April 29, 2006

Ecumenism or Sheep Stealing?

The recent television commercials by a variety of churches and cults all say, "come to our church where you will be accepted and be a part of a real faith community." The commercials recently released by the United Church of Christ reveal just how desperate these dying churches are for persons to warm their pews. Their motto is: "The United Church of Christ seeks to be Multiracial Multicultural, Open and Affirming, and Accessible to All - A Church where everyone is welcome!" In the commercial, a variety of people sitting in the pews get ejected up and out, including two gay men snuggling together. The UCC’s definition of "Open and Affirming (OAA)" means "it has publicly declared that ‘gay, lesbian, bisexual’ (GLB) people or those of all ‘sexual orientations’ are welcome in its full life and ministry; e.g. membership, leadership, employment etc."

The words "Open and Affirming" mentioned on UCC’s website links to a website sponsored by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. The program is called "Shower of Stoles" which "is a collection of over a thousand liturgical stoles and other sacred items from gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons from twenty-six denominations in six countries. Each stole contains the story of a GLBT person who is active in the life and leadership of their faith community in some way: minister, elder, deacon, teacher, missionary, musician, administrator or active layperson." The page has listings of OAA churches around the world so that GLB people can find a congregation that doesn’t expect them to reject their sinful lifestyles in order to be accepted in the "faith community." These include congregations from just about all the Protestant churches such as Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Baptist, Disciples of Christ, Mennonite, Quaker, Church of the Brethren, and a host of newer churches like the Metropolitan Community Church. 

So as the Protestant churches place ads to get others in the faith community to join their group, the Catholics are working overtime to bring former Catholics back to fill their own dwindling pews. During a recent visit to a Marian shrine in Santa Clara, I bought some Catholic tracts at the parish gift shop. One was fashioned after David Letterman’s "Top Ten" list that counts down from the tenth to the number one response. Here is the tract’s list without the elaboration they included under each heading. My counter-list is next to theirs.

In a time of growing apostasy in the church of Jesus Christ, it is so important for the believer to know what the Bible teaches and to test all things, holding fast that which is true. Those coming after our souls are getting more and more clever at finding ways to direct us away from the foundation of the Word of God and get us to conform to this world’s programs under the banner of "liberty," "tolerance" and "love". We must hold fast our confession until He comes for us.

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