite church:

What, concretely, are you asking for? I don’t see any specific goals in this letter. What does “radical hospitality” or “full welcome” mean? Our church already welcomes everybody, including LGBT people.
The second paragraph of the letter ends with this sentence: “We believe that all people are invited to faithful fellowship in this Body, blessing for our deepest relationships of love and care, a spiritual home for ourselves and our children, and the opportunity to fully express the gifts for ministry that God has given us.”

In other words, the authors of this letter – Weldon, Cindy and Sheri -- call MCUSA to accept into membership, marry and ordain all people, regardless of sexual orientation. The letter does not specifically say how this will come about or next steps are in this process. But these are the goals to which the letter points. We believe that anything less than this “full welcome” ends up treating LGBT people as second-class citizens within the church.

Whew!! Mennonite Church USA is currently not opposed to GLBT people entering Mennonite churches and participating in worship, but there is the expectation that, in order to fully participate in the body, they acknowledge homosexuality as a sin and take the steps appropriate to deal with it as sin. The "Pink Mennonites" make no mention of such personal change. They clearly want full inclusion and acceptance just as they are, which is hardly biblical.

So what do we, the church, do with homosexuals? Derek Webb to the rescue with a song from his new album! I hope that he does not believe homosexuals should be unquestioningly accepted into membership without a loving insistence that they repent and turn from sin.

Weddings

By the end of this summer, I will have personally attended 7 weddings within the past 2 years. I sincerely hope that each of these couples "beat the odds" against them, but cannot help wondering to myself how many marriages, out of the total number of weddings that I have been invited to, will have dissolved in divorce 25 years from now?