One netfriend:

I am was quite amazed to see your jump from baptising those who have recieved the holy spirit to ordaining homosexuals. To say “back God” on an issue that so strong in the whole NT, that of the gospel is for all people groups not just the Jews is fine.

Another:

But it wasn’t so easy for Peter’s friends was it? The New Testament hadn’t been written yet, so what they were witnessing went against what they understood the scriptures to be saying, and seemed utterly impossible to reconcile with their understanding of God’s holiness. It was simply inconceivable that God could pour out the Holy Spirit on Gentiles the same as on Jews. We are so far removed from that controversy now that we find it difficult to see that this was every bit as shocking to them as the idea of God calling a homosexual person to ministry is to us.

First one:

But then to use the same argument in the area of homosexuality is not a valid use of scripture, theology or logical thinking.

Second:

I’m not trying to start with an argument here, however good or dubious it might be. I’m trying to start with the reality of the people I know and ask the theological questions about what I see. I know quite a few homosexual people who are excellent ministers. They are prayerful, humble, gracious people who live their lives with honesty, courage and integrity. They conduct their love lives with at least as much love, care and fidelity as most straight couples I know, and given that they have to do it in an environment that still will not affirm their love no matter how faithful they are, that is all the more admirable. They have a strong sense of call to Christian ministry, and they have been faithful to that call. Their call has been tested by the churches and affirmed, and then proven over years of fruitful ministry. Their ministries have shown every sign of being blessed by God, as they have led others to Christ and seen their congregations journeying deeper into worship and faithful discipleship.

So when I look at the evidence of their lives and ministries, what am I to conclude? If I hold to my original assumption that homosexual practice is always sinful and should preclude such people from ministry then I must surely conclude some or all of the following: 1. When we talk of the “gifts and graces” for ministry, we don’t really think they are God’s gifts and grace at all, but simply natural abilities and personality traits, or else we think that God makes some terrible mistakes in giving these gifts and graces to people who do not deserve them and have no right to exercise them; 2. When we talk about the “call” to ministry, we don’t really believe that it comes from God but from the desires of the human heart, or else we think that our approach to discerning the call is so faulty as to be useless because if people conceal their sexual identity we can’t tell between the real call and the fraud, or else we think that God keeps making bad mistakes by calling people who are incapable of fulfilling that calling; 3. The marks by which we assess God’s blessing of a person’s ministry are completely wrong, or else a ministry can be fruitful without any assistance from God, or else God keeps making terrible mistakes by accidentally blessing the ministries of the wrong people; 4. That God, who could presumably not just withhold blessing but actively confound the work of those whose lives should rule them out of ministry, is either failing to do so or is doing so so weakly that we can’t tell the difference between that and the ordinary failings of the rest of us.

Being unable or unwilling to accept any of those conclusions, I am left with three options: 1. I could work really hard to find faults in the ministries of those homosexual pastors I know so as to convince myself that they are not exhibiting signs of calling, giftedness and fruitfulness. I could, but unless I ran a very obvious double standard that would leave me condemning most of the straight pastors I know too, and developing the gift of fault-finding is not classically regarded as a Christian virtue; 2. I could avoid having anything to do with any homosexuals and try to forget anything I noticed when I knew them, and thus avoid being exposed to any observations that might require me to question the validity of my convictions; 3. I could conclude that my beliefs about homosexual practice being incompatible with Christian ministry need to be reconsidered, and that perhaps the Bible doesn’t tell the whole story on this issue, just as it didn’t on slavery, just as it didn’t on women’s ministry, just as it didn’t on the doctrine of the Trinity.

The reality is that all the churches have been ordaining homosexual people throughout our history. We’ve just been doing it with a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in place. Most denominations have continued to support pastors who everyone knew was gay, so long as they didn’t come out and openly confirm it. As long as it has remained unspoken, it has been tolerated. We’ve never had enough gifted straight ministers to replace all the gifted gay one’s we would have had to kick out, so we just looked away. This consequent culture of hypocrisy seems to have done much more damage than the ministries of the gay clergy.

We can toss bible verses and confident assertions of what is sin around until kingdom come, but for myself, I am no longer interested in conducting the discussion as just a theological exercise that disregards the actual experience of gay people and their discipleship and ministries. It seems that the old hermeneutic circle of practical theology we all learned about in college gets ignored on this issue and we don’t want to risk allowing our beliefs to be tested by application to real life.

Maybe I’ve got it all wrong, but at the end of the day, I’d much rather be standing before Jesus Christ to be judged for being too inclusive than for being to exclusive, because at least he’ll know what that feels like! 🙂