Part of the solution

In the summer of 2002, I attended the Church of the Brethren Annual Conference in Louisville, KY. I was finishing my second year as the interim pastor of youth at the Lancaster Church of the Brethren, a newlywed preparing to enter volunteer service with my wife that fall. I confess that I went to conference somewhat disillusioned with the church and looking forward to a year away from it. That fall Amanda and I would begin a year of volunteer service, and I had hopes that that time would help to clarify the growing tension in my love/hate feelings for the church and to discern my calling, whether in the church or out. But what I experienced at conference that year nearly sealed the deal in my contemplated exit from the ministry and potentially the church, and left a sour taste in my mouth that still lingers.

Conference fielded a query that year on the propriety of licensing and ordaining homosexual persons to the ministry. I honestly do not remember whether there were other significant items of business on the agenda that year. What I do remember was the spirit that saturated that conference, a spirit that was palpable to me in not only in the contentious business sessions addressing the query, but also in worship, in the exhibit spaces, even in the hallways of the convention center and the surrounding hotels. It wasn’t pretty. It was a spirit of hatred and fear, of distrust and judgment. Instead of brothers and sisters coming together to discern the mind of Christ, I experienced two sides at war – conservatives verses progressives, BMC verses BRF, us verses them. Instead of searching to understand the scriptures together, I saw our sacred texts used as weapons – words pulled out of context and hurled back and forth with no more love than a pin pulled from a grenade.

I do not know how much of my perception was grounded in my own wrestling with the church at that stage of my life and call. But I do know that I was not alone in my perceptions. And I also know that the tension over the question of homosexuality is in no way unique to our denomination nor to the church. Dan Kimball has named homophobia as one of the 6 negative perceptions consistently cited by those who like Jesus but not the church.

In my continuing love/hate relationship with the church, I sometimes wonder which church will carry the day on this issue -- the church which led the abolition of slavery or the one that saw nothing wrong with one huan being owning another, the church that birthed some of the greatest institutions of higher learning in the western world or the church that has set itself in opposition to science for centuries.

And then I realize that this is the church. And that it's not which church "wins", but whether we as people of faith have the fortitude to stick with an imperfect institution and with imperfect sisters and brothers in the constant journey to reach for and to realize the best of our calling and the best of ourselves -- to be the change that we want to see in the church and in the world. And as much as the debate over homosexuality drives me crazy, and as much as I may be tempted (driven?) to walk away from a church that is tearing itself up over the issue, I believe that we are (or at least can be) better than what I experienced at that 2002 Conference.

And I need to be part of the solution.