@ Sea With Justin Mcroberts

In the introduction to last week’s episode, I mentioned that in the years I spent as a pastor in an evangelical setting, the conversation about the place of LGBTQ folks in a local church was a regular and often difficult one. That the Biblical image I kept coming back to was of Moses and his people stuck between the uncrossable waters in front of them and the violent forces behind them. The tensions felt are often theological and institutional. But the cost, the main cost, was and is personal. Yes, I saw pastors lose their jobs and I saw a flood of people leave congregations they loved or stay in congregations in which they felt deep sadness and stress. I lost friends, too. And because that cost was and is so personal, my thoughts and feelings about what’s at hand in this conversation started to evolve and change and, in some way, clarify. Are there institutional and theological steps to be taken and moves to be made? Yes? But I’ve never felt it was an agreement that was what actually held healthy communities