THE WHOLE HOMOSEXUALITY ISSUE
(Sunday) Someone has posted comments on the story about St Barnabas Church in Austin. The commenter implies that these are fundamentalists and that if the church really comes into the Covenant they need to make sure that they understand our commitment to "agree to disagree."

I want to suggest that the commenter has a fundamental misunderstanding of the Covenant -- and St Barnabas.

St Barnabas is hardly what one might call a "fundamentalist" church -- theologically or culturally. They are low-key civil people who are struggling with the issue of faithfulness to biblical Christianity in the midst of their own denominational crisis. These are humble people. There is no "holier than thou" thinking that I'm aware of.

In regard to the Covenant's "agree to disagree" principle -- that agreement is only in certain areas where faithful Christians have historically had differences of practice (e.g. mode and timing of baptism, understanding of the endtimes timeline). Homosexuality (like heterosexual promiscuity, greed, racism, drunkenness, divisiveness...) is not and never has been one of those "agree to disagree" areas.

We have never made this an issue of crusade but when pressed we have consistently said that homosexual practices of ALL sorts are inconsistent with biblical teaching and the Church's historical practice and understanding.

The 1996 statement on human sexuality makes this clear and the annual meeting of the ECC last week reaffirmed this with just a few dissenting votes. And the few dissenting votes were divided between those who wanted the denomination to be more aggressive in hunting down signs of sin and those who don't think that the Covenant should speak at all on this issue. Where we stand is pretty clear and this is why many evangelical congregations from mainline churches have been moving our direction.