Open and Affirming Pastoral Letter
August 30, 2010
To the Members and Friends of Fairlawn West United Church of Christ:
I am writing this in the historic vein of "Pastoral Letters" that are sent out by Christian pastors to their congregants at vital times in the life of the church and vital times in human history.
On Sunday, September 19th following the 9:20 am worship service, we will gather for a congregational meeting in the Fellowship Hall to consider the Open & Affirming Mission Statement for our congregation. The Council appointed a task force to prepare this for us. In adopting this Mission Statement we are proclaiming that we are an Open & Affirming Church with the United Church of Christ.
On Sunday, September 12th following the 9:20 am worship service we will be having a potluck lunch and watch the documentary "For the Bible Tells Me So", which focuses around the Biblical messages in respect to homosexual acts, about the reality in scripture of affirming, loving relationships, no matter ones sexual orientation and about the toll that the misuse of scripture by the church and politicians has taken on many people and families including deaths.
Why are we doing this now? Our congregation under the mission statement of "Offering hospitality to all God's children" has already been reaching out to all people. And that is clear in the present make-up of our congregation. In truth, we are already a United Church of Christ congregation that is open and affirming. However, we realize that in this day and age when condemnations, judgments and threats are in the air including through the church, it is important for us to be more visible in reaching out in the name of Jesus Christ. We are aware of other churches that give the image of being inviting to all people, but once gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people are within those congregations, they are told that they need to stop the "sinful" behavior. The message is that those churches "love the sinner, but reject the sin." Biblically homosexual loving relationships are not ever viewed as sinful. However, behavior that condemns them and exploits them is sinful.
We have encouraged you in the last months to study the scripture passages that are used by others to condemn God's children who are oriented in their sexuality homosexually. We still have copies of the book "The Children are Free" which we used for a four week study series open to all in July. We also have copies in the front lobby of the first chapter of that book called "The Clobber Passages."
I believe this vote will be the most historic and one of the most profound decisions ever intentionally made by this congregation. Our desire though is not just to take a vote where we take on ourselves the label of "Open and Affirming," but that we will be clearly stating within the community why we believe that homosexuality in and of itself is no more sinful behavior than heterosexuality is. We will distinguish ourselves by stating that when we say we are inviting people to be a part of Fairlawn West United Church of Christ, we will not be singling them out to change their sexual behavior because they are homosexual.
Attached are two items: 1) the proposed Open and Affirming Mission Statement 2.) a FAQ from the United Church of Christ web site about becoming Open and Affirming (O&A).
Please be very spiritually prayerfully intentional in preparation for our meeting. Please, talk with a variety of members of the church in the next few weeks including the members of Council (Mary Austin, Alison Oswald, Dich Pasher, Paul Richert), the O&A Task Force (Dottie & Dick Pasher, Betty Breth, John Gossett, Barb Greve) and myself. As I said last Sunday in casting a vision from Ephesians 4, Christ matures us spiritually into oneness. Our society provides for us to have the rights of one individual to act and say what we believe. However, at some point, our individual rights as one are transformed by Christ into oneness of his body. for Christ's sake we are One in the body.
Grace and peace,
The Rev. David Loar, Pastor of Fairlawn West
United Church of Christ
2095 West market Street, Akron, OH 44313