I think I am a lot more comfortable with this one…

Once there is a relationship with some trust established, I feel a lot more comfortable having a serious and honest dialogue. I am less worried about hurting someone or being misunderstood, because they are willing to listen longer to where I am trying to go before writing me off. At the end of the day, it may not be resolved the way either of us might hope, but a relationship can be maintained if it can be begun…

I had a friend a while ago who was deeply involved (with her partner) in an emergent community. She was always open and honest about her partner, about their relationship… it took a couple of years for the pastor to say something. By that time she’d been teaching kids, doing music ministry, writing, evangelizing…

Her essential reaction was “I was good enough to do all that work when there was no one else to do it. But now we’ve grown big enough so they don’t need me…”

The second question (after “What to do for Gay Pride day?”) is “What to do when I do preach that sermon and someone says, ‘But Pastor, I’m gay…’?”)

I am wholeheartedly with you on this point…

…but there is a long history of animosity between the church and the homosexual community that colors this in deep shades. In my experience, very few gay women or men would show up to a religious event without asking the question.

As a pastor, this puts me in the position of doing what we both agree shouldn’t be done, namely, putting a persons sins on the table at our very first meeting…

I wish we could begin a relationship first, and then use that relationship as a safe and stable basis for discipleship unto Christ. But, it seems (and I certainly can’t lay blame at any door other than the church for this!) that gay women and men want to use the answer to that question as a basis for entering into discipleship and/or relationship in the first place…

I suppose we must change from a ‘come and see’ approach to a ‘go and show’ approach. Instead of hoping, praying, and inviting people into buildings, we should go to the highways and byways beginning loving relationships. If the church can go and bless the people outside of it, right where they are, do you think we might earn the right to speak to our culture on behalf of God, even if that message has implications for sexual desire and practice?

How would your Antiochan colleague rate this as “ick-factor”? And in the Bible, no less.

I received this email from a reader – well known to me – who asked that their name not be shared. But I think the point is very valid:

I started to read the review, as is my wont, but I stopped dead after the first block quote, and could not continue. Why? you might ask. I’ll tell you, in the form of a rant aimed at Sara Miles:

For the umpteenth fucking time, people, Jesus did not fucking roam through fucking Palestine. I’m sorry you are so hung up on your politics that you can’t help but spew this anachronistic nonsense, but it ruins your credibility and identifies you as a total asshole in the eyes of anyone who gives a shit about what Jesus of Nazareth may actually have said and done (that is, not the “Jesus of faith”). If your fantasy Jesus is a modern-day Palestinian Arab projected backward, fine, God bless. But just admit up front that you don’t give a flying rat’s ass about who your savior was on Earth — which, imho, makes your notion of who he is in heaven more than a little suspect. And while you’re at it, admit that it may be just a tad anti-Semitic to refuse to call your Jesus a Jew who roamed Galilee and Judea, with a stopover in Samaria. Like it says in — oh, I don’t know — the friggin’ TEXT.

P.S.: Your “Jesus was a Palestinian” bumper sticker is equally moronic, making my head explode as a historian, if not as a moderately well-read amateur theologian.