World Vision Reverses Decision on Gay Married Employees: We Made a Mistake

Poster mattf12486 pasted a link On the other thread : https://www.sermonindex.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=51915&forum=48 after reading it, I thought it might be worthy of a new thread :

Dear Friends,

Today, the World Vision U.S. board publicly reversed its recent decision to change our national employment conduct policy. The board acknowledged they made a mistake and chose to revert to our longstanding conduct policy requiring sexual abstinence for all single employees and faithfulness within the Biblical covenant of marriage between a man and a woman.

We are writing to you our trusted partners and Christian leaders who have come to us in the spirit of Matthew 18 to express your concern in love and conviction. You share our desire to come together in the Body of Christ around our mission to serve the poorest of the poor. We have listened to you and want to say thank you and to humbly ask for your forgiveness.

In our board's effort to unite around the church's shared mission to serve the poor in the name of Christ, we failed to be consistent with World Vision U.S.'s commitment to the traditional understanding of Biblical marriage and our own Statement of Faith, which says, " We believe the Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God. " And we also failed to seek enough counsel from our own Christian partners. As a result, we made a change to our conduct policy that was not consistent with our Statement of Faith and our commitment to the sanctity of marriage.

We are brokenhearted over the pain and confusion we have caused many of our friends, who saw this decision as a reversal of our strong commitment to Biblical authority. We ask that you understand that this was never the board's intent. We are asking for your continued support. We commit to you that we will continue to listen to the wise counsel of Christian brothers and sisters, and we will reach out to key partners in the weeks ahead.

While World Vision U.S. stands firmly on the biblical view of marriage, we strongly affirm that all people, regardless of their sexual orientation, are created by God and are to be loved and treated with dignity and respect.

Please know that World Vision continues to serve all people in our ministry around the world. We pray that you will continue to join with us in our mission to be " an international partnership of Christians whose mission is to follow our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in working with the poor and oppressed to promote human transformation, seek justice, and bear witness to the good news of the Kingdom of God ."

Sincerely in Christ,
Richard Stearns, President

http://www.christianpost.com/news/world-vision-reverses-decision-on-gay-married-employees-we-made-a-mistake-116871/

This doesn't sound like repentance to me. It sounds like bowing for the esteem of man. The question of whether they have employed or let slip in homosexuals and whether they are working to remove them is not addressed. One doesn't make a decision to admit homosexual 'unions' without considerable prior compromise.

Last night I listened to the Art Katz message "The Real or the 'Plastic'" which deals with this scenario. It deals with the excommunication, or removing from fellowship, of an unrepentant brother. This man who was excommunicated then comes to the conference where Art is speaking just a couple days later. He claims a dream and change of heart, very dubious indeed.

In another message, "Human, all too Human," Art speaks of a well known prophetic figure who has recently fallen. Celebrated as The Oracle, he freely took all the praise and hyperbolic attention. He met the needs of the people for personal prophecy. They didn't have to know the Holy Spirit, he had access for you. This man literally put the spotlight on himself. And the people LOVED it.

He was an alcoholic and a homosexual.

Who here has discernment and knows the voice of the Spirit? When you see promotions about a group, can you recognize if it is satisfying your fleshly lusts? God says flee from them. Have nothing to do with them. Cast them out from among you. He also says that if you want to do His will, you will recognize His voice and follow Him. You should know without knowing why. The Holy Spirit will teach you all things and show you things to come, if you are born of Him.

EDIT: corrected Katz message references.

Clearly the original announcement caused such an uproar that they knew fund raising and support would take a dramatic hit. It is hard to fathom, even from a secular point of view, how a company could be so out of touch with its base so as to make a decision that could put the whole operation in jeopardy. As bro Frank mentioned, there is a carrying along of every doctrine and the sleight of men going on.

In order to have confidence in ministries we support, we need to know that that ministry shares Biblical views and standards sincerely and without coercion. If Christians have to threaten to boycott and withhold funding to get an organization to do what's right- it is clearly time to move on and prayerfully find other more worthy recipients of the resources God has made us steward of. Moreover, once it is evident that they wanted to unilaterally spread the homosexual agenda into the churches, we risk making ourselves partakers of future evils that they adopt by continuing to support them.

I think the head of this organization should resign. I agree with him being clearly "out of touch with his base." He's clearly misleading his organization.

With that said, I think it is also rather shameful how much of a knee-jerk reaction many Christian leaders engaged in with immediately threatening to literally take food out of the mouths of the starving, and calling down fire and brimstone on this man and organization, all over this issue.

Justice and mercy are the weightier matters of the law my brothers.

I tend to agree with KJ-

I mean it seems that they can't win for losing. Would we rather they NOT have reversed their decision? Didn't other christian leaders (like the Mike Brown article posted on SI) WANT them to reverse their decision?

Or now that they are willing to reverse course should our attitude be "it's too late baby, now it's too late?"

Now obviously we would have preferred that they not have made the mistake in the first place. I am sure the decision was a symptom of some sickness going on in the board. But I think we have to support that they have reversed course.

Now, one might argue that they just "caved under pressure." But isn't that the whole purpose of Jesus's instructions in Mt. 18? The purpose it point out a sin that perhaps the sinning brother is blind to and then encourage (pressure) him to repent. It says that if it works you have "gained a brother."

"Now, one might argue that they just "caved under pressure." But isn't that the whole purpose of Jesus's instructions in Mt. 18? "

I would say, no. Godly sorrow is God-wards and not "man-wards." Worldly sorrow concerns itself for the consequences of ones actions. Godly sorrow works life and can be trusted. The other works death and should be distrusted. This is the message of Psalm 51.

There is something very rotten at the core when an organization is prepared to unilaterally and without coercion adopt the homosexual agenda. It tells me that this is what they truly believe, no matter how they suddenly reversed course. That is what concerns me.

It is sort of like sin. If a person stumbles into sin or is overtaken by it, we can forgive and restore joyfully. But if a person's sin is the result of a point of view that is contrary to the faith once delivered to the saints, even if they reverse it under coercion, I am inclined to assume the still hold the belief. We ought not be interested in homosexuals who come out of the closet going back into the closet. We ought rather to press on until their is a change of mind and a change of direction. When someone shows us who they really are I think we ought incline ourselves to believe them. Just my thoughts.

RobertW....Clearly the original announcement caused such an uproar that they knew fund raising and support would take a dramatic hit.

Getting into the pocket book has always been since the beginning of mankind, the best method to get folks attention, and it's still going strong in the 21st century.

Part of their statement kind-of bothered me:

"In our board's effort to unite around the church's shared mission to serve the poor in the name of Christ, we failed to be consistent with World Vision U.S.'s commitment to the traditional understanding of Biblical marriage and our own Statement of Faith, which says, " We believe the Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God. " And we also failed to seek enough counsel from our own Christian partners. As a result, we made a change to our conduct policy that was not consistent with our Statement of Faith and our commitment to the sanctity of marriage."

Why did they choose the words "traditional understanding of Biblical marriage"? Why didn't they use more solid terminology like: "the clear Biblical teaching of marriage". It is as if there is a "traditional understanding" and another understanding ... leaving open the idea that another viable understanding is available ...

I am not at all for the idea of taking food from hungry children. If I were already supporting a child with them I would continue, but I would never take on another new child with their organization when there are other much more solidly Biblical based organizations like www.gfa.org.

Forgiveness and trust are two different things. They have my forgiveness, but they have lost my trust.

Some say the children should not have to suffer because of this decision.

I wonder how many children who were formerly sponsored through World Vision by conservative evangelicals will now starve and die because so many Evangelical leaders are so concerned about being "holy." Next you'll be worried about people being healed on the Sabbath.

While this whole event has been grieving to hear about, it has not been too surprising for me. A while back the lead pastor of the church I was then attending brought several copies of Richard Stern’s book, "The Hole in our Gospel” and encouraged everyone to grab one. As I started reading it I immediately had serious concerns with its premise and the way it handled the Scriptures to support its agenda. To be honest I couldn't really stomach to read the whole thing. It was clearly supporting what has been termed the "Social Gospel” which is no gospel at all.

This liberal, social gospel has been packaged and repackaged over the years, and in recent times it has been promoted largely by the emergent church movement. Multitudes of churches have been caught up in this trap of Satan.

As part of this movement there is a challenging of the authority of the Word of God. Brothers and sisters, we must take heed that we do not get caught up in the social gospel trap and agenda. It is a clever deception which places human physical needs above God and His Word. It is a man-centered message with a man-centered agenda. Many believers including myself have been too gullible to recognize the deception.

The primary purpose of the church is to preach the gospel and make disciples for the glory of God and the advancement of His spiritual kingdom. All other types of efforts are secondary to that primary purpose, and they should be done with that primary purpose in view.

It is true that Christians are called to do good to all people, especially those in need within the household of faith(Gal.6:10;Acts 6:1-3). Our Lord indeed fed and healed the multitudes of lost people, but it seems clear to me that He always did so within the context of proclaiming the gospel of the spiritual kingdom of God, because that was His main mission in His earthly ministry before going to the cross.

I believe this article does a good job at giving a biblical perspective on Stearn’s book:

http://www.thebereancall.org/content/january-2011-extra

Some say the children should not have to suffer because of this decision.

So the question becomes, what are we willing to surrender for the bread that perishes? For the poor, for our children, for ourselves?

Will it be bread or every word that proceeds from the mouth of God?

There are other organizations that feed and clothe the needy, both Christian and non-Christian. Why support an organization which claims to be Christian and yet is apostate in nature, while there are other organizations you can support, both Christian and non-Christian. 1 Cor. 5 comes to mind. There we are commanded not to fellowship with those who claim to be Christian and yet deny the faith. I would venture to say it's better to support a secular organization that does not claim to be Christian.

Even better yet, we can go to the poor ghetto areas within our reach and reach out with the gospel and food and clothes as we are able, then we can make sure our money is not misspent.

My thoughts, Oracio

The Pharisees were concerned that people would spend eternity in hell and that the Jews would be sent into exile again... which is why they were so concerned about Jesus healing on the sabbath.

If you don't feed them long enough to get the opportunity to hear the Gospel, and they die, they'll go to hell anyway.