The Way of Jesus Is The Way of Love and Inclusivity
I think love and inclusivity are the central virtues of Jesus’s kingdom vision. I’ve thought this for quite a while. And it’s a significant reason why I resigned from my post and surrendered my ministry credentials after 10 years as a lead pastor in a conservative evangelical denomination.
I reached a point where I couldn’t be the pastor I believed that God called and gifted me to be, the pastor I wanted to be, and I couldn’t love people — all people — the way I believed Jesus’s central kingdom virtues demanded.
The denomination was fond of saying that we welcomed all people. But we really didn’t. We welcomed them with stipulations and strings attached. We welcomed them if they conformed to our ways of thinking, believing, and behaving. We welcomed them if they would capitulate to “our tribe’s” way of seeing and doing things.
LGBTQ people? Of course, we love the people, but we hate their sin, was the mantra of that denomination. We love the person, many people would say, but we disagree with their lifestyle. And until they got their lives straight, LGBTQ people couldn’t be part of and minister in the congregation in significant ways. As if their sexual orientation is divorced from the image of God in which they were created and their standing before God contingent upon our approval and acceptance.
