The United Methodist Church (UMC) will hold its next General Conference session in early May 2016 in Portland, Oregon. Among key items to be considered is a proposal called “The Third Way” which would permit individual UMC conferences to vote to permit their ministers to conduct same-sex “weddings” and to permit UMC ministers on an individual basis decide whether or not to conduct such marriages.
In the following short video UMC pastor Kennetha Bigham-Tsai, chair of the Connectional Table’s Legislative Writing Team, describes changes being considered:
Methodist pastor Rob Renfroe urges a no vote on the LGBTQ proposals and comments on the rules for process the UMC GC hopes to employ at GC 2016:
While the United Methodist Church is not the Seventh-day Adventist Church, Adventists have followed developments in that communion with considerable interest. The “Third Way” Methodist proposal seems remarkably similar to the “Third Way” women’s ordination proposal some floated in the months previous to the 2015 SDA San Antonio GC session, in that it claims to offer a neutral approach with which all in the church can live, while granting legitimacy to an unbiblical practice. Advocates of LGBTQ rights are at work within the Adventist Church as well.
The UMC faces possible schism next month over the LGBTQ proposals.
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4 replies on “Methodists: Gay Marriage on GC Agenda”
This is a good example of what we would have faced in the near future had the women’s ordination proposal passed last year. Why is it so hard for Christians (both Methodist and Adventist) to call sin by its rightful name? Lord help us as we continue to face these issues in the years to come, and help us to stand firm and true to your Word in this world of “political correctness” (a term I call “cowardly compromise”).
The voice of those who cannot tolerate creeping blasphemy should be loud and well heard.
Let’s have a organized movement standing for traditional historical adventism be started so that those who think that they lead the adventism could see that they wrong when they tolerate sinful activity such as WO and Gay promoting innitiative.
By ordaining women, accepting evolution, and embracing other unscriptural theories, United Methodism has long since set aside the authority of Scripture and the life-transforming agenda of the Wesley brothers.
The Seventh-day Adventist Church rightly rejected the proposal to divide the church through localized acceptance and/or rejection of women’s ordination, because Biblical truth cannot be a local affair. The Methodists dare not go this route with regard to the LGBT issue. If indeed they do, it will offer further evidence of the continuing fall of Protestant Babylon.
“..because Biblical truth cannot be a local affair.”
I think it should be a local affair in the first place, starting with each of us.
And factually this is exactly the root of the issue – open neglecting the Biblical truth spreads throughout the church.
We would never go to gay’s club because we don’t want to have anything in common with sin.
Why then should we allow the sin among us?
(I understand the concept of wheat and tares, but at least wheat should be called wheat in this approach, otherwise it totally makes no sense),