Like Advent, Christmas, Lent and Easter, Thanksgiving offers an important rhythm in our year to practice something essential to human happiness - in Thanksgiving's case, gratitude!
Back in 1971, about 300 young adults and their babies left the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco in brightly colored old school buses and tie-dyed shirts. They crisscrossed the country looking for a perfect place to create a utopian community. Five months later they landed in Summertown, Tennessee, the poorest county in the state. These young adults called their experiment in communal living simply “The Farm.” They jokingly referred to themselves as the “Technicolor Amish.”
Rita nervously sat down in my office. Because counseling is not my ministry, I had tried to steer her to one of our staff counselors or her small group leader. But she insisted on seeing me and promised that her appointment would not take long. Prior to her visit, I had had just a few superficial conversations with Rita; conversations that I considered friendly, and in no way confrontational.
There has been a spate of stories over the past month or so about same-sex relationships. President Obama endorsed same-sex marriage, but chose to leave proposed legislation to the states. A Federal Court of Appeals recently struck down the Defense of Marriage Act. The Defense Department chose to join with many cities and states in celebrating June as Gay Pride Month. The California State Legislature is considering a first-of-its-kind ban on reparative therapy (therapy intended to heal same-sex attraction). And Psychiatry giant, Robert Spitzer, considered by some to be a father of modern psychiatry apologized for his prior support of reparative therapy.
Last month President Obama announced his support for same-sex marriage. Since then there has been a massive worldwide discussion about the legitimacy of same-sex marriage. People both within and without the Christian church have asked: What is the church’s position concerning same-sex marriage?
Ever since President Obama revealed his (unsurprising) view that same-sex couples ought to be allowed to marry in the United States, everyone not only in America, but around the world has been thinking about gay marriage. One of the statements that I’ve repeatedly heard over the last month is that gay marriage is the greatest threat to Christian marriage.
A few weeks ago, President Obama announced his unqualified support for gay marriage. Immediately following the President's statement, the NAACP Board with nearly unanimous support, passed a resolution supporting gay marriage as a civil right. Interestingly, the President’s declaration came a day after North Carolina voters overwhelmingly approved a state constitutional ban on gay marriages by a vote of 60-40 percent. In fact, whenever the issue of gay marriage has been voted on by the public, it has been rejected. And there is greater opposition among black Democrats than white Democrats to the President’s decision. 61% of white Democrats supported legalizing marriage for same-sex couples, compared with 36% of black Democrats. 35% of black Democrats opposed any legal recognition, compared with just 18% of white Democrats.
Vineyard Columbus is part of a larger association of churches known as Vineyard: A Community of Churches which is comprised of approximately 550 churches in the United States. This past year, the leaders of the Vineyard movement put forth an audacious goal: to plant 750 new Vineyard churches in the next decade. This goal means that the Vineyard movement is seeking to more than double the number of Vineyard churches in the U.S. by the year 2022.
Week after week for the past 25 years, I have stood before the church, opened up the Bible, explained the meaning of the text, and then, have attempted to press home the message to my hearers. Often, I extend an invitation to receive the benefits of Christ’s saving work in their lives. When I invite people to come to Christ, I do so knowing some basic things about people.
About twenty-five years ago I had a series of vivid dreams one evening in which I was preaching at our church to an obviously racially mixed audience. In the dream I became extremely joyful. The Lord repeated that dream to me several times that evening.