I have an issue I would like to comment on. It might be best if you came back and read this when you have at least 15 minutes to devote to this.

“. . . Homosexual persons no less than heterosexual persons are individuals of sacred worth. All persons need the ministry and guidance of the church in their struggles for human fulfillment, as well as the spiritual and the emotional care of a fellowship that enables reconciling relationships with God, with others and with self. The United Methodist Church does not condone the practice of homosexuality and considers this practice incompatible with Christian teaching. We affirm that God's grace is available to all and will seek to live together in Christian community. We implore families and the church not to reject or condemn lesbian and gay members and friends. We commit ourselves to being a ministry for and with all persons.” ...

The majority's decision now condones the denial of the fellowship of the church to persons in need of its ministry and guidance who are homosexual. The decision eviscerates our statement that God's grace is available to all and reduces it to an empty platitude. More tragically, the same Judicial Council charged with giving effect to the intent of the enactments of the General Conference has turned a cold and rejecting ear to its plea that families and churches not reject lesbian and gay members and friends. ...

I am greatly concerned about this ruling that my majority colleagues have banded to pronounce. My greater concern is that its pronouncement may be a harbinger of things to come. Will we begin to see cases where membership has been denied based on economic status? Or educational status? Will pastors deny membership to those who do not support all of our Social Principles? Or those who fully support our Social Principles? We all aspire to break the bonds and reject the forces of sin. Nevertheless, we choose a perilous course when even “responsible pastoral judgment” is granted to allow pastors the “discretion” to select among a multitude of sins for which some persons will be refused membership. ...

For all of the foregoing reasons, I vociferously, yet respectfully dissent. Here I stand. I can do no other. So help me God.
Jon R. Gray November 8, 2005

I love how Jon Gray words his comments. I agree entirely.

I was shocked last Novemeber when the Judicial Council of the United Methodist Church came down with the ruling that a pastor may bar a person from membership for their sexual orientation.

Being the only liberal on a campus that is very conservative I am continually asked how I can support homosexuality. It seems that everyone on my campus believes that the Bible has whole chapters on why homosexuality is the worst sin ever.

Here is my basic argument.
1. If we have committed one sin we are guilty of committing all of them. Yes, if you stole a candy bar when you were 7 you are just as guilty as a gay man. You have just as much sin whether you are a lesbian or if you lied to your mother once.

2. Sin itself is a lifestyle. We all try to break free from the bondage of sin -- however, sin remains in all of our lives. I don't like it when I lie or when I lust ... however I do it anyway. Paul writes movingly on this subject - I know what is wrong and I do it anyway. Would you decided that Paul doesn't deserve membership because he struggled with sin that didn't go away.

3. Prevenient Grace. United Methodists believe that God is working in everyone's life so that each person is continually moving closer to accepting Christ. Because we hold this viewpoint we believe that there is no shame in accepting members who are, as of yet, not prepared to accept Christ or change their lives. This is a dangerous position -- but we believe that we give those people an effective Christian witness by accepting and loving them.

4. When Jesus was tempted in the Garden of Gesthemane "the holy Spirit led Him to where he would be tempted." Just as God allowed Satan to tempt Job God will allow us to be led to temptation. Christians so often vociferously deny that God would create people to be Gay ... however I believe that God allows Satan to tempt them with the Sin of homosexuality. It is just another sin to God, one that he abhors - like all others, but still just another sin. It isn't a special sin in God's eyes. It isn't special punishment from God chosen for the worst of sinners.

5. Jesus Christ died for all sinners. There weren't any exceptions. God didn't say - I hate fags and my son won't die for them. That would be proposterous ... and yet we allow our churches to daily set forth that message.

6. It is a preposterous idea that the Christian church which is so filled with sin feels itself righteous enough to point out the sins of others. When we remove the plank from our eyes we can then proceed to help our gay brothers and sisters get their specs out of their eyes. When we get right with God I think we will realize that God would rather have us love than condemn. That is a hard teaching to swallow.

That's all for now. Those are my points. As Jon Gray stated to eloquently "For all of the foregoing reasons, I vociferously, yet respectfully dissent. Here I stand. I can do no other. So help me God."

This is the position that God has most assuredly placed me in. I could rebel against it and sin or follow the teachings of Christ and fight for love and acceptance of those who are different from me.

I have a story I would like to comment on. My sister's bofriend, Mike, recently made a mistake.

Mike works at a small fire department as a volunteer. The truck hadn't been re-fueled since the last fire so Mike took it to get re-fueled. Mike opened the door and backed up. The door, however, had been broken for more than a year and sometimes didn't go up right. Mike hit the door pretty hard and did some damage. Mike put the door down and went and told the other firefighters. They came and tried to put the door back up, but it wouldn't budge. They realized that if there was a fire they would have to use the other truck - the one that no one had got around to fixing yet. So that night the firement fixed it in case there was a call.

Because of Mike's mistake - insurance will cover replacing the broken door, the door will no longer be broken, the fire truck that they had "been fixing" for weeks was now operational.

We will all probably make a lot of mistakes. But, aim for the ones like this. If you are going to make a mistake let it be one that will have positive ramifications. Laziness, apathy, and ignorance have no positive side effects. They kill you slowly. When, however, you ram a truck into a door there are immediate side effects. Some of them negative. There is guilt, anger, and frustration on Mike's part right now ... but there are also positives.

I read recentl a book by Jim Bakker, famed televangelist who had an affair and then was arrested for embezzlement, about the mistakes in his life. A recurring theme in the book was that if he had waited patiently instead of rushing into things he woulnd't have gone to jail. He failed to realize that everything he was jailed for happened long after his affair. He would have gotten away scotch free if his embezzlement wouldn't have got in the way.

Our mistakes hurt. Sin hurts. May it be our prayer than when we mess up there are positive side effects to the problem. May we see Christ's perfect resolution in all of our screw ups.

I don't have mono. The aren't sure yet what I have, but they are sending out a blood sample. I am so tired I can't even function properly. I'm sure I will be okay, but at least I didn't get the puking virues that's going around. Happy day.

I am very happy abot how everything is going. We have 3 or 4 skits on the way for the youth drama ministry. Two weeks from now we will have a meeting about Water's Edge new church start. Next Wednesday we will have the meeting about Threadbare. Everthing is shaping up nicely for a lot of the ministry oppertunities I have.

Just to think, I was worried about all 3 of these ministries and how well they would work out. How silly of me to worry about the ministries God has called me to - and especially worrying about having enough time to perform all of them. I realize (don't tell my mother) that compared to the work I am called to my classes aren't that important. I still want to do well, of course, but I also know that if I give my time to God he will use it better than I can.

"Ms. Fengai-Kabba saw the results of poverty and injustice from another perspective as a Global Justice Volunteer working with Filipina migrant laborers at Bethune House/Mission for Filipino Migrant Workers in Hong Kong. Poverty sent the women in search of a better life that too often proved illusive in Hong Kong. Ms. Fengai-Kabba assisted women seeking redress for labor abuses and violations of their work contracts. She went with them to their nation's Consulate. "They were facing injustice, but nobody at the Consulate would hear them," Ms. Fengai-Kabba said. "One lady had cuts on her, but the Consulate didn't care."
She went with them to court. "I didn't know the law, but I went just so they'd have someone to stand with them," Ms. Fengai-Kabba said."

I have been thinking a lot recently about love. One of my best friends has made some pretty stupid moves lately in the arena of love. I see a lot of Christians horribly mis-construing love as a gift. I know that I have many amazing examples of love surrounding me. My good friends Jon and Nathan are both in committed relationships with women who love God that are excellent examples of Godly love. I have decided that recently I have been spending too much time "looking for love." Most of my freinds here are seniors. They all seem to be in a mad dash for marriage. I'm not.

I have made the decision that until I can love others with no expectation of love in return I am not ready to look for love in a romantic sense. The above story is from one of the global justice volunteers from last year. She is from Sierra Leone. I think that this is an example of love that I want to follow. I am going on a weekend retreat with my youth group. My goal this weekend is to love the guys I will be staying with. I want them to know that I love them with Christ's love. There are a lot of problems in my youth group. They have had fights break out between the kids, few of the kids are Christian on any level of the word, and the guys especially are unresponsive to the message of loving others.

I don't see a problem there that the love of Christ couldn't solve. This weekend I will try and be that love. I will forget all of the problems in my life. My sickness, my anger towards those I love, and my schoolwork. I will instead focus on love.

I have realized that I'm not ready for love. I realize that I am at this time too imature to even consider a long term relationship with a girl. I think more importantly that until I can love "the lease of these" as my self, how can I expect to be able to love anyone more than myself for the rest of my life.

I see with a lot of my friends that when a woman comes into the picture friends take a secondary role. I have also realized that the love they previously would have invested in the fringe of this world - the poor, the broken, the hurt - is now being invested, instead, in their girlfriend.

I realize that I don't love people enough. I still have people who I refer to as crazy, there are people who smell too bad for me to allow them to ride in my car, there are people who annoy me enough that I can't eat a meal with them, I can't offer a young black mother with groceries for the week, I can't befriend gay people because I am too afraid of being labeled with them, I am afraid to talk to strangers and sometimes even people in church. I realize that I love my own life too much.

I know that I am a saved Christian, and that compared to most earthly standards of goodness I stack up pretty well. But, I am concerned not about the world's standards, but, rather, God's standard. It is all too easy for me to compare myself to other Christians - but, when I compare myself to Christ I realize that I fall short.

A friend of mine used to be suicidal. He told me recently that since he has become a Christian he has noticed the greatest irony ever - for so long he wanted nothing to do with his life, and now that he is commanded to "die daily" to himself and instead live in Christ he finds that he often holds onto his life instead.

I'm holding on to life still. My friends still hold on to life. Why do we do this? I'm so sick and tired of Christians who know the Bible. My friends here know almost every word of the Bible, and yet they still miss the point. I love them, but I realize that we are all missing the point so often.

Isn't it ironic that love can get in the way of love. It is almost like in Little House on the Prairie when there were forest fires and Laura's family lit the crops near the house on fire. They burned everything near their house, and the fire that was looming had no fuel to make it to the house. They lost all of their crop, but they all survived. We all too often burn the fuel around our heart in meaningless relationships, but if we would instead let the fire consume us, with no control on our part - I think that's what it means to die to ourselves. I have decided not to pursue love, but to rather allow the author of all love to consume me.

Boy that's what I call being bold.

My friend Andy is the epitome of timidity. (I like the sound of that.) He is pretty shy, but generally a good person to talk to. We were discussing church backgrounds today. He told me he was raised charismatic, but attended one of the 40+ Baptist churches in Toccoa. I asked if there were no charismatic churches here, and he told me a little story:

Andy and his roomate Ben went to the charismatic church one Sunday. Everyone was speaking in tongues at the same time - there was no interpretation of the tongues. Andy knew that this went against what the Bible said about speaking in tongues. Andy told Ben, who agreed. Ben got the attention of the congregation. Andy (on his first visit to the church!) opened up his Bible and read where it says that only one person should speak in tongues at a time and that there should be interpretation. Andy sat down.

My mom always talks about how Moses was meek ... and the amazing things he did. I realize more and more that I am not a bold person. I have a huge mouth, and have no problem getting up in front of hundreds of people and speaking or singing. However, when it comes right down to small group dynamics I am just not bold.

I don't stop the guys at lunch from making fun of my roomate of whom I love dearly. I don't participate. I just don't stop it.

I don't stop people from telling gay jokes, and often joke about it myself. We give no regard to the fact that they are an emerging people group with very little positive contact with the gospel and a whole lot of negative exposure to it.

When the youth group guys kicked a kid out of a game of cards because he was "too stupid to play" I didn't have a jazzy come back to make everything better. I told one of the guys that it wasn't nice ... but that was the extent.

I don't think I would ever stand up in an unfamiliar church (or a familiar one!) and tell them that their style of worship was unbiblical.

I'm too timid to stand up for Christ in so many situtation, but yet I know that Christ loves me anyways. Jesus makes me bold often, and sometimes I do stand up and speak up. I guess today I will just pray for boldness, and tomorrow will remember that when I have failed to be bold it was failure - and Jesus has great plans for me that include far less failure than victory.

I love weekends. I know - I'm a college student and it's a prerequisite that I love weekends. But, even if I wasn't forced at gunpoint to love weekends I still think I would.

On Friday I went to a friend's birthday party. On Saturday I spent 6 hourse working on a Habitat for Humanity house. Professor Collier was in charge of the worksite, and boy was it fun to work with him. He is the most conservative theologian. Ever. We have postulated that if he ever uttered one liberal thing his head would explode. "The Holy Spirit is a woman?" Bang!! Pop goes the weasel. All joking aside, his head literally would explode. He is also a mean sarcasm person. We get along great. We put up sheetrock for most of the ceiling on the first floor. It felt good to be doing something nice to give back to the community.

I, however, managed to work through about an hour of the time I was supposed to be at a class. I had a movie to watch for 3 hours on Saturday, and after getting back atleast 1 1/2 hours into the film I took a shower, and decided that I would try and make it up later. I had a cake to bake.

We had the realy party for Ann on Saturday. I made her favorite cake, "better than sex cake." I'm not making this up. It was pretty good ... but if that's all that I have to look forward to.... Nevermind. We had a fun dinner - me and my upperclassman friends. I went to Wal-mart with Ann, Liz, and Mel. We have a new Wal-Mart and it's amazing.

I brought my friend Joel to church with me this morning. It was fun. The pastor's sermon was so good. I almost cried during it. I lauged, I cried, ... it moved me Bob. I'm heading off to youth group now for the Super Bowl.

So that's it. No moral or spiritual insight. No sermon to preach, no bones to break. Just a scheduler in reverse. I hope all of my weekends are as fulfilling.

I worked my first day at my first job that paid more than minimum wage. I enjoyed working with the children. I work at an elementary school that has a lot of very low income families. Let's just say that few of the rich white children from my church attend this school. I had a really fun time working with the kids. They all have really fun southern accents which I occasionally can't deciver.

My sister told me that she reads my blog. She said she will tell mom to read it also. Now that I have my fan base I can use it to take over the world. Mwa-ha ha ha ha.

Whenever I'm around children I'm reminded of how God sees humans. When these kids were reading things out loud they would often miss whole lines of text, or skip big words, or even skip the small ones. I started to wonder how God is so patient with us. Does he ever think, "Okay, let's try this again. Love God - love people. That's it. That's the whole shabang. Wait, why are you doing that. You can't just skip over the word God. The statement doesn't make sense anymore. Love ... love people. What? Try it again. Ok, that was better, but this time you left out the part about loving people. Try again."

We try over and over again to follow what must be the simplest commands from any religion in the world ... and yet we fail horribly. We don't have to pray 5 times a day. We don't have to starve ourselves for inner peace. We don't need to worship anything made of stone, pray to our anscestors, or use formulaic traditions. We just need to love God and love people. So why is it so hard?

It's an eventful moment in my life. I don't know what it is, but many things happened today to make me happy. I finally finished the book by Jim Bakker I was reading. It was a long, boring book. Bakker, the disgraced televangelist, could have easily summarized in 100 pages, but chose to instead use 600 pages. He often had full pages of "famous" people who wrote him letters in prison. I don't know why I kept reading. I enjoyed the ending, though.

I start my new job tomorrow. I will be reading to elemtary children. I'm sure I will love it, but some of the past employees have had some realy horror stories.

I have talked with the other students from my school who will be helping in the church plant. They all spoke VERY highly of the pastor we will be working with. I am so excited to be working with people who just truly love God and love people.

I got my car back today. It cost $365 (Yes, I know. A dollar for every day for a whole year.), but I have a new radiator. The car is running much better now, and I feel much more free than when I was depending on other people.

I talked with my friends Jonathan. I have three friends named Jonathan. I had a very good conversation with all three of them today. That makes me happy.

I didn't have any homework for my class tomorrow. (and will have no Tues/Thurs class next week!)

I realize every day that there are many things I should praise God about that I don't. I just simply don't take the effort needed some days to praise the creator for everything. It's sad, but admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery. I think there are a lot of Christians who need a support group that will bring them back from lethargy to vibrancy.