CLGS

A pastor shares his thoughts about inclusivity and arrogance in a sermon to his Reconciling Congregation. Perhaps your welcoming church is struggling with the same issue.—Editor (Open ...

I feel strangely at home here at Wesley United Methodist Church (see Source, p. 12). Thirty-eight years ago, while I was a student at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, my wife was pregnant with our first child. Our doctor's office was in the Wesley office building which used to stand next door to this church and we came here regularly for pre–natal care. Our baby boy was duly born at Fairview Hospital, not far from here. Twenty–one years later, he told us he is gay.

In the spring of 1994, my husband Tom and I decided to become therapeutic foster care providers. We had just finished graduate school in rehabilitation counseling. One Sunday, skimming the paper for employment opportunities, I saw an ad that read something like this:

Foster parents needed to provide in–home care to a young man with multiple disabilities. This person will be facing a series of surgeries and will need assistance with independent living skills...

I am an evangelical Christian. I use that word, not in the context of present national political divisions, but in the context of a particular movement in the Protestant Reformation. We evangelicals believe our tradition is firmly rooted in the Bible.

To deal with diversity is to accept an open invitation to be as inclusive as possible in developing welcoming and reconciling communities of faith. To deal with diversity is to enter into covenantal choices that can bind us together as congregations whose confessions, convictions, and commitments honor the differences which enhance us as uniquely Christian human beings.