Association of Vineyard Churches, AKA, Vineyard Movement, homophobia.
Yes, it is another denomination post as a reference post to be used in the reporting on the Dallas Morning News and their promotion of homophobes. Seems to be practicing the New Homophobia.
Subscriptions are free.
Some of the material about there homophobia could only be found at the Internet archive. Always save links to the Internet Archive. Instructions on the Archive at the end of this post.
The New Homophobia of the Association of Vineyard Churches.
A lot of stuff has been pulled offline. If it wasn’t for the Internet Archive and the sloppiness of their member churches their homophobia would have been successfully hidden.
On their webpage you won’t find anything about their homophobic beliefs.
For as much as you can or can’t trust Wikipedia, I found this one statement very interesting about the Association of Vineyard Churches.
In the section on Doctrinal statements this is what Wikipedia has to say.
For most of the early life of the Vineyard Movement, Vineyard churches had no official statement of faith. This is not to be interpreted as an absence of a common belief structure; rather, the primary reasons for the absence of such a declaration were:
the demonstrative teaching of John Wimber, who effectively set the tone and doctrinal beliefs of the movement
a desire to reflect the "low-key," "low-pressure" environment of the church that encouraged people to "come as you are"[Boldface added.]
specifically, de-emphasizing any atmosphere or actions that could be considered overtly dogmatic. [Boldface added.]
Basically lure people in without scaring them away with your beliefs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Vineyard_Churches
In the online statement of what they believe, you won’t find their homophobic beliefs.
You will find this statement:
We see Jesus' teaching on the kingdom of God as the overarching and integrating theme of the Scriptures. The Vineyard movement expresses the historical, biblical, orthodox Christian beliefs with the Bible as our final authority in all matters of faith and practice.
It would be reasonable to assume that “historical, orthodox Christian beliefs with the Bible as our final authority,” would mean they are homophobic, but they don’t actually state that it means they are homophobic. In a public discussion, with the flexibility of theology, it truly surpasses mathematical topology in flexibility, what their statement of “Core Values & Beliefs,” mean could be very obscure and obscuring. This is the New Homophobia.
https://vineyardusa.org/about/core-values-beliefs/
There was a statement by the Vineyard Canada. It was mentioned in the Wikipedia entry. It is no longer online at a Vineyard website, but it was saved in the Internet Archive. You can read it at the following link.
However, it might be argued that Vineyard Canada has done a rogue action or made a mistake or something to deny that this is a policy or doctrine or belief of the Assocation of Vineyard Churches.
I did find this online at Vineyardusa. I am not sure why Google Advance search didn’t pick it up. It is current.
Then I heard Tim Keller speak about commoditization, and I realized I had my perfect foil for the opposite of covenant.
When I think about talking about homosexuality, that needs to be within a much bigger conversation about separating Christian ethics and Christian pastoring and Christian public policy. And part of the challenge of the whole conversation is that for many Christians, those three things are one. But pastors have to do the hard work of figuring out how to communicate the ethic.
For a pastor, the challenge is, what does it mean to pastor a human being to whom you’re communicating that you can’t have sex? I think part of the issue, and the reason people are tempted to change the Christian ethics perspective, is because they have not yet dealt with the Christian pastoring and the public policy components yet. So the result is that we say, “Well, we can’t live with this ethic,” instead of truly wrestling and acknowledging the tensions.
But we do know some things. For example, it’s not good for people to be alone. So we can’t simply announce to someone, “Your life is singleness,” without immediately communicating, “Here’s how you can live singly and also in community with real relationships.” How has the church been able to pull off authentic community as directly with a brotherhood? How have they done that? How has the historic church functioned when they have a brotherhood of celibate men? These are things to consider.
https://vineyardusa.org/biblical-faithfulness/
Doing different researches I did find this document, “Pastoring LGBT Persons,” August 2014 Position Paper, with the statement that it was a Vinyard USA Postion Paper.
However, though it appeared to be authentic, it could be argued that it was a fake document. It wasn’t at a Vineyard website. I did save it in the Internet Archive though.
So searching for Vineyard churches I was able to find a post referencing Vineyard homophobia and quoting form it:
This letter is a short version of an 83 page Position Paper that can be accessed on Vineyard USA website. The Paper states that Vineyard USA insists that Vineyard Churches not perform same sex marriages which we have stipulated in the By Laws of Heartland Vineyard already, and that Vineyard Churches not ordain or license persons participating in sex outside of marriage, may it be heterosexual or homosexual. I hope you take a few minutes to read this letter.
The link is no longer working, but someone saved the document in the Internet Archive. I saved the following link in the Internet Archive also.
https://hvchurch.org/2015/07/the-vineyards-response-to-legalized-gay-marriage/
It is in the Internet Archive, but you need to go back to 2015.
It is a 90 page pdf document, “Pastoring LGBT Persons,” August 2014 Position Paper for the Vanguard USA.
If you go to the original link, you will get this. That is what the Internet Archive captured later. So sometimes you need to go back in time on the Internet Archive.
So what does it say:
There is the usual, “Love the sinner, hate the sin approach.” This is because Christians realize that homophobia is one of the major reasons they are currently in rapid decline. The linear curve projects extinction of Evangelical Christianity in less than 24 years. I will do a post on this and add it in later as a reference. This is the link to the data.
https://www.prri.org/research/census-2023-american-religion/
So here is the “usual love the sinner, hate the sin section,”
This paper is by no means comprehensive in its coaching of Vineyard pastors concerning how we relate to the LGBT community within our own churches or cities. There is much to consider as we engage people in our cities, especially the LGBT community. There has been much hurt and harm done to the LGBT community in the name of Jesus. The Vineyard wants to love and serve the cities we are in with no strings attached. We also never want to place moral obstacles in the path of people who are coming towards Jesus. This includes, of course, those in the LGBT community! Our moral convictions are secondary to our communication of the glorious Gospel of grace that we find in Jesus. The leading edge of our conversation with those who are outside the church always ought to point to Jesus and the life he freely gives. This paper is intended to assist our pastors as they lead our churches, and to speak to Christian believers and Christian leaders about this very sensitive subject. We hope and pray for all of us to grow in our ability to engage the LGBT community with the love and grace of Jesus. [Page 6]
If you have someone try this approach with you, you need to take a hardline stance and not engage them about the Bible or stuff like that which makes their contestation of your humanity a legitimate topic. We suggest replies like, “Shut the fuck up,” or “Shut up.” Don’t say, “Shut the hell up,” because “hell” is in the Bible and they will targeet blabing. You might try, “Keep your shit to yourself,” or “no one asked your delulu beliefs.” The important message is to convey that you find them contemptible.
Their new approach is inspired by Pope Francis of the Roman Catholic Church.
Consider the example of Pope Francis. He has not changed the content of Roman Catholic teaching, but he has changed the tone. What makes Pope Francis such a transformational leader is his incredible humility. And this humble tone (and pastoral theology) is not just found in what Pope Francis says, but in what he does. One of the first acts of his papacy was to wash the feet of a young Muslim female prisoner, and then he spontaneously kissed the head of a severely disfigured man. [Page 13]
There is a long section about the Bible and theology and how it is all against homosexuality. Then it gets down to their approach.
We live in a deeply divided, partisan nation. But we need not be a deeply divided, partisan church. The Body of Christ must embrace life in tension – regarding the LGBT community, welcoming all people but not affirming all behaviors. [Page 59]
They basically want to recruit you to tell you that homosexuality is wrong. They also don’t want their members to do things that give their denomination a bad name.
This is the conclusion.
The Vineyard movement is a movement that has always refused to cut the tensions that we find in Scripture. From our beginning, we have defined ourselves as evangelical and charismatic. We believe in a kingdom that is already and not yet. We have practiced evangelism that involves proclamation and demonstration. John Stott in The Cross of Christ, wrote this:
Emil Brunner in The Mediator did not hesitate to write of God’s “dual nature” as “the central mystery of the Christian revelation.” For “God is not simply Love. The nature of God cannot be exhaustively stated in one single word.” Indeed, modern opposition to forensic language in relation to the cross is mainly “due to the fact that the idea of the Divine Holiness has been swallowed up in that of the Divine Love; this means that the biblical idea of God, in which the decisive element in this twofold nature of holiness and love, is being replaced by the modern, unilateral, monistic idea of God.”186
In the Vineyard, we worship a God who is both completely Holy and completely Love. We follow a Savior who is radically inclusive, welcoming everyone with wide open arms, and One who is also radically demanding, calling all who come to him to “pick up their cross and follow him.” Attempts to welcome people without the demand for repentance and self-denial and to reduce the church’s distinctiveness from the world almost always end up shrinking the church instead.
We live in a deeply divided, partisan nation. But we need not be a deeply divided, partisan church. The Body of Christ must embrace life in tension – regarding the LGBT community, welcoming all people but not affirming all behaviors.
May God assist Vineyard to continue to live in the tension which missional orthodoxy demands – to persist in being, at one and the same time, biblically orthodox and missionally relevant! [Page 59]
There are appendixes afterwards to give total of 90 pages.
This lengthy text represents the fear that Evangelicals will want a flavor of Evangelicalism without the homophobia. The average Evangelical is at the church to have all sorts of fun and shows and drama and feel holy and saved and just generally have a giggly gosh good time. They don’t want to be condemning a relative or neighbor or friend. The Evangelicals realize this, so they want to adopt these arguments and methods to make their homophobia seem as nice as possible.
It still is their current belief.
Don’t let them tell you that is in the past. Besides the link by Heartland Vineyard there are these links with their homophobia.
https://www.bavineyard.org/beliefs
https://www.vineyardcolumbus.org/vineyard-and-the-lgbtq-community
https://www.vineyardcolumbus.org/faq
https://www.alivevineyard.org/hp_wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/March-17-colorb.pdf
This is a whole listing of this church’s articles on the LGBT.
https://www.svc.church/blog/category/lgbt/
https://www.vineyardcincinnati.com/event?EventOccurrenceId=6335
Notice how I am preemptively thinking about all the ways Vineyard might spin this. That is because the New Homophobia sometimes is not so upfront anymore.
Association of Vineyard Churches online presence.
https://www.facebook.com/vineyardusa/
https://www.instagram.com/VineyardUSA/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaLl3A2EUL2pcqoFBLXe5PA
With this, you can see what local Vineyard churches might be in your area so you are alerted.
