I love this brave new world of church politics. Maxie Dunnam tries to change hearts and minds by creating a video outlining how the United Methodist Church’s Amendment One (link) will loosen the standards and let unchecked people into membership as well as further the HomoLiberalAgenda. Watch the video if you like (link).
But that opened the floodgates a bit, and trickles of response videos are creeping out. One that I found today via Twitter has a Texas pastor presenting a situation that deals directly with this Amendment, including a case study of another Texas pastor and his son. Check it out:
Love it. Moral of the story? It’s a brave new world, and if you want to make a video, be our guest. But don’t be surprised if when you lay the tracks down through a medium, that other cars come through too. So thank you to Maxie Dunnam for getting people on Youtube and can find important Methodist videos like this one on the “What’s Related” column. Tee hee.
Thoughts? If there are more videos out there, leave them in the comments!
It bothers me to say it–because I really enjoy your blog, but the tone used in this post is quite polemical, and for me, that’s a bad hack.
You have drawn a line between us and them, a false line that does not include people like me in the mix. I’m down with full inclusion of homosexuals in the life of the church. I’m also NOT down with Amendment 1 as it eliminates a large part of my ability to protect my congregation’s integrity of a body of believers held together in Christian love and devotion and obedience to Jesus Christ.
As a seminary student, I’ve seen what I can only describe as the “Jesus optional” agenda, where Elders, candidates, and church workers alike claim to believe in God, but are “not quite sure about Jesus.” Unfortunately, the so-called homoliberalagenda folks tend to hang out in the Jesus Optional camp.
I’m a supporter of the GLBT folks, but not often of their tactics. I think Amendment 1 is a devious political move, impatiently made, without forethought of their ramifications in the local congregation or the UMC at large. A cause worth winning is worth winning rightly. Otherwise, again, bad hack.
As for the YouTube debates, bring ’em on, but without the “teehee.” I wanna hear and consider both sides; I’m honestly glad we’ve adopted this technology in the church. But please don’t encourage the “us vs. them” situation. Its just disappointing to see in an online forum that is usually very inviting, interesting, and engaging.
On a different note, is there a means to be notified of comment updates on your site?
Kurt, you have articulated the difficult line Amendment 1 is making persons like yourself walk: If I may summarize, you may be socially progressive, but theologically orthodox in terms of minimum requirements for membership. If that is fair, then an Amendment like this that is socially progressive but theologically ambiguous puts people like yourself in a difficult place. Thanks for speaking up and giving voice to others who feel this is difficult.
As far as the tone, I’m sorry it felt polemical. I have a dark humor for political agendas that have unintended consequences, like Dunnam’s videos that spawned tenfold opposing videos. But if my timeline is correct, RMN (Affirmation) predated the other caucus groups and their emergence spawned the inter-necine caucus group shenanigans that disgust us both. The “us v. them” is part and parcel of church politics now and it leaves out people who are neither or both/and.
So the topic of this conversation was less about spurring polemics and more about unintended consequences. Does that frame the conversation better?
Whoops, one more: no, no way to do per-post comment updates. But you can subscribe to the site comments feed for the entire site by adding this link to your feed reader: comment feed