Gnosticism! Response #3 to Vineyard USA's Pastoring LGBT Persons

In speaking of how one might reach a third way or affirming position the Executive Team summarizes one way to the affirming view in this surprising way: “This position (affirming) will use the argument of some form of higher gnosis, which enables one to elevate certain biblical themes, like love and mercy, over other biblical themes, like creation and covenant law.”[i] 

The charge of Gnosticism is a surprising and persistent theme in a paper entitled Pastoring LGBT Persons. This theme runs throughout the paper and receives nearly as much space, (it might actually be more if we collected all he references to gnostic knowledge), with its own separate appendix as the portion of the paper that is actually about pastoring.[ii] 

From what I gather the crux of the argument is that humans are obviously either male and female, it is affirmed in the creation accounts, and it is backed up by simple biology and anatomy. During the time the paper was being written my Regional Leader summed up the argument for me in this way, "People need to pull down their pants and look in the mirror." (Granted less learned sounding than the charge of gnosticism, but more to the point). 

The Executive team quotes N.T. Wright at length along these lines. “For Wright, the results of the reemergence of the Gnostic worldviewhave been obvious, namely “confusion of sexual identity and behaviour.” ‘If the outside world, including my own body in its male or female particularity, are not
the good creation of a good and wise God, but rather the inessentials made by a blind and
stupid creator, and if instead my inner “experience” is what really counts, then I not only
can but must be true to the spark of light, and indeed of desire, which I find most deeply
within myself, even if it goes contrary to the apparent order of creation, the norms of
traditional society, and the teaching of the bible and the church.’”[iii] As is often the case N.T. Wright is eminently quotable, and I agree that what he is describing - “inessesentials made by a blind and stupid creator,” and the bit about “spark of light,” does sound pretty neo-Gnostic. So good for the executive team for taking a firm stand against neo-Gnosticism. 

But, here is where I am confused, where exactly has any proponent of the third-way talked about the inessentials made by a blind and stupid creator? Where exactly did they talk about an inner “spark of light?” The Executive Team seems to think this is actually how proponents of a third-way arrived at and talk about a third way. This might fit the classic definition of a straw man argument. Or, maybe the Executive team has some secret knowledge to which I am not privy, but I simply do not think that is the case. As I read it, the proponents of a third way confessed a degree of agnosticism regarding the etiology of gayness or lesbianism, but were open to the idea that there may well be biological factors (non-dualistic – material factors). What proponents of a third-way did say consistently is that there actually are LGBT Persons, that is these persons do actually exist, and that they were made by the good Creator. As I read the proponents of a third-way they were simply saying that the Good Creator God also made "Steve."[iv]

Early the Executive team summarizes the question before them in this way:

The basic issue that the Western world is currently struggling with comes down to this: do we human beings create the meaning and purpose of sex, or do we discover the meaning and purpose of sex? Does sex have a meaning totally apart from what you and I think about it and our job is to discover that meaning? Or does sex simply mean whatever we want it to mean? Is there a design for sex given to us by God, or do we just make it up as we go? Here’s the divide.[v]

And then summing up how they might answer if they were an advice columnist responding to a husband whose wife had an affair: “…God has a design for sex. When we step outside of that design, we get hurt and we hurt others….You know, there is a grain that runs through the moral universe and when you rub your hand against the grain, you pick up splinters.”[vi] Ok, great. Nobody wants splinters. I’m in for not getting splinters from the moral universe. But, as I read proponents of a third-way no one was saying we get to make up whatever meaning we want for sex. Again maybe the Executive Team has secret knowledge to which I am not privy. Proponents of a third-way within the Vineyard were asking if the moral universe had primarily to do with covenant, monogamy and fidelity in a to death do us part relationship, before God and in a covenantal community. Proponents were asking if there was a third-way in which this type of commitment could be opened to LGBT Persons.

I’m also confused, because in the above quote and in their quote of Wright the Executive Team seems to be saying that there in actuality may not be any such thing as LGBT persons. It would seem from the above quotes that the only way to be an LGBT person would be by just making “it up as we go.” But, earlier in the paper they approvingly quote Welsley Hill as he talks about realizing that he was gay:

"By the time I started high school, two things became clear to me. One was that I
was a Christian… The second was that I was gay. For as long as I could remember, I had been drawn,even as a child, to other males in some vaguely confusing way, and after puberty,
I had come to realize that I had a steady, strong, unremitting, exclusive sexual
attraction to persons of the same sex… It seemed more like noticing the blueness of my eyes than deciding I would take up skiing. It was never an option– ‘Do you want to be gay?’ ‘Yes, I do, please.’ It was a gradual coming to terms, not a conscious resolution.”[vii] 

It seems the Executive Team wants to recognize, at a minimum, that there was a certain is-ness to Hill being Gay. The team seems in approving of the this quote to be saying that a part of Hill's embodied, actual non-gnostic existence is his being gay. Yet, simultaneously the Executive Team of Vineyard USA wants to accuse proponents of the third way, of a gnosticism that makes up the meaning for sexuality as they go. Or, is the Executive Team saying that Hill may have felt that he was gay, but he was actually making it up? Based on their later quotes of Wright, I am not exactly sure how the executive might answer this question.

I find this Gnostic charge to be one of the most and perplexing, least solid and least satisfying parts f the entire paper. I think this partly for the reasons noted above, but the most perplexing part for me is found in the original quote I noted: “This position (affirming) will use the argument of some form of higher gnosis, which enables one to elevate certain biblical themes, like love and mercy, over other biblical themes, like creation and covenant law.” I am absolutely and completely befuddled, by the idea that elevating the themes of love or mercy, makes one a Gnostic. Love and mercy are themes that are Biblically elevated. By this reckoning the Bible is a gnostic book. Under this definition of Gnosticism, the Executive team will have snared in their gnostic net: Jesus – the greatest command is Love, Love the Lord your God…, (if greatest is not a form of elevation, then I do not understand the meaning of elevation);  again Jesus – “I desire mercy, not sacrifice;” and Jesus talked about weightier matters – justice and mercy (my understanding would be that weightier is not an antonym of elevated); Paul – the greatest of these is love (again maybe I am misinterpreting when I read greatest as a form of elevation); James – talks about the royal law of love – loving neighbor, and about mercy triumphing over judgement. The book of 1 John as I read it has primarily to do with love. I'm probably missing others, but these examples spring readily to mind as Biblical writers who elevated the themes of love and mercy. Outside the Bible they have put a lovely little song firmly in the gnostic camp  - Love and Mercy.

In seems the gnostic charge seems odd, unfounded and out of place in a paper on Pastoring LGBT Persons. To return to an earlier point, this again shows that this paper is actually not about pastoring actual LGBT persons. Pastroing LGBT Persons is about making a case for the Vineyard foul lines. Still even given reinforcement of foul lines as a goal, I am completed baffled by the idea that elevating the Biblically elevated themes of love and mercy, makes one a neo-gnostic. 

[i] Pastoring LGBT Persons, p. 24.


[ii] Other examples (besides the three page appendix!) “The unsuitability of the biblical teaching to prevailing Western culture is countered either by an attempt to revise what the texts mean, or to admit that they are universally prohibitive, but then to elevate certain biblical themes (love and acceptance, or a certain reading of Galatians 3:28) over other biblical themes on the basis of a higher gnosis drawn from modernity.” P.52-53 n explaining why they are for the traditional position: “There is no “new thing” to come, no new eschatological era, no new gnosis with a higher revelation on these matters.” P44


[iii] Pastoring LGBT Persons, p. 69.


[iv] Conservative Christians famously used to say (and perhaps still do), God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. This begs the question who exactly made Steve?


[v] Pastoring LGBT Persons, p. 28


[vi] Ibid. p. 28


[vii] Ibid, p. 15.

Response to Vineyard USA 2 - Responding to the charge of caving to culture

Jettisoning Scriptural Authority for Contemporary Sensibilities

The Executive leadership team of Vineyard USA early on summarizes a lynch pin of their argument against any type of third way by contending that Ken Wilson arrived at his conclusions in A Letter to My Congregation because: “In place of the authority of Scripture, Ken has reconstructed Christian sexual ethics to accommodate contemporary sensibilities.” [i] There is an insistent tone throughout the paper that the only way to arrive at a third way is to jettison Biblical authority.[ii]  According to the Executive Team jettisoning Biblical authority is in fact what anyone who is for a third way must have done, and this charge is repeated and hammered home in a variety of ways.[iii]

The way the Executive team has formulated their argument maybe a textbook example of begging of the question. The Executive team formulates their argument of jettisoning Biblical authority to give more weight to contemporary culture in this way:

1. There is one and only one faithful Biblical position on the question of Pastoring LGBT persons and that is that they can’t marry. 

2. To arrive at a “third way” one must have given more weight to contemporary sensibilities. 

3. There are people in the Vineyard who are for a third way, not the one and only faithful Biblical way of Pastoring LGBT Persons. 

4. Therefore, these people have given more weight to current sensibilities than Biblical Authority. 

The Analogy of Divorce

Executive team piles on regarding Ken Wilson's and those sympathetic to his views Biblical unfaithfulness. The executive team for a moment (a very brief moment), acknowledges that there is something to Ken Wilson's analogy of divorce in A Letter to My Congregation. But, ultimately the Executive Team summarizes Ken’s analogy regarding divorce this way: “Ken’s argument is: ‘We've been willing to be unfaithful to biblical teaching regarding divorced people so why don't we bend the rules on gays?’This is like saying: “The American church has had a racist past. The

only logical response to our racism would be to add anti-Semitism to our catalogue of sins for

consistency's sake.”” Truly I tell you, this is verbatim how the Executive Team summarizes Ken's questions about divorce on page 37 of Pastoring LGBT Persons. The Executive Team acts as if (or maybe actually believes) this is Ken’s actual argument – which it obviously and emphatically is not. But, framing Ken's analogy in this way furthers the Executive Team's narrative of Biblical unfaithfulness. Ken’s point is obviously that a different hermeneutic (interpretation process) seems to be at play regarding divorce and remarriage, than the one being applied to pastoring people within the LGBT community.[iv] Even a cursory reading of Ken’s book would make this clear, but the Executive Team seems bent on pinning on anyone sympathetic to a third way the charge of not being faithful to the Bible and caving to culture.

Naivete about the workings of tribal culture 

The Executive Team appeals to some odd arguments to pin the charge of Biblical unfaithfulness on anyone in the Vineyard proposing a third way (see above and their summary of Ken’s divorce argument). But, in furthering the narrative of jettisoning Biblical authority to “accommodate contemporary sensibilities,”perhaps the greatest flaw in a flawed argument is how the Executive team either ignores, or displays a significant degree of naivete about how culture(s) and tribes actually work. 

The Vineyard has often described itself as a tribe, and tribes have powerful cultures. Tribes often have a significantly more powerful cultural effect on their members than the “contemporary sensibilities” out there. At a minimum I can say as former local Vineyard pastor there was no great pay-off within the Vineyard tribe of articulating disagreement with the Vineyard “foul lines,” – mind you, not playing outside of them, but merely disagreeing with them. For the people I know there has been no great pay off from the culture “out there” but there has been significant social loss which has included for each of us the loss of the Vineyard tribe.[v] 

The executive team seems to imagine people (particularly pastors) closing their Bibles, holding up their finger to find out where the winds of "cultural sensibilities" were blowing and then simply setting the sails of their churches to run with the winds of culture. This narrative that the Executive Team puts forward basically ignores the on the ground pastoral experience that Ken describes in A Letter to my Congregation - the actual experience of knowing actual people and seeing the work of the Holy Spirit. The Executive Team out of hand dismisses any narrative that would say: we met actual people; we saw the the wind of the Spirit; we reread and reread our Scriptures; and we prayed and prayed; and we repeated. The only wind blowing in the mind of the executive team was the shifting wind of culture. It is understandable that the Executive Team would want to formulate an argument in this manner, because it does seem heroic to stand firm for Biblical faithfulness against the shifting winds of culture. However, I am not convinced this is how cultural pressure actually works.

I am convinced that there were many cultural factors at play as Pastoring LGBT Persons was written, but I am not convinced that the primary (or only) factor was the “contemporary sensibilities” out there. Instead think it might be fair to posit that a significant part of the cultural pressure was tribal pressure from within the Vineyard tribe, to deal with Ken Wilson and anyone sympathetic to his views. I have been told twice by a member of the Executive Team that before and as the Pastoring LGBT Persons was being written there were hundred(s) of churches threatening to withdraw if Ken and his views were not dealt with. Let me repeat that: there were hundreds of churches threatening withdrawal from the Vineyard. [vi] My Regional Leader told me that the feeling in the National Leadership was that maybe between 5-10 churches might be lost or disaffiliated after the paper. If one wanted to talk about cultural pressures it is perhaps not impossible to imagine the calculus involved in weighing 8-10 churches against hundred(s). The assertion that a third way simply gives more weight to contemporary sensibilities looks particularly odd when juxtaposed against the reality at the time in the Vineyard, and in the light of how cultural pressure actually works. 

In sum, I find less than satisfying and less than solid, the argument that a third way is only arrived at by jettisoning the Bible for cultural approval. The charge: 1.Begs the question as it begins with only one acceptable Biblical outcome. 2. Posits bad faith on the part of anyone reaching a different conclusion. 3. Ignores on the ground pastoral experience. 4. Is naive about the actual workins cultural pressure. 

But this argument is not the only argument that the Executive team marshals, so next I will turn to one that may have been a surprise to any number of people – that people reach a third way by route of that ancient heresy, Gnosticism.

[i] Pastoring LGBT Persons. P. 9


[ii] Let me take a moment to clarify the Executive Team’s position – there is actually no third way – it is only a rhetorical device – Ken’s third way is really the “open and affirming” wolf dressed in the sheep’s clothes of third way.


[iii] “Capitulation to the moral, religious and spiritual sensibilities of the culture has always been a grave temptation for the church.” P. 12 Continuing the theme of capitulation - that Ken and those sympathetic to Ken are in the view of the executive team guilty of. On a related note there is this rhetorical question: “But this does not explain the way certain very obvious intertextual connections are ignored by affirmative scholars. Is this not also an evasion tactic to avoid the biblical position?” p. 23. “One cannot read Ken Wilson’s paper without hearing either intentional or unintentional echoes of liberal Protestantism’s method of beginning with human experience, rather than Scripture and tradition. His book starts with his experience of people in his church and then adjusts the meaning of Scripture from any consensus understanding to his own highly eccentric reading of Romans 14. It’s as if Ken has predetermined what Scripture must say to fit his limited experience, rather than allowing Scripture and the universal church’s historic interpretation of Scripture to determine his beliefs.” p. 44. Also these rhetorical questions: “The obvious question arises: are the affirming arguments really derived from a careful exegesis of Romans 1, or are they merely an indication that Paul’s statements are entirely at odds with current liberal sensibilities regarding sex? Again, for those who are committed to an affirming position, would it not be better to transparently disagree with Paul and admit that one has decided to elevate contemporary values over biblical norms, than to attempt a revisionist reading of Paul? And one final example a comparison between Peter Fitch and Ken Wilson and pagan writers of the Greco-Roman world: “For all these reasons, it is simply not credible to read the stipulations in Leviticus 17-18 without reference to the creation narrative, the clash of two different views of deity and the rule of Yahweh in the covenant relationship. All of these are inextricably connected through obvious intertextual links. The clash of these two worldviews continues in the contrast between the New Testament writers and the Greco-Roman world, and continues today in the clash between the church’s traditional perspective regarding homosexuality and the entirely new affirming position taken by, among others, Ken Wilson and Peter Fitch.” p. 26-27 Yikes! Ken and Peter are aligning with the equivalent of Greco-Roman pagan writers?! That seems bad. I guess the implication is I should disagree with Ken and Peter. This theme of caving to culture has also been expressed in other settings. At the Great Lakes North Regional conference of 2014 Phil Strout the National Director of the Vineyard speaking about questions around pastoring people in the LGBT warned pastors against the dangers of becoming the contemporary culture’s “lapdog.” (My AP’s notes from the gathering). Fair enough warning, but I have not heard anyone from a third-way perspective asking “How can we be culture’s lapdog?” Warning a tribe about the dangers “out there,” is fair, but from my perspective the warning carries little actual risk within the tribe. It is, if you will, red meat for the tribe and fuels tribal imagination of the godless culture out there beyond the pale.


[iv] The paper goes to lengths explaining the nuances of divorce and remarriage while simultaneously citing various scholars and chiding Ken for being unaware of the scholarship. It strikes me that the executive team has employed some hermeneutic other than the main and the plain (and to be clear I think this appropriate – and well Biblical- for example I think maybe Paul is engaging in something other than the main and the plain in his reading of Hagar). I do not think it would be fair to accuse the executive team of giving more weight to “contemporary sensibilities” than Biblical authority regarding divorce. I do think it is fair to ask: Why does the hermeneutic and pastoral approach on divorce and remarriage feel strikingly different to the hermeneutic  and pastoral approach applied when it comes to pastoring people within the LGBT community?


[v] The World Vision debacle of April 2014 is perhaps the best illustration of the principle that culture is primarily tribal. Within 3 days of the decision to merely employ followers of Jesus (these would be people who in good conscience confess the Apostles Creed) in covenanted same-sex relations, 17,000 donors had withdrawn their pledges made to children around the globe. World Vision reversed its decision after three days. In short, there was only a negative payoff within the broader evangelical tribe of the initial World Vision move – and if there was a decisive pressure in the ultimate decision it seems to have been from within the tribe, not “contemporary sensibilities” out there.


[vi] Two direct conversations with a member of the Executive Team.

Responding to Vineyard USA Position Paper - Pastoring LGBT Persons 1 - This paper wasn't actually about pastoring

Why write a response?

In August of 2014 the Vineyard USA Executive Team released a ninety page position paper entitled Pastoring LGBT Persons. In the introduction the Vineyard Executive Team laid out their reasons for publishing only the sixth position paper in the history of Vineyard USA.[i] The team cited two reasons: the public context with the changing morality of Western Democracies, and the Vineyard context with the publication of Ken Wilson’s A Letter to my Congregation.[ii] The Vineyard executive team said that for these reason this issue “had greatness thrust upon it,” and deserved a position paper. [iii] Having been in the Vineyard movement for 20 years with fifteen of those years in pastoral work, my primary reason for writing a response to Pastoring LGBT Persons involves people. The people I know and love within the LGBT community, who have long lived with the pastoring laid out in Pastoring LGBT persons. I’m writing for anyone who may not be convinced that the only faithful way to pastor and live is laid out in Pastoring LGBT persons. For me this is not simply an issue with “greatness thrust upon it” that needs to be dealt with, but rather about pastoring actual people within the LGBT community – and not incidentally - recognizing that people within the LGBT community have pastoral gifts themselves, and probably should be a primary voice in the discussions of pastoring. So for this reason, I am writing a series of comparatively very brief responses to the most problematic aspects of Pastoring LGBT persons.[iv]

Pastoring

The most glaring weakness of Pastoring LGBT Persons, is that it actually has very little to do with pastoring. The actual counsel on pastoring does not occur until 55 pages into the paper, and then is treated in four pages. In these four pages the executive team treats pastoring narrowly as the administration of ordinances and rites, and the question of who can lead in a Vineyard. According to the Vineyard Executive Team the "pastoring" LGBT persons are to be given is as follows: Communion? Yes! Baptism? Maybe, after a firm discussion, (use the analogy about opening every room of your house). Child dedication? Vineyard pastors have some flexibility. Marriage? Absolutely not. Ordination? Absolutely not if the LGBT person is in covenanted marriage to a person of the same sex. Can a person in a same-sex marriage lead in a local Vineyard? Well certainly not in an ordained position, but possibly in other positions. In this respect, the Vineyard is like baseball.[v] There are clear foul lines: don’t perform a same-sex ceremony (third-base line?), and don’t ordain a person in a same-sex relationship (first-base line?). So perhaps a person in a same-sex marriage could teach Sunday school or usher. In sum, this position paper on Pastoring LGBT Persons devotes four pages out of ninety to actually pastoring LGBT persons, roughly about 4.4% of the paper, or just slightly more space than the Executive Team spends on accusing third-way proponents of being guilty of the ancient heresy of Gnosticism.[vi]

That the paper is not about pastoring is evident in the opening paragraph, since the Executive Team regrets that actual LGBT persons might read this paper on how they, LGBT persons are to be pastored. The Executive Team wants to make it very that the paper was not written for actual LGBT Persons: “We realize that this paper will likely end up in the hands of those for whom it is not intended.”[vii] It may not be the best, when your advice on pastoring a group of people, is not meant to be read by the actual people who are going to be on the receiving end of your pastoring. It is not hard to imagine how a community of people who have not historically been treated/pastored that well by the church (as the paper acknowledges), might be nervous about pastoral advice that the Executive Team laments ending up in their hands. This seems to underscore that the paper is at best only indirectly about pastoring, because I would hope that in general, counsel on pastoring would not need to be hidden from the recipients of the pastoring. If I were a cardiac patient and came across a paper in the waiting room of my Cardiologists office entitled The care of Cardiac Patients, that lamented in the opening paragraph that it might fall into the hands of an actual cardiac patient, I might be nervous about entrusting myself to the care of that Cardiologist.

In short, Pastoring LGBT Persons is not ultimately about pastoring. Instead, Pastoring LGBT Persons is demonstrably about making it clear that Vineyard pastors cannot perform same-sex marriage ceremonies, and that Vineyards cannot ordain people who are in same-sex marriages.

As a Vineyard pastor for close to 14 years, and lead pastor for 7, I was dissatisfied with the foul lines chalked by the Executive team. (Vineyard USA didn’t have a formal policy on this issue until the paper was released). And I was extremely disappointed in the defense of the foul lines articulated in Pastoring LGBT Persons. I was distressed that my denomination put out a ninety page paper entitled Pastoring LGBT Persons which was not about pastoring. I asked my overseers within the Vineyard for an open discussion of the paper and the foul lines. My Regional Leader responded that he believed, “Vineyard's paper is an excellent piece of work, solid and satisfying in its arguments and footnoted explanations,” so there would be little benefit to a discussion. In my upcoming responses I hope to lay out a few areas where I found Pastoring LGBT Persons to be significantly less than an excellent piece of work, and why I found many of the arguments less than solid or satisfying. These will be responses to the reasons that the Executive Team gives for chalking the foul lines. I hope to show that the arguments are actually rather weak. But, for now let me reiterate on last time, that the biggest weakness of Pastoring LGBT persons is that it is not about pastoring.

Finally, I hope it is obvious, but in case it is not, I want to say here that I hope LGBT persons will read this. I would like LGBT persons to know that there were people within the Vineyard who thought differently, from the Executive Team. I hope this small effort will demonstrate that some people saw Pastoring LGBT Persons as something less than an excellent piece of work. Something less than solid and satisfying. Anyone else is welcomed to read as well – there really are no hands for which this is not intended.








[i] Pastoring LGBT Persons p. 10. In footnote 23 the Executive team lists the first five position papers of Vineyard USA which are all a defense of spiritual gifts. “In historical order they are: John Wimber, Why I Respond to Criticism (answering anti-charismatic criticism from
cessationist evangelicals); Jack Deere, The Vineyard’s Response To ‘The Briefing’ (a similar subject); Wayne Grudem,The Vineyard’s Response To ‘The Standard’; Wayne Grudem, Power And Truth: A Response To ‘Power Religion’; and Rich Nathan, A Response To ‘Charismatic Chaos’ (as the previous ones, but the particular book by John MacArthur).These are Position Papers of Vineyard USA.”


[ii] Pastoring LGBT Persons. P. 7-8.


[iii]Ibid. P. 7. The Executive team goes on to talk about how they might talk or write to actual LGBT persons. "If we were speaking directly to the LGBT community, we would address different questions and would prioritize the conversation about what it means to know and follow Jesus as a member of the LGBT community. This paper addresses the hermeneutics used to interpret important biblical texts and also considers the pastoral implications of those texts. If you are not actively following Jesus, or are from the LGBT community, it will be easy for you to misunderstand the thrust of our arguments as they are intended for a different audience.” I actually think the pastoring the Executive team lays out is fairly easy to understand. The chalked foul lines are clear. What is exactly is there to misunderstand? This strikes me as a little condescending towards LGBT persons  - "It's hermeneutics - you won't understand." I think actually that LGBT persons, will have no trouble understanding the pastoring that the Executive team offers – it will be quite familiar.


[iv] And I do think there are significant problems as I hope to make clear, in my responses. A hugely frustrating part for me as a Vineyard pastor was how different this process felt from the path that led to the opening of all levels of leadership within the Vineyard to women. In the opening of all levels of leadership to women there was  call for input from all across the Vineyard and many pastors wrote papers that were publicly available laying out their cases on either side of the argument as best as they could. Within the Great Lakes region there was a public debate that featured two pastors of the region presenting their cases on stage during the regional conference - it was a featured part of the conference. In short that process felt much more open than this process. It felt from my perspective as if there was a fear of pubic dialogue.

[v] Ibid. p. 59. Here is the baseball metaphor: “To use a baseball analogy, Vineyard USA has two clear foul lines regarding our corporate life together: one foul line concerns marriage and the other foul line concerns licensing and ordination. The baseball field that we play on is huge. We permit Vineyard churchesto be positioned on the field in different places. We will not all agree on where those positions are, but we are committed to practice generosity toward one another, so long aswe are on the field of play.


[vi] Ibid. p. 55-59. And by all means read these pages for yourself. If you do, I believe that you will find I have given a fair summary of the pastoring LGBT persons will receive in the Vineyard.


[vii] Ibid. P.6.