The United Methodist Church seeks to one-up the Episcopalians
The first few paragraphs of this news article kind of say it all...
WASHINGTON - A United Methodist minister who has changed gender since being chosen to lead a congregation in Baltimore will be reappointed there, church officials announced Thursday at a regional convocation.
The Rev. Drew Phoenix told the church's Baltimore-Washington conference that he had gone through "spiritual transformation" in the past year, since changing his name from Ann Gordon and receiving medical treatment to become a man.The denomination bans sexually active gay clergy but does not have any rules about transgender pastors.
That we should even need to have rules regarding "transgender pastors" speaks volumes about the state of the church and American society. I can't imagine what sort of person would sit under the teachings of a person who is so clearly disturbed. The secondary issue here is that the UMC, in direct defiance of Scripture, initially installed Ann Gordon as a "pastor". If you can have a woman as a pastor, why not a sexual deviant? I pray that God will intervene in the life of this confused person, one so confused and disturbed that they would mutilate the body given them by God in a vain attempt to become a man. Ann Gordon's actions are not to be celebrated, but mourned and the lack of Biblical leadership and leadership in the UMC ought not be commended, but condemned.
5 comments:
Truly sad... Could it be that we could see that denomination under men like George Whitefield again?? It is sad how denominations rise and fall in such ways...
A good friend of mine and I talk about this all the time. I am a Southern Baptist and he comes from a Christian Reformed Church background. While the SBC certainly has it's issues, like dispensationalism and arminianism, at least we aren't arguing much about the Bible or ordaining women (much less homosexuals or "transgerndered" people!) I think that the structure of the SBC made it possible for the lay members to retake control of the convention, whereas the CRC may never be able to because of the hierarchical nature of control. Whoever controls the money and the seminaries wins. He still holds out hope for the CRC, but I am afraid it may be too late.
Yeah... there is need of revival on all levels in the Church... Alot of the dispensationalists I know coming from Michigan were burned pretty badly by the liberal CRC and basically label anyone who believes in Reformed theology like that... it truly has hurt the church in many ways. One can see how there turn to dispensationalism and Arminianism was caused by that type of liberalism...
On an unrelated note, my copy of Children of Hurin arrived today, I am hoping to get started on it tonight...
nice...
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