Fall Canadian Mennonite Brethren conference to feature plenary session on biblical ethic of sexuality, birth sex, and gender identity

“Fire and Ashes: Why Church? Why MB?” is the title of the Oct. 26-28 Equip conference being put on by the Canadian Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches (CCMBC). 

The event will feature a number of plenary sessions, including one titled “Why the Church needs a biblical ethic of sexuality, birth sex, and gender identity” with speaker Iain Provan of The Cuckoos Consultancy. 

“For many, sexuality and gender questions are at the forefront of whether participation with church itself (or an MB church in particular) is worth the effort,” according to the plenary’s description. “How should the church respond to the highly esteemed cultural values of justice and inclusion embraced almost universally in our world?”

Provan, who formerly was a professor of biblical studies at Regent College in Vancouver, founded The Cuckoos Consultancy in 2022. Its goal is to equip Christians “to recognize the non-Christian roots of the powerful, competing ideas of ‘the human’ that they encounter every day and to have the courage to reject them.”

Why that name? According to Provan, it comes from the behaviour of the European cuckoo, a bird that does not raise its own young. 

Instead, it sneaks into another bird’s nest and deposits an egg that looks very much like the host’s eggs. The host goes on to raise the cuckoo chick believing that it is one of its own.

“Unfortunately, the cuckoo is, from the moment of birth, an assassin. It goes around systematically pushing any other eggs or chicks out of the nest. It grows as a consequence to two or three times the size of the original chicks. In all of this the cuckoo is a superb master of misdirection.”

For Provan, who attends an MB church in Vancouver, “unbiblical anthropological ideas are like cuckoo chicks in the Christian nest. They have been smuggled into it by birds whose natural habitat is elsewhere. They are foreign bodies in our nest, and they are a threat to the survival of the family. They can ‘misdirect’ us to our doom, such that the Church is no longer really the Church.”

Provan also has published a book on this topic, titled Cuckoos In Our Nest: Truth and Lies About Being Human.

I asked Ken Esau, National Faith and Life Team director, some questions about the plenary session.

Why did you decide to offer this plenary session? 

Mostly because this topic has become so important in our CCMBC family. Churches have been asking for resources to assist them as they navigate these questions.

How do you choose the plenary speakers? (Originally I asked Ken why someone who was not MB was selected, since I saw nothing in Provan's bio suggested otherwise. He responded to that question.)

The Equip conferences have not chosen plenary speakers firstly based on their affiliation with our MB church family—so membership was not our primary concern this year either. However, all of our Plenary speakers (and all of our Workshop presenters) are either members of or attenders of an MB church. I don't think this has happened in any recent Equip conference. As noted in the advertising, we are trying to make this year's event more of an MB family conversation—which also means that we will be holding three Table Discussion Group sessions.

Are you worried that his metaphor about the Cuckoo bird—killing the other birds in the nest—might feel unwelcome and offensive to MBs who want to see the denomination become more open to LGBTQ+ people? (Comparing them to baby killers and nest destroyers.) 

Iain's book is not comparing people to baby killers and nest destroyers, but describing how widespread cultural ideas are sneaking into the nest of Christian faith communities that have been orthodox in their histories. 

Any speaker addressing the topic of sexuality and/or gender from one perspective or another will result in someone in our family feeling unwelcome and the presentation experienced as offensive.  There is no neutral ground to stand on that will be inoffensive to all. 

CCMBC's Collaborative Unified Strategic Plan expresses that CCMBC leaders will plan and make all of our decisions in order to keep with our seven key values. This means that we will "weigh all our decisions in light of scripture, theology, and the MB Confession of Faith" (CUSP, p.7). These seven values and the commitments that grow out of them are guiding our planning for Equip 2023.

Will you provide opportunity for people who hold a different view to speak on this topic? Or respond to the speaker?

There will be Table Discussion Group time first thing on Friday morning for participants to respond to Iain's presentation. We hope to collect responses electronically. 

What do you hope to achieve by holding this session?

Everything about Equip and all of our NFLT (and CCMBC) activities are geared toward moving our churches closer to our mission: "To cultivate a community and culture of healthy disciple-making churches and ministries, faithfully joining Jesus in his mission." 

That mission statement is how we will measure the effectiveness of all of our Equip sessions—including this one. 

"Love Beyond Belief" is the guiding principle for Southridge Community Church

It’s been six months since Southridge Community Church in St. Catharines, Ont. was expelled from the Ontario Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches over its stance on welcoming and affirming LGBTQ+ people and same-sex marriage. 

Since I had done a follow up with Estuary Church, formerly Cedar Park, about how they were doing after leaving the British Columbia Mennonite Brethren Conference, I thought I would check in with Southridge pastor Jeff Lockyer to see about an update. 

“Nothing much to report on our end,” he replied. “We enjoyed a terrific ‘Love Beyond Belief’ celebration service the Sunday after our denominational expulsion, being able to fully and equally include followers of Jesus who hold both convictions on the biblical definition of marriage.” 

Since then, he said, “things have been rather quiet on that front, allowing us to stay focused on embodying Jesus and incarnating His love to a greater degree.” 

“Love Beyond Belief?” I was intrigued. What was that all about? How did they arrive at it? And how has the congregation responded? So I asked Jeff. In reply, he pointed me to a message he gave in February 2023 on this topic. A summary of that message is below. 

In the message, Lockyer began by telling the story of Tony and Michelle, a couple who used to attend another church before coming to Southridge. 

At their previous church, the two were required to sign a statement of beliefs in order to be part of the congregation. 

One of those beliefs was a statement opposed to same-sex marriage. Tony and Michelle couldn’t sign it—their son is gay. 

When they came to Southridge to inquire about being part of that church, Lockyer told them there were members who also believed in a traditional definition of marriage along with those who had an affirming view. 

But that was OK, he said, because the church had worked to create space for both points of view through its approach of “love beyond belief.” 

The two circles were distinct, but through that approach overlapped to stay together.  

That, Lockyer said, “represents the journey our community is on . . . people who hold both views are one family.” Tony and Michelle were invited to be part of it—an invitation they accepted. 

Southridge’s journey goes back early to mid 2000s, Lockyer went on to say. 

We had a problem to solve . . . the negative impact the Christian faith and their own church had, and was having, on LGBTQ+ people

“We had a problem to solve,” he said. That problem was the negative impact the Christian faith and their own church had, and was having, on LGBTQ+ people. 

That impact, he said, was different from the impact “Jesus had on people when he walked the earth.” 

The church committed itself to solve that problem by bridging what it called “the impact gap” between who Christ was and how the Christian faith was experienced by LGBTQ+ people. 

But soon the church realized it had another problem: The  radioactive division that came with trying to talk about these issues among Christians

That seemed all fine and good. But soon the church realized it had another problem on its hands: “The intensity of polarization and the radioactive division that came with trying to talk about these issues among Christians,” as Lockyer put it. 

Christians, he said, were “harshly divided” about this matter, a division that seemed insurmountable. 

“We wondered how God would be able to neutralize these divisions to create a safety of space that we could see the impact on LGBTQ+ people changed,” he said. 

That’s when God directed them to passages in scripture they had not paid much attention to, he said. 

It’s in the book of Romans, in chapter 14, where Paul addresses an issue dividing the church in Rome: Whether it was acceptable to eat meat offered to idols and whether it was OK not to observe the sabbath. 

Those two issues were tearing the church apart. 

Eating meat offered to idols and keeping the sabbath were tearing the church apart. Paul called these disputable matters

Paul’s response was to call them “disputable matters,” not foundational to whether or not someone was following Christ, Lockyer said. 

Paul, he said, was trying to bring together these two independent circles so they could “co-exist as people of diverse convictions in the same community.” 

Paul did not say that people on both sides have to give up their convictions,  Lockyer noted. In fact, he urged them to continue to hold them.  

But he also said one other thing: While it was OK for them to hold their positions for and against eating meat offered to idols and observing or not observing the sabbath, they should not judge those who don’t hold the same convictions. 

“Your job is not to force them on other people, and not judge other people who hold different convictions than yours,” Lockyer said, interpreting Paul. 

“Be a bridge builder, pursue oneness . . . Let us make every effort to do what leads to peace and mutual edification. Don’t destroy the work of God for the sake of food.” 

Those passages in Romans opened up a new way for Southridge to view same-sex marriage

Those passages opened up a new way for Southridge to view the topic of same-sex marriage, Lockyer said. “We see it as a disputable matter,” he said, adding the goal is to “build a bridge of love and oneness” between the perspectives. 

Ah, but that’s the challenge. What for some might be seen as disputable is, for others, a matter of absolute bedrock Christian faith. Not disputable at all, in other words. 

For Lockyer, the answer to that is in the foundation of Christian faith going back to the Reformation. “Our belief is in grace and faith alone, in Christ alone,” he said. “Anything added to that dilutes the purity and simplicity of the message and person of Christ.” 

Southridge also found support in Matthew 22, where the religious rulers of Jesus’ day tried to trip him up by asking what would happen to a woman who married seven times—whose husband would she be in the afterlife? 

Jesus, he said, refused to be backed into a corner. In eternity, Jesus said, people will not be married or given in marriage. 

If marriage wasn't a big deal to Jesus in his reply to the religious rulers, why are Christians today making it a bigger deal?

Or, as Lockyer put it, if it wasn’t a big deal to Jesus, “we wondered if we were making a bigger deal” of marriage than Jesus intended. “It was not essential or eternal.” 

That, he concluded, is the “journey God had us on . . . this is the way we feel we want to be as a community. This is the disputable matters framework. We want to live in peace, not judge each other. It is love beyond belief.” 

That doesn’t mean it’s been easy, he said. But it is doable. “People are not asked to change their views, but they are asked to develop a spirit to live in unity and harmony with people of different views.” 

That goes for people on both sides, both traditional and affirming views of marriage, he said, adding “we feel we have neutralized that polarization in our church by inviting people from both views to a safe environment.” 

For Lockyer, God has led Southridge to a place where they are “one community united around ‘love beyond belief.’” 

Read more posts on this blog about Southridge here.

Role of LGBTQ+ in causing people to leave their faith groups: New research

Why do people leave their religious tradition? A recent study by the Public Religion Research Institute in the U.S. has some answers.

 

The number one reason for leaving, according to the research, is because people stop believing what their faith group teaches (56%).

 

The number two reason? The negative way a group teaches about and treats LGBTQ+ people. (30%)

 

Other reasons for leaving included scandals involving religious leaders or divides caused by politics.

 

For those who left evangelicalism, the number one reason for leaving was they stopped believing what their churches taught. Negative attitudes towards LGBTQ+ people was number two, prompting 45% to leave.

 

The research did not break those findings down by age. But one area where it did include an age range was about whether LGBTQ+ people should be welcomed into church leadership.

It found that younger people (ages 18-29) are most likely to express a desire for more LGBTQ church leaders (33%), compared to 22% of churchgoers ages 30–49, 21% of churchgoers ages 50–64, and 17% of churchgoers age 65 and over. 

It also found that younger churchgoers 18–29 are more likely (30%) to say they wished their church talked more about transgender rights than those ages 30–49 (18%), 50–64 (15%), and 65 and over (14%). 

Another study, done by Brandon Flannery and reported in Baptist News Global in 2022, found similar results.

 

According to Flannery, negative attitudes towards LGBTQ+ caused almost 28% of Christians to walk away from their church. 

He acknowledged some of his respondents were queer, and not being accepted by their congregations was a critical motive for leaving. 

But there were also straight and cisgender people who responded, “and they ultimately started doubting Christianity when they were told they couldn’t support their queer friends and family. Unable to rectify their love of LGBTQ people with the church, they chose LGBTQ acceptance,” he said. 

“The first thing was noticing how what Christians preached/practiced didn’t seem to align with that I knew to be the character of God, including views on the LGBTQ community, immigration, adoption, mental health issues, ‘mission work,’ and just general treatment of others.”