God is love. We who walk with this loving God seek to love Him and others in humble obedience to His holy Word. Though it may seem at times like we're up against a brick wall, God's love compels us to engage the LGBTQ conversation with humility and love, realizing our own broken conditions as we pursue a biblical understanding of God's intention for us all. While thankful for our true identity in Christ, we realize our deficiencies and pray that God will be seen and glorified through us.
As part of God's holy church, we continually strive to engage the challenging issues of culture with godly compassion. We draw upon our biblical heritage in embracing societal issues and welcome every opportunity to engage the LGBTQ conversation. Since we suffer the effects of living in a sinful world, we confess that we haven't always done this very well. Motives other than God's love have sometimes dimmed our intentions and blurred our heartfelt desire to reflect God's will.
While there are many starting points in this conversation, we underscore here the central theme of restoration. Based on God's holy Word we emphasize His desire for wholeness, the image of God in us, the nature of sin and salvation, and the power of God's grace that helps us in our daily living. Our goal is to proceed in this conversation from a framework consistent with who we are becoming by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.
We emphasize our desire to engage in the LGBTQ conversation. We're not trying to answer all the questions. We encourage those who would join in this conversation to integrate this framework into their particular situations with the loving grace that is consistent with God's holy church and the biblical imperative to love God and others. We will not take a sectarian stand to demean anyone, for we're all created by God and are bearers of His holy image.
Bearing the image of God is unique to human beings. Humanity was originally created to reflect God's image perfectly and clearly, abiding in close relationship and intimacy with God. Having been given the freedom to choose, we chose ourselves over God. The result of our selfish choice was broken relationship and intimacy with God and others. In this separated state, the image of God became broken within us and in relation to others.
But God's love is not willing that any of us should remain eternally broken and separated from Him. Love compels God to take the initiative in reconciling us back into relationship with Him and one another. This has ultimately happened through the life, death and resurrection of God's only Son, Jesus Christ. By grace through faith in Christ, God is redeeming the world and providing the only way for the image of God to be restored in us. And as the image of God is restored in us, we are being healed of our brokenness and becoming whole in Christ.
All brokenness in life results from the separation that exists between God and us. It is seen in different dimensions of body, mind and spirit which are being kept from integrating into our lives as a whole. It is also seen when one area of our life is out of step with the whole. This warped image of God in us represents disconnectedness among the various aspects of who we are physically, intellectually, emotionally, socially, psychologically and spiritually. We fall short of God's intention of complete integration and wholeness in our lives. In light of this, we believe same sex attraction, bisexual or transgender identity represent an incongruity among the component parts of how God has made us. Such an inharmonious existence is the result of separation from God as is any existence that falls short of the wholeness God intends for us.
What God intends for all human beings is a completely restored wholeness, reflecting the wholeness of God. Since God's holy will cannot be realized when we are separated from Him, each of us live under the effects of sin. In that condition, we tend to make choices that reinforce, defend or justify ourselves. People with a gender identity that is not the same as their physicality, whether by personal choice or psychological factors, reflect this condition of a disintegrated whole. Those who act on physical attractions to same sex persons as an expression of their sexuality also reflect the condition of all human beings which is being out of sync as a result of not reflecting the integrated wholeness of God. In the same way those who give in to addictions of any kind, whether it be adultery, gossip or overindulgence, are living with the effects of brokenness because of separation from God. They too exemplify lives that have fallen short of truly reflecting God's own image.
We all are sinful people, living under the effects of broken relationship with God to one degree or another. Every sin is an act of rebellion against a holy God. We're all born into sin and will choose whether or not we accept the truth of God's way back into a reconciled relationship with Him. The only way of salvation from sin, for coming back to God, is through one Person, Jesus Christ.
Prompted by grace, our salvation from sin requires each of us to individually and willingly: acknowledge our sinful condition (confession); desire to be made whole again (repentance); rely on the work of Christ for salvation (justification); and surrender daily to the graceful influence of God's love transforming our nature through the work of the Holy Spirit (sanctification). Everyone will choose whether or not to walk this path. Whatever our beginning condition may be (stubborn independence, addiction, greedy self-consumption, lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender behavior), we all fall under the effects of sin and need a biblical path to restore us to the wholeness of life that only God offers us.
We believe that presuming upon God to redefine His path for us is selfishness. Saying that our sinful condition should be acceptable to God just as we are, and that God's intention and desire for us should include our current broken condition, removes the need for grace and takes away our responsibility to seek healing from our misrepresentations of God's image. Revising God's biblical intention for us is another form of self-justification that replaces pursuing God's holy will which is restoring His broken image in us. We know God is forgiving, merciful, and most of all loving. God is so loving that He has made a way by grace through faith in Christ for us to be fully restored in God's image.
It's by grace alone that we're enabled to properly manage the influence of our fallen condition through daily choices that guide our behavior. Grace is God's love in action! Grace is the help that comes to us from the very presence of God, which meets us just as we are in our sinful condition and guides us to make life changes to become more like Jesus, bringing glory and honor to God. When we resist grace, we're saying "no" to God's help and His desire to work with us, deciding instead to remain in our sinful condition and live by our own definition of wholeness.
When we receive grace, we accept the reality of our sinful condition. It means we rely upon grace as compensation for our inadequacy as long as we live under the effect of sin. It means recognizing that apart from the presence of God we remain a broken image of God's intention for us. Accepting grace means acknowledging that our humble surrendering to God's influence upon us is the only way to wholeness wherein the various parts of our being will again come into integrity with one another. Accepting grace is living with the assurance of fulfillment in life that is not the result of redefining our wholeness but the result of the compensatory nature of God's loving grace.
Some may dispute our understanding of God's intention for us as a binary gendered interpretation. Some say it should be expanded to include other combinations of gender identity and sexual expression that are not necessarily hetero nor singularly gendered. This is the crux of the question which we appeal to the biblical passages and scriptural principles, knowing some will dispute our interpretation and come to different conclusions. To inform our interpretation and understanding of Scripture, we also appeal for guidance to our historic identity as part of God's holy church. We apply Spirit-led reasoning to the scriptural principles and appeal to the heritage of countless churches and believers that have gone before us and left a long-standing pattern for engaging difficult issues.
We stand for the truth as it is in Jesus. We know that sin has affected us all without exception. We humbly accept our broken condition. Though not all sins are created equal, every sin is an act of rebellion against a holy God. Therefore, we all are in need of the ever-present loving grace of our forgiving God. We acknowledge God's desire to restore the image of God in every single human being. We are fully committed to salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. The grace of God is sufficient for all our need. We depend on the Holy Spirit to supply our every need. Our quest is for God to restore us to wholeness in Christ, daily becoming more like our Lord Jesus.
To be like Jesus, the church as biblically revealed must reach out in love to all broken and sinful people. We encourage everyone to become fully restored in Christ and claim their place as a part of the family of God. Is a gay, bisexual, or transgendered man welcomed to join the church in the worship God? Yes! Will the church affirm his sexual behavior? No! Will the church encourage a lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered woman to seek God's will for her entire life, including her sexuality? Yes! Will the church condemn either the man or woman and single them out in their sins? No! Will the church call a gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered man or woman to repentance and experience God's forgiveness and restoration in their lives? Yes! Will the church elect her or him to church office, if s/he continues to practice broken sexual behavior? No! Will they be free to bring their lovers to worship with them? Yes! Will they be free to be physically expressive at church, as a husband and wife would be in a public setting? No! Will the church pray for them and seek to love them as Christ loves us? Yes! Will the church bless their union by providing or attending a civil or marriage ceremony? No! These responses also apply to any who willfully practice behaviors which come from broken conditions of all kinds that tilt our hearts away from God's intention for all of us to faithfully represent the image of God in our lives.
What is it, then, that we celebrate and encourage? We celebrate and encourage the humble acceptance and appropriation of God's grace by everyone, so that God's image may be fully restored in them. We know and accept that there will be times of failure and stumbling on the path to wholeness in Christ. However, we continue to celebrate God's intention for us all to fully reflect His holy nature in us. We call for the working out of our salvation until we find eternity with God. Mostly we celebrate the loving grace of God, which sustains us all until that day and makes it possible for us to live as whole people while still bearing the burden of our broken condition.
We stand on the authority and truth of God's Word, and seek to welcome all lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgendered people who humbly seek the sufficiency of Christ for their broken conditions. We encourage all Christian leaders to reflect God's loving grace in engaging the uniqueness of the particular situations they encounter, seeking to help all people to find holy relationship and intimacy with God. This is the biblically revealed intention of God for all people: men, women, boys and girls who are of one particular gender and are integrated within their own lives, living in unbroken conditions of restored life which bear God's image faithfully and seek to become more like Christ.
