Opinion: "What we've got here is a failure to communicate."

 

"What we've got here is a failure to communicate." Cool Hand Luke

That line from the 1967 movie comes back to me when I think about what happened between Cedar Park Church (and Artisan Church) and the B.C. Mennonite Brethren Conference.

When it comes to the subject of LGBTQ+ welcome and inclusion, members of those two churches saw it as a chance for conversation—to discuss what it might mean to welcome and include members of the LGBTQ+ community.

BCMB, on the other hand, appears to have seen it differently. Not as a chance for conversation, but as a cancer in the body that has to be killed as quickly as possible.

To continue the medical analogy, that means bringing out the big guns: Chemotherapy and radiation. Using poison to kill the poison in the body.

Sure, some healthy cells might be damaged or destroyed in the process. But it's worth the cost if the body can be saved.

The result is a failure to communicate. 

One side saw this topic as a chance to talk and explore what new thing God might be saying to the church today. 

The other side saw it as a dangerous, life-threatening cancer that had to be eliminated.

And so we get a meeting like happened at Cedar Park on April 3, with recriminations about false teaching being levelled at the church's former pastor, along with an upset and frustrated congregation—and maybe a frustrated and upset BCMB leadership, too.

Will we ever learn to communicate on this subject? 

Maybe. But it seems to me we first need to agree on how to talk about the topic of LGBTQ+ welcome and inclusion.

Is it a chance for conversation, or a cancer to be killed?

Until that happens, as with Cool Hand Luke, communication will be a failure.