Dear Minister: Is it OK with Jesus to have gay ministers?
– Confused in Somers Point
Answer: Some give an easy ‘no’, and some give an easy ‘yes’, answer to this question. Good, faithful Christians who love Jesus, and revere the Scriptures, reach different conclusions.
We agree Jesus loves all people and desires to include all people in a grace-filled, unconditionally loving, faith-deepening, and selflessly serving relationship with him. We agree, in God’s eyes, no one is ‘OK’ in that all people have faults and failures that burden and break our relationship with God. We call this sin. But, good, faithful Christians don’t always agree on theology and Biblical interpretation in matters of sin and how to live out our faith in church, culture, and society.
We agree Jesus loves all people so much that he sacrificed himself so that his love would overcome our sin. We agree he redeems our faults and calls all people to new life. We agree we are still imperfect, but in Christ we are getting better and better.
Jesus doesn’t wait until we are perfect before he calls us to follow him, love one another, grow in faith, serve the world, and share the Good News. This is the ministry of all believers. In this we are all ‘ministers’ and no one is excluded.
Some are called to ‘ordained ministry’ for pastoral leadership in the church. These are the ‘ministers’ we typically have in mind when we ask, “is it OK with Jesus to have gay ministers?” But, given all of the above that we agree on about Jesus, this question is less about whether ‘it is OK with Jesus’ and more about ‘is it OK with the church’. And churches through history don’t always agree on theology and Biblical interpretation in matters of sin and how to live out our faith in church, culture, and society. But wherever we go, and however we would answer this question, we will find good, faithful churches, and good faithful Christians, who have more in common than divides them, and who love Jesus, revere the Scriptures, and are living into new life in Christ!
Rev. Erik C Hall
Senior Pastor
St. Peter’s United Methodist Church
501 E 8th St, Ocean City, NJ 08226
makingwaves.church
