“I will be governed by our polity, but with the following qualification ….”

I met before my presbytery today [May 14] and read the following statement. The response was for a half dozen to applaud and the remainder sat in stunned awe.

Dear fellow members and elder commissioners:

Since the amendment to our Form of Government number 10-A has passed and will become effective in July of 2011 I must report to you, my presbytery, that my conscience is sorely grieved. When I was ordain, in 1979, I gave an affirmative and unqualified answer to the question cited below. In 2003, I again gave an affirmative response to this same question before this presbytery as it met in the form of an administrative commission.

Will you be governed by our church’s polity, and will you abide by its discipline? Will you be a friend among your colleagues in ministry, working with them, subject to the ordering of God’s Word and Spirit?

I will be governed by our polity, but with the following qualification: I will not affirm the ordination or installation of any officer who refuses to repent of the sin of homosexuality. Nor will I work with anyone who is not either chaste in singleness or living in a bond of fidelity in a heterosexual marriage of one man to one woman. While I will consider all persons to be my friend, I will not consider a willfully unrepentant sinner to be my colleague in ministry to Jesus Christ.

I will not accept the judgment of this presbytery or any other when it ordains or installs anyone who is a self-declared unrepentant homosexual. To do so would make me disobedient to the God’s word, the Bible, and to God’s Spirit Who inspired it and guides my understanding of it.

Since my membership to this presbytery is based on my affirming this vow, I now give my presbytery an opportunity to rule this as my change of conscience.

1 Timothy 1:18-20 (RSV) “This charge I commit to you, Timothy, my son, in accordance with the prophetic utterances which pointed to you, that inspired by them you may wage the good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience. By rejecting conscience, certain persons have made shipwreck of their faith, among them Hymenae’us and Alexander, whom I have delivered to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme.”

Gary W. Miller, Pastor
Minden Presbyterian Church
Minden, La.

Source: The Layman [Editor’s note: the original URL (link) referenced is no longer valid, so the link has been removed.]