Good News has issued a
press release taking sides in the case of the
Virginia pastor who was placed on involuntary leave of absence as the consequence of his refusal to allow an openly gay man to join his church in spite of his district superintendent's instructions to receive him.
The Rev. James V. Heidinger II, president of Good News, said the involuntary leave voted by the Virginia Conference's executive clergy session "screams with injustice." He calls the Rev. Edward Johnson "a faithful pastor who was seeking to enforce the policies of our
Book of Discipline..."
Given my understanding of sexual orientation (see
here,
here, and
here), I obviously strongly disagree with the idea of excluding anyone from church membership because of her or his sexual orientation.
I think our
Discipline could not be any clearer about people being welcome into membership regardless of their sexual orientation. Paragraph 4 of the
Book of Discipline says, "The United Methodist Church is a part of the church universal, which is one Body in Christ. Therefore all persons shall be eligible to attend its worship services, to participate in its programs, and, when they take the appropriate vows, to be admitted into its membership in any local church in the connection."
Also, in the statement on "Human Sexuality" appearing in "The Nurturing Community," a section of the church's Social Principles, Paragraph 161G, the
Discipline says: "We implore families and churches not to reject or condemn their lesbian and gay members and friends. We commit ourselves to be in ministry for and with all persons."
So I disagree with the basic assumption behind the press release issued by Good News. What part of the
Discipline does Good News think the pastor was enforcing by denying a gay man membership?
But, independently of this, I am surprised by the position Good News has taken because of what it seems to say about the role of pastors.
As a pastor I have always felt it was my responsibility to make reasonably sure that potential members understand, so far as possible, the church's membership questions. If they then are willing to answer them appropriately, I have not assumed that it is my responsibility to judge the sincerity of their answers. I think this would be presumptuous on my part.
Over the years I have doubted the motivation of one or two people who chose to join a church where I was pastor at the time. Once had to do with an insurance salesperson who I suspected was at least partly motivated by greed. I think he saw the congregation as a prospect list. I spoke earnestly to his membership class about what it means to commit ourselves to Christ through church membership, but I did not deny him membership. Why not? Well, I may have been wrong to define his ambition to sell insurance to church members as being driven by selfish motives. I may be wrong that greed, as I define it, is a sin. Then, too, I am not so self-confident about the single-mindedness of my own motivations that I can presume to judge others on this.
Shane Raynor at
Wesley Blog has
an interesting reaction to this question of judging someone's qualifications for church membership. He suggests that if we are going to accept anyone who presents himself or herself for membership unconditionally we ought to do away with the concept of membership all together. But, he adds, if we are going to continue having members and ask them to say vows, we should make sure the vows are taken seriously.
Doing away with a category of participants called "members" is an interesting idea. My churches have always included people who were not officially members but who were active in the congregation's worship, programs, and mission. Some of these were folk I considered to be the best of members, even though they officially weren't. There were always others who were officially members but who did not participate in church ministries the way they said they would when they joined. What church does not experience this? So why bother distinguishing between members and non-members?
Although I would not consider it an essential characteristic of the church, I think asking people to commit to participation is helpful, and I think membership is an okay way to articulate our commitment. Some churches are beginning to ask people to sign on as partners rather than members, but I don't think this changes the basis principle of inviting people to make a commitment to the congregation.
According to Shane's thinking, if we ask somebody to make a commitment, then someone needs to judge whether that person's commitment is sincere and serious before we accept him or her into membership or partnership or whatever we want to call it. This is where I disagree. I am not sure any of us are qualified to make this kind of judgment about someone else.
And even if I did agree that we ought to judge people's sincerity and honesty, then I do not think it should be the decision of any one person, not even the pastor (maybe especially not the pastor). If we are going to judge sincerity before we receive members, we need a jury to do it. We all have our own peculiar biases and subjective definitions of things like sin. No one should take on such a task unilaterally.
So then we would need a convoluted structure for membership screening and testing and maybe even complaint procedures and trials to determine whether membership promises are being kept adequately. Yuck.
Jesus' parable of the wheat and the weeds in
Matthew 13:24-30 seems instructive. We just aren't smart enough to go pulling up what we think are weeds without risking that we will uproot the good wheat as well.
