They Did What!?!

Okay…I’m still rubbing my eyes, trying to see if what I’ve been reading is really there. The first sentence of the Baptist Press article reads, “Members of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, voted Dec. 2 to delay a decision on whether to include homosexual members as couples in a church pictorial directory.”

If I understand the issue correctly, Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, started allowing practicing homosexuals to become church members at some point in the past. Now the church is struggling with whether to allow gay couples to be presented as such in the church directory.

Wow!

Here’s an excellent example of why Southern Baptists needed to update their confession of faith in 2000. Southern Baptists adopted similar confessions of faith in 1925 and 1963. Unfortunately, the 1963 version has been used time after time to justify sinful behavior such as homosexuality. There’s a phrase in the 1963 Baptist Faith & Message that I agree with 100%...sadly, some who want to call themselves Southern Baptists highjacked it from its context and have used it to validate their immorality. It’s the phrase, “The criterion by which the Bible is to be interpreted is Jesus Christ.”

Sounds harmless enough, right? In fact, it’s not at all hard to agree with it. The problem with that little phrase is that some wayward Southern Baptists who have wanted to justify virtually any aberrant behavior have consulted the gospels and concluded that if Jesus didn’t address an issue, it must be acceptable behavior. Case in point—homosexuality.

Please hear my heart on this. I’ve said it repeatedly as I’ve preached—“Sexual sin is sexual sin is sexual sin!” God doesn’t view homosexuality any differently than He does fornication and adultery. They’re all sexual sin, whether the orientation is heterosexual or homosexual.

But when we receive members into our churches, we make certain assumptions and seek to operate within certain guidelines. Perhaps the most fundamental of these is that the candidate for membership has forsaken all known sin and placed his faith in Christ as Savior and Lord. We call that having a “regenerate church membership.”

That a church which has a quasi connection with Southern Baptists would be struggling with whether to allow gay couples to be presented as such in their upcoming church directory is absolutely inconceivable to me. But when you deviate from the Word of God and begin to equate the pseudo-wisdom of men with the timeless truths of Scripture…well, this is the kind of thing that happens.

“Lord, I want to pray for Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And, Father, I pray for those in homosexual bondage who've been admitted into Broadway's church membership and encouraged to continue their lifestyle. Somehow...through someone...deliver them through the life-changing power of the gospel. Lord, I don't pray that You'll give them heterosexuality...that's not their greatest need right now. But I pray for Your holiness to be poured into their lives by grace through faith. In Jesus' name, Amen.”