Enough of the LayMAN

Tribal Church asks Is Anyone Else Getting Tired of the Layman?




TC reports on typical tactics of the LayMAN:

A couple years ago, my dear friend Beth Sentell was engineering a merger between two small churches. To do something like that successfully is no small feat. Often one congregation is simply engulfed by another, but she and a neighboring pastor managed to do the delicate work of uniting two congregations without losing anyone along the way.

And then, of course, there was the issue of property. They didn’t need two buildings any longer, so they put the church up for sale. After months, they got an offer–a really good offer–from an Islamic Community Center. They sold the property, and figured that the matter was settled.

It was, until the Layman decided that the good laws that govern our good nation (namely that you can’t discriminate against people on real estate deals on the basis of religion) weren’t good enough.

They wrote a story, misconstruing the facts. Among other things, they wrote that the congregation had turned down solid offers from other churches in order to sell it to the Muslims. Soon after the story ran, an anti-Islamic blog reprinted it. And so now, when someone does a google search on Beth’s name, all of this stuff comes up….

You can count on exposure and mocking of the LayMAN on Shuck and Jive. The LayMAN was responsible for fomenting schism in my previous congregation. An agitating group demanded that the session sign on to the fundamentalist Confessing Church Movement and when the session unanimously voted that it was not interested, the LayMAN got a hold of the congregation's mailing list and turned every church member into an unsolicited subscriber.

This is not an evangelical vs. progressive issue. This is between those who love the PC(USA)--(evangelicals, progressives, and moderates)--against the LayMAN and its ilk who want to foment schism and bring down the PC(USA).

Fight back, beloveds.