Where sexual liberalism is welcome, Bible believers are not | thebereancall.org

TBC Staff - EN

Where sexual liberalism is welcome, Bible believers are not [Excerpts]

Conservatives do not have high hopes for the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), which has been leaning liberal for decades and is now officially leaning further to the left.

Meeting in Orlando July 13-17, delegates at the General Assembly passed a significant resolution that...opens the denomination's doors to people of all sexual orientations or gender identities.

The denomination's leadership has been on that trajectory for a long time, and it has had a damaging impact. Once counting about two million members in the 1960s, the Disciples of Christ now has about 639,000, making it perhaps the fastest declining denomination in the nation.

[It was noted that this is] "...always the irony for the liberal church -- that they embrace sexual liberalism with the idea that that will make them more welcoming and throw open the doors, but, of course, the consequence is always just the opposite."

People either leave the church entirely, or find a church where the Bible is taught and still held sacred.

The resolution passed by the church's governing body lists sexual orientation and gender identity alongside race, age and other categories to which the denomination is "striving to become a people of grace and welcome."

Doug Harvey, executive director of Disciples Heritage Fellowship, a non-denominational ministry mostly comprised of former Disciples of Christ churches or congregations still officially connected with the denomination, agrees that the liberal view of sexuality and transgenderism is difficult for many church members to embrace.

"A lot of the older folks in the Disciples of Christ denomination remember what it once was and simply don't have a category in their brains to put a church that would actually ordain ultimately gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people," Harvey states. "So even when it's there on paper, it just kind of goes over the top of their head; they just can't comprehend it. And I say, 'God bless their innocence,' but that's not the world we live in."

Once a renewal group within the Disciples of Christ, Harvey says Disciples Heritage Fellowship lost hope years ago of facilitating change that embraced an evangelical worldview. He suspects this recent affirmation will cause more to lose hope, too.

"Those churches will go through a painful process of studying their history and their own faith and then make a decision," he predicts. "Some will leave, some will choose to stay, but those that choose to stay often lose their best members -- the solid Bible-believing young adults."

http://onenewsnow.com//church/2013/07/22/where-sexual-liberalism-is-welcome-bible-believers-are-not#.Ue1c5UTgIlI