 PLC Chair  May/June, 1999
A Message from the PLC Chair Activists within our denomination who affirm homosexual conduct are few in number, but, aided and abetted by friends in high places, they continue to “wag the dog.” Their persistently disruptive activities currently demand attention on two fronts – awards and overtures.General Assembly Council Executive Director John Detterick, National Ministries Division Director Curtis Kearns, and the NMD Steering Committee deserve an award at this year’s General Assembly for performing their duties as servant leaders with integrity. They stood firm against outrageous and uncivil personal abuse after deciding to reject the Women’s Ministry Program Area “Women of Faith” award to self-styled “lesbian evangelist” Jane Spahr. Nine members of the GAC Executive Committee should receive a different award at this year’s General Assembly – a Commissioner’s Resolution of No Confidence for dereliction of constitutional duty. These nine caved in to activists’ protests and voted in secret to overturn that decision and to reinstate the award to Spahr. If the GAC nine have any respect for our constitution, as a matter of personal integrity they should publicly disclose their votes and affirm that they concur with GAC Chair Cathy Chisholm’s rationale that “process” is more important than the content of our Church’s witness to the world. Our constitution is clear that all ordained officers are duty bound to uphold it – not subvert it as is being urged by Barbara Wheeler, whose strategy speech was recently posted on the Covenant Network website and printed in its newsletter. Meanwhile, some overtures to GA may be viewed as misguided or foolish; while others are well intentioned but unwise. Four overtures require much stronger judgment because they repudiate the essence of the gospel. Three of four “anti-reparative therapy” overtures explicitly ask the GA to “direct” its agencies to “refrain from supporting, implementing, or sponsoring therapies or ministries which attempt to alter a person’s sexual orientation.” In other words, a majority of four presbyteries has opined that human sexuality is excluded from the healing power of the Great Physician, asserting that this portion of our being cannot become obedient to the Word written or incarnate. That any ordained officer of our church could actually believe that human sexuality is beyond the reach of “the proclamation of the Gospel for the salvation of mankind” – is symptomatic of the cancer of a secular agenda that threatens to consume our church body. The Gospel is God’s prescribed transformational ministry for the church and it is his singular, certain, and eternally efficacious therapy for whole persons in the real world. Christ’s love and his willing submission to the Heavenly Father is by grace freely extended to all, and by that grace we are able to accept all persons as his children. But, we, also, must never forget who we are called to be. The agenda of secular culture – to compromise the truth and purity of the Church as the bride of Christ – must be opposed with faithful resolve. Every ordained officer of the church, whether presbyter, GA commissioner, council member, or employee, ought to remember and sincerely believe that, “...no opinion can be either more pernicious or more absurd than that which brings truth and falsehood upon a level, and represents it as of no consequence what a man’s opinions are. On the contrary, we are persuaded that there is an inseparable connection between faith and practice, truth and duty. Otherwise, it would be of no consequence either to discover truth or to embrace it.” (Book of Order G-1.0304) Robert L. Howard |
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