“PROGRESSIVE/INCLUSIVE” TENNESSEE EVANGELICAL MEGACHURCH WITHERS AFTER SUPPORTING “GAY MARRIAGE”

 

 

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:

 (Friday Church News Notes, 
December 1, 2017, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) -
 We reported in February 2015 that GracePointe Church near Nashville had
 changed its stance on “gay Christianity.” After country music star 
Carrie Underwood spoke in favor of “gay marriage” in 2012, the pastor 
led the church in a three-year process of “listening on the topic of 
sexual orientation and identity.” Though the matter has been settled in 
Scripture for thousands of years and Bible-believing churches since the 
apostles have universally treated homosexuality as a sin to be repented 
of, the very modern senior pastor Stan Mitchell led GracePointe to 
accept homosexuals into “the full privileges of membership,” including 
“being able to serve in leadership.” Two years later, Out & About Nashville
 reports that GracePointe is a shadow of its former self. Attendance has
 fallen by more than two thirds, from 700-800 to 250, and the church is 
selling its multi-million dollar property. Mitchell told reporter Julie 
Chase, “We need to get being LGBGQI off the sin list, because it’s 
killing kids” (“Stan Mitchell and GracePointe,” O&AN, Sep. 8, 2017).
 No amount of “listening” and cunning exegesis can change the Bible’s 
simple and clear teaching that marriage is limited to one man and one 
woman and that any sexual relationship apart from sacred marriage is sin
 before God. “Marriage is
 honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and 
adulterers God will judge” (Hebrews 13:4). Mitchell frames the issue in 
terms of “love.” If we love the homosexual, we are supposed to 
sympathize with his condition rather than sit in judgment on him. In 
fact, the issue is
 love, but the first direction of our love must be toward God, as per 
His first law (Deuteronomy 6:5), and toward His infallible Word which 
cuts against the grain of this proud generation. Further, the call for 
sinners to repent is the truest definition of love, for this makes it 
possible for them to have a right relationship with God. Mitchell also 
frames the issue in terms of inclusion. He says that “inclusion means 
that we can live together in agreement and disagreement.” That is not 
what Paul taught. “Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord 
Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be 

NO DIVISIONS among you; but that ye be PERFECTLY JOINED TOGETHER 

IN THE SAME MIND and in the same judgment” (1 Cor. 1:10). 

There is no unity in diversity here.

______________________________________________________

 Interview: Evangelical Church Begins 

Accepting LGBT

 GracePointe Church announces 

"full membership" to LGBT members

February 4, 2015 Dialogue – The Church & Full Sacramental LGBT Inclusion from GracePointe Church on Vimeo.
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