By Nate Atwood
TE, Presbytery of the Central Carolinas
For most of us, the question of ordaining a “same sex attracted but celibate” pastor is a theoretical conversation. Not for me. In my 43 years of ministry, three of the four churches I have served have had an SSA pastor. In each instance, though the circumstances vary, each of these pastors would have been ordainable under the second draft of the AIC report. And in each case, though at first their ministries went well, before long the damage was done.
Before I begin, I want to say the stories I’m about to tell have become a matter of public record, or the people directly involved have gone home to be with the Lord. I also want to say that though the pastors involved struggled with SSA, each had many admirable qualities and formidable gifts.
My first story comes from my seminary days, serving as a pastoral intern. While excited to serve at this particular church, over time I began to sense that there was an undefined inner tension in the church. Increasingly, I realized that the center of this tension was the senior pastor himself. I began to wonder if he struggled with homosexuality. Despite my personal concerns, my wife and I were stunned when the senior pastor’s wife later approached us, asking if we thought he was a homosexual. Her suspicions were later confirmed. In retrospect, I do not believe he ever acted out his SSA and yet the church could never really flourish. His private struggles shaped the landscape around us. Though many fine people — including the senior pastor himself — worked hard, we never truly entered into the renewal we all sought.
I was then blessed to spend eight years at St. Giles, where Percy Burns and his wife, Sara Jo, were a model we could all look to. We took it for granted, of course, but in retrospect I see the strength we all drew from their ongoing love story. Biblical marriage and family were front and center at St. Giles because the senior pastor and his wife lived it … from the heart. How important is family to the Church? Read the Bible.
My next journey into the world of SSA pastors followed my years at St. Giles. I succeeded a senior pastor who later described himself as “SSA but celibate” although only more senior members of church leadership knew this. Despite the attempt at discretion, people increasingly became uneasy about his friendships with some men. Perhaps even more damaging, was that he and his wife were incapable of freely living out the kind of love story St. Giles witnessed in Percy and Sara Jo. How can you teach what you do not live and cannot model? While we tend to think that it’s the presence of sin which is most damaging to a congregation, even more damage can be done by the absence of truth. Because there was no clear teaching or example, family began to suffer in this church. Both divorce and sexual immorality crept into too many lives. When Helen and I arrived at this church, the hunger to reset the table with regard to marriage, family, and holiness was palpable. As we partnered with the Session and many wonderful church members, the church genuinely entered into revival. Those were remarkable years.
I was then called as senior pastor to a church which, in the previous decade, had lived through the trauma of their senior pastor being caught in a homosexual affair with a man in the congregation. For years he had kept his SSA under wraps and so would have met with the ordination standard proposed by the AIC. Finally, he did so no longer. It is a tribute to the Lord and His people that the church survived.
What Helen and I learned after we arrived was that despite the years that had passed — and fine pastoral leadership in the interim — the hurt and confusion still lingered. While any church can suffer from hurting marriages and broken families, we saw far too much of this. It quickly became clear that the church as a whole and under the heading of “compassion” had lowered Biblical standards. We were further dismayed when we found both unbiblical remarriage and sexual immorality among those in leadership positions. No wonder grace had become “cheap grace.”
At times I felt a bit like a visitor to Hiroshima weeks after the atomic explosion. The “blast” had happened years ago when the SSA senior pastor crossed the line, but the ongoing “radiation” of disappointment, distrust, and moral compromise hung in the air. As in my previous church, it was an honor to work with many fine elders and congregants to rebuild family, holiness, and grace that not only forgives our sin but changes our lives. Once again, God was good to all of us.
In each of these situations — the good as well as the bad — I believe the Lord gave me a unique vantage point on the ordination requirements of Scripture. I read the presumed heterosexuality of “husband of one wife” (1 Timothy 3:2) with a deepened sensitivity to what happens when this obvious standard is ignored. Friends, let me be blunt. It doesn’t work. In my experience, ordaining those who have an ongoing struggle with SSA leads to inevitable congregational damage, disappointment, and distrust.
When I read the various documents generated by the AIC, their concern for those who struggle with SSA is obvious. I appreciate the pastoral heart. However, when it comes to ordination, isn’t our first responsibility to the health of those churches we help to oversee? Don’t we all know that healthy churches depend in no small part on healthy marriages, most especially for those ordained? If we don’t know that, shouldn’t we? When I began my ministry, I had no idea the Lord would place me in so many churches where there had been an SSA pastor. Take it from a veteran of many campaigns, those who struggle with SSA and who seek repentance must certainly be welcomed in our pews. But they don’t belong in our pulpits or serving on our Sessions.
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