And one more thing

I can't help thinking that what was missed in the long and difficult discussions about LGBTQ+ issues at the Synod was one salient fact about life at the Neland Avenue church: at Neland, not everyone believed or believes that electing a deacon married to another woman was or is a good idea. It's not as if the entire church went gangbusters toward her ordination; the move had, and still has, I'm told, its nay-sayers. Some members may be more happy today than they were at any time since the deacon in question was elected.

And it's probably equally important to know that at Neland, elections for church office are still done by the congregation. No names in a hat or a collection plate or in an old sock from years past, the congregation elects office-bearers with their vote. It's quite old-fashioned. Most churches are happy to let God or the luck-of-the-draw do the discriminating.

What the facts thus illustrate is that Neland Avenue is struggling with an issue that has split just about every other ecclesiastical body in America, save those who don't have any queer people, which quells dissent, of course, and makes life much simpler and easier, if ease is the way of the church.

Neland Avenue shares membership in the denomination with every other congregation represented at Synod. But they're also, like every other church, trying to figure out how to work through the problems our changing culture has put front-and-center. It's becoming difficult to remember that as late as 2008, Barack Obama said he was decidedly against gay marriage. Change is in the nature of things. I feel sorry for the good CRCs of Colorado, who would have to question whether or not they could countenance their governor, should he profess his faith, as a member. 

That the good people of Neland, both for and against single-sex marriage individuals serving in church office, could and do stay in the pew together is, it would seem to me, a goal worth striving for, not a situation to be damned.

Somewhere through their deliberations, the 2022 Synod determined that a new concept should capture our churches, something called "radical hospitality." On the floor of synod it became a much-beloved buzzword. I suppose I shouldn't venture an opinion on a definition I wasn't there to hear, but I can't imagine that, with respect to the means by which our churches deal with LGBTQ+ issues, "radical hospitality" couldn't be more clearly illustrated than the way it is every Sunday at Neland Avenue CRC.

Neland has its struggles with the issue, and those struggles go on. What they're doing is "radical hospitality," doing something no one else does and trying to understand if what they've done is blessed. 

The Synod said nope, not allowed.

I can't bring myself to believe that Neland won't forsake trying to be hospitable radically, after the pattern of none other than the Jesus they worship.