i dont recall the pastor saying he needed christ less than the gay guy. there is nothing wrong with taking a stand on principle, as long as there is no malice involved. from the story, its obvious this is not an issue of hate. I knew Gary (and his "crowd") when he was still worship leader at Lakewood, back in the day. He's not perfect, but christians don't come better than that. the knee jerk rush to judgement is really puzzling.
Don’t want to be a geeky cliché but his counts as one of those WWJD moments. Can you see Jesus saying, "Oh, man. He's gay? Really? Oh Crap. I know I told you guys that you could have the service at my place, but its really important to me that I don't look like I'm endorsing that, so... I'm sorry. But don't take it personally, cause I care about you from as far away as possible and as long as you are not being gay at my place. I'll give you this nice fruit basket so you know how much I love you, OK? But just take it somewhere else." If you can, you are apparently reading a different bible than me. I appreciate that it was probably a knee-jerk mistake when they discovered it at the last minute and were thrown a loop, but to somehow rationalize that it wasn't a mistake to turn a sinner (even a dead one) away from a church is genuinely distressing to me. Do you if you can think this is the ideal realization of the teachings of Jesus? And what Max is pointing out that one sin is as sinful as another and we are all sinners. That's kind of a fundamental point of theology. Homosexuality doesn't get special treatment as a worse sin, so you should treat it just the same if you found out he was sleeping around on his wife, or spent time in prison for murder, was a drug dealer, etc. Fundamentally the idea of turning people away from churches because they are sinners is like McDonalds kicking people out for being too hungry. It is contrary to the very reason for the place's existence.
If the church wants to get out of the funeral "business" altogether, they should stop doing them for all sinners.
