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| United Church delegates from across Ontario gather in Port Elgin. ~~ Saugeen Times Photo |
This past weekend for instance, the Unifor Center in Port Elgin (Saugeen Shores) was the site of a unique first for the United Church of Canada. Approximately 550 delegates from across Ontario attended the inaugural meeting of a major restructuring of the church. The southwestern Ontario region has been re-formed into three regions: Antler River Watershed (Region 7), Western Ontario Waterways (Region 8) and Horseshoe Falls (Region 9).
While it was a busy weekend for delegates, among the highlights was guest speaker Rev. Cameron Trimble, a serial entrepreneur committed to the triple bottom line -- a concern for people, profit and the planet. Driven by an adventurous spirit, she runs businesses and NGO organizations, both secular and faith-based. She serves as a consultant, a frequent guest on national speaking circuits, is a pilot and an author.
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| Rev. Cameron Trimble |
Cameron currently serves as the Executive Director of Stop the Traffik USA, an NGO focused on putting an end to human trafficking around the world through the use of technology-driven intelligence-led prevention. STT works in partnership with IBM, Barclays, Facebook, the Financial Times and many others to develop the tools to identify and disrupt human trafficking networks. She is the CEO of Convergence and the Center for Progressive Renewal, an international non-profit made up of subsidiary companies and organizations. She is the Co-Founder of Skycross Media, a for-profit venture that provides online solutions for organizations doing good in the world. She is also a partner in Trimble Properties, a real estate company dedicated to housing vulnerable people in the Atlanta area.
A petite and animated young woman, Cameron is particularly focused on the empowerment of women, people of color and LGBTQ (Gay-Lesbian community) people in leadership. Her coaching clients are primarily executive leaders going through dynamic culture transformations. Diversity, she believes, is the source of lasting innovation and the driver of fair profit. Becoming a pilot at a young age, Cameron learned many of her leadership lessons through the adventures of the cockpit of her airplane. She has also served as the pastor of four congregations in the Atlanta, GA area.
With humour but blunt dialogue, she focused on the ‘shared common vision’ that the United Church should now be considering. “You need to work together to hold the scale of vision through trust,” she said. “There are two kinds of trust – earned and granted. The church today faces the challenge of creating in a new unchartered territory. A congregation is a community as a whole and also individual communities (opinions).”
When it comes to disruptive people within a congregation, Trimble was adamant. “You have to ask them to leave. It’s nothing personal but you can say … ‘this is not the church for you’. If you don’t establish a culture and react to maintain it, then you lose credibility.” Now, there's a controversial challenge if there ever was one...In other words, get on side or get out!
There is no doubt, according to many clergy in attendance, that the United Church is undergoing major changes and ones that congregations may find difficult to accept.
PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN AN ACTS 11 MOMENT
And, coincidentally, on the same weekend Rev. Randy Benson, in a sermon to the small congregation at St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Southampton (Saugeen Shores) was more blunt and specific.
"...Looking at a more contemporary situation, our denomination now finds itself in what I am convicted to believe is an Acts 11 moment. Our denomination has a binding and losing decision to make. For the past few decades God has been including people into the Body of Christ whom many believe to be unclean...and yes, I am referring to that pesky sexuality and gender matter that we stand divided on. General Assembly is coming up in two weeks and the matter will again be on the table. I, being your dutiful minister, must brief you on what is happening so that you won’t be caught unawares if the PCC (Presbyterian Church in Canada) should make the national news at some point during the first week of June," Benson explained.
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| Rev. Randy Benson |
"This is a difficult topic, this deciding who is included, who is acceptable, who is clean in God’s eyes. I’ve often heard ministers preach that when Jesus was crucified, He was nailed to the cross in such a way that his arms were wide open in love to all. Yet, when it comes to us, His disciples, we seem to have our arms crossed in judgement. But, you know, we should be careful when we construct boundaries around the love of God because it makes Jesus’ arms look crossed in judgement."
Benson went on to point out that sometimes God, through the powerful workings of the Holy Spirit, gets out in front of us and does things that challenge us and doing so He leads us to accept those whom we believe we have a Scriptural basis to consider unclean. "When God does this we have a choice: either to continue to exclude them and hinder what God himself has done, or to take a deep hard look at our own spiritual state and, considering the grace God has shown us each, humbly acknowledge as Peter did, 'Who am I, who am I, to hinder God?'
"As a matter of background, the current stance of our denomination is that we recognize that homosexuals and people who are differently gendered are the way they are because they were born that way not that because (and excuse my crassness) they made some “perverted” decision to “swing the other way.” To take this stance is to say we understand that God formed them in the womb to be the way they are just as he formed each of us to have the sexual identities that we each have. We have welcomed the work of some very sound science to come to this conclusion.
"This is also to acknowledge that nearly all of these folks have suffered greatly for simply being who they are. Historically, the Church hasn’t helped them much at all. Rather, we’ve called them an abomination to God and contributed to acts of violence against them. Our denomination has repented of these hate crimes and has vowed to discontinue and counter any practice that might continue this violence. It is the stance of the PCC that we want our churches to be safe places for people who are not heterosexual.
"Furthermore, it is our denomination’s practice that in acknowledgement of the presence of the Holy Spirit in the lives of these folks we welcome these folks into the membership of our churches hoping they will find the love of Christ embodied in us and be accepted as they are. Moreover, they are welcome to serve in any ministry in the church even as elders and even ministers provided they stay celibate. Yes, homosexuals can be ministers in the PCC provided they stay single. For us to have this practice means that we recognize that the Holy Spirit is at work in these folks just as he is in us. Therefore, we must listen as did Peter to the voice in his vision that told him not once but three times, 'Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.'"
Benson added: "Presently, the matter that we continue to wrestle with as a denomination is what we call 'full inclusion'. This involves permitting or prohibiting homosexual marriage and permitting or prohibiting married homosexuals to serve as Ministers of Word and Sacrament. To do this we must change our definition of marriage. “Full inclusion” is on the table because we need to discern whether or not our current stance of being welcoming as long as they are not practicing is an insult to their basic human dignity and right to be in a fulfilling relationship."
He suggested that this matter has proven immensely divisive and threatens the very survival of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. from a Holier Last year’s PCC General Assembly formed a special committee consisting of former Moderators of the General Assembly and charged them with the task of trying to find a way to go forward. The report came out Tuesday (May 21) with four options which are: change nothing; full inclusion; create three sub-denominations under the one big denomination; or, let ministers, sessions, and congregations do what they want.
"Well, back to the council of Apostles in Jerusalem, and to Peter, and to the point I wish to make," Benson concluded: "Sometimes God, through the powerful workings of the Holy Spirit, gets out in front of us and leads us to accept those whom we believe we have a Scriptural basis to consider unclean. When God does this we have a choice either to continue to exclude those whom God has included and hinder what God himself has done or take a deep hard look at our own spiritual state and, considering the grace God has shown us each, humbly acknowledge as Peter did, “Who am I, who am I, to hinder God?” And maybe we should take a page out of Peter’s playbook and just spend time eating with and getting to know those whom we regard as uncomfortably different from ourselves. Amen."
Indeed, big changes and much soul-searching in the days ahead for members of protestant churches in Canada...Some communicants will go with the flow of the current while others are sure to bail out, if they haven't already! Still others may be asked to leave if they are "disruptive" and deemed to be making waves.
The old church vessel, she is a listing in churning waters
Personally, I float in a life raft with the possibilty of never coming ashore again. If I can't swim, perhaps I'm better off sinking anyway. A fellow can get to that point in life!
Is it just me, but wasn't doing church a lot easier when one could cast an insular, sanctimonious eye from our holier-than-thou comfortable pews?
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