Southminster Played A Part in the Marriage Equality Amendment

The late Robert Funk, the bad boy of the Jesus Seminar, had a great quote regarding leadership.   He said that leadership is finding a parade and getting in front of it.   While my picture is in the paper, the good folks at Southminster helped get this parade going!

To be clear, Southminster did not draft the language that was adopted by General Assembly.  Southminster's session (board of elders) had approved a resolution that was created in its Sunday Starter group.    The session then reached out to advocacy groups and adopted language another group had created so that there would be a unified effort.  Since the language was similar to its initial resolution, the session sent this new adopted language to Cascades Presbytery.  Many sessions across the country sent similar resolutions to their presbyteries.   Cascades Presbytery was first to meet, thus the overture came from Cascades and 16 other presbyteries concurred.   It is a testimony to collective, collaborative effort across the country.

Here is the story in the Portland Tribune.

Laura Chapman, 18,...has attended Southminster since she was in elementary school and recently graduated from Tigard High School.

While she wasn’t part of the group that drafted the original resolution, she got involved at church and attended last year’s General Assembly, where she shared her views with smaller groups. She said her interest in gender equality in the church stems partly from being bisexual.

“I feel like it’s important for our church to move forward on this issue and become more inclusive,” Chapman, now a freshman at Oregon State University, said by telephone.

“I feel that God views marriage more about love and less about the specifics of the people,” she said. “This was really personal for me, so that’s why I chose to speak up about it.”