Photo credit: Roanoke College (CC-By-2.0)
InterVarsity Christian Fellowship told its staff that starting November 11 staff members who support gay marriage or disagree with their statement on human sexuality they will be dismissed from the evangelical campus ministry.
And in other breaking news – water is wet. What is remarkable is that it took them this long to do what other evangelical churches and ministries have done.
Liberal minds blown however. TIME reports:
One of the largest evangelical organizations on college campuses nationwide has told its 1,300 staff members they will be fired if they personally support gay marriage or otherwise disagree with its newly detailed positions on sexuality starting on Nov. 11.
InterVarsity Christian Fellowship USA says it will start a process for “involuntary terminations” for any staffer who comes forward to disagree with its positions on human sexuality, which hold that any sexual activity outside of a husband and wife is immoral.
Staffers are not being required to sign a document agreeing with the group’s position, and supervisors are not proactively asking employees to verbally affirm it. Instead, staffers are being asked to come forward voluntarily if they disagree with the theological position. When they inform their supervisor of their disagreement, a two-week period is triggered, concluding in their last day. InterVarsity has offered to cover outplacement service costs for one month after employment ends to help dismissed staff with their résumés and job-search strategies.
So they are not engaging in a witch hunt to ferret these staffers out, but they do expect that staff are aligned with with the ministry believes about human sexuality and marriage. I think they are also going above and beyond to provide them with outplacement services as well.
When you consider how millennials are turning away from what God’s word clearly teaches on the subject of marriage and human sexuality it is vitally important that a campus ministry’s staff affirm what the Bible teaches. These students are getting bombarded with the opposite message everywhere else. If churches and evangelical ministries don’t hold forth the truth nobody else will.
But this is not news. Ed Stetzer at Christianity Today published a statement that InterVarsity released in response to the TIME article.
The Time article buries the most relevant info, which is that this was a four-year process that was telegraphed and communicated to staff. No one was caught flat-footed or surprised. Recognizing that some staff felt this was theologically contested ground, we opened up a time of 18 months for them to research and discern their convictions on this issue, as well as learn about our convictions. The goal was to clarify our position while also providing ample time for those whose convictions differed to seek out better-fitting ministry opportunities.
Parts of this process were hard and painful, but it was not abrupt, or a shock.
Not news, but as Stetzer pointed out in his piece this doesn’t mesh with the “new orthodoxy.”
The new orthodoxy says that you have to bend your beliefs to fit it.
But InterVarsity has a different view—the mainsteam evangelical view. And, such views do cost you today.
And, ultimately, every organization with the beliefs of old orthodoxy will face a moment like this.
It is time to take a stand. Will you stand for biblical truth or will you stand for popular culture?