When Restore began, we were a denominational church.
Now you can probably tell from the tents of those words that we
are no longer. A denominational.
Church. And it's important to know that
this was not by our choice. We were actually kicked out.
Of a denomination. So I want to tell you the whole
story. Now, I also know that what we've
been through is nothing compared to what LGBTQ plus folks have
endured. The queer community has been
called abominations, disowned by their families, condemned to
hell, and even tortured and abused through conversion
therapy, all at the hands of Christians.
Many thanks to Ginger who sent me this sermon from Pastor Zach
W Lambert called All Inclusive Homophobia and Transphobia.
It contains so much material that I have divided the sermon
into four parts and called Part 1, kicked out and called an
abomination. Here is Pastor Lambert.
Hey, my name is Zach. I'm the lead pastor here at
Restore. Thanks so much for checking out
this week's message. I hope that it's encouraging to
you and inspiring to you. I hope that it causes you to
dive deeper into the scriptures, and I hope that you're able to
do that with some people around you, with some community.
But. If you don't have that, we would
love to invite you. Into the community here at
Restore. If you want to take a next step,
get more connected, you can just go to restoreaustin.org/connect,
fill out a card on there, and I will personally reach out to you
in the days after you do that. And if you want to grab coffee
with me or just get more information about the church, I
will make myself available to you you for that.
As you will hear, we are in this thing called a year around the
table. And it really comes from this
vision that God's given us that restore will be a place where
anyone has a seat at the table and everyone experiences the
extravagant love of Jesus. So AI hope that you experience
the extravagant love of Jesus as you check this message out.
And B if you don't have a table to sit at, we want to invite you
to Jesus table here at Restore. Did y'all know that Restore our
Church started out in a denomination?
Oh, I'm going to take those blank stares as no, I'm not
going to say which denomination in this setting, although it's
certainly not a secret and I'd be happy to tell you if you'd
like to know. But when Restore began, we were.
A denominational church. Now you can probably tell from
the tents of those words that we are no longer.
A denominational. Church.
And it's important to know that this was not by our choice.
We were actually kicked out. Of a denomination so I want to
tell you the whole story so. When I was in seminary, I took a
church planting class, kind of interested in starting a church
and what that might mean. And there was a denomination
that the district supervisor who ran all of Texas and Oklahoma
would go to the church planting class and recruit potential
church planters because they really wanted to start new
churches all over Texas and Oklahoma.
So I met this guy and talked through everything with him,
told him about Restore, told him what we felt like God had called
us to do. We talked about a couple of kind
of hot button topics, so to speak, which is that we were
going to have women in every area of leadership.
We were going to be fully inclusive of LGBTQ people and
that type of stuff. And he was like, well, you'll be
the only church in the district that does that.
But I guess there's nothing in our policies about not doing
that, so it's fine. And so I was like, great.
And it was very much pitched as like we're a big tent movement.
You know, we got the kind of core ancient doctrine stuff,
right? Like we come around 2000 years
of Christian orthodoxy, like you can be a part.
It's great. So we decided to jump in with
them. We jumped in with a bunch of
other church networks and individual churches, sponsors
and all that kind of stuff. It's just like getting a non
profit or a business off the ground.
You have people that seed into it and then you launch.
And then we became financially independent about year 3, which
is kind of the goal. But our first year we did
something called Bapticue. I want you to raise your hand if
you've ever been to Bapticue at Restore.
Yeah, Bapticue is the best. SO Bapticue is baptisms and BBQ
shoved together. And so out on the lawn we do
baptisms and we bring Rudy's Barbecue in for everyone to just
have this huge party. It is so much fun.
And our very first Bapticue, we baptized 88 or 10 people, I
can't remember. And one of them, it's this
incredible story of this woman named Shauna.
And Shauna had come from just horrific background of growing
up in churches where, I mean, bad, bad news stuff in these
churches, like where like black people couldn't come, where they
were escorted out, where you couldn't even, you know,
remotely identify with LGBTQ community stuff.
I mean, it was intense kind of fundamentalist churches.
And so she grew up for a number of other reasons too, hating
God. And so when we met, she was
still very anti when we met. I remember we went to coffee at
radio and she was like, I don't believe any of this.
You need to know that number 1. And I was like, great, cool,
cool, awesome. But we became really good
friends. She's actually one of my very
best friends to this day. And soon after those
conversations LED into her saying, I think I want to follow
Jesus. She had this incredible
encounter with him. We actually showed her story
once on on video. It's really beautiful.
So we baptized her with all the other people that got baptized
at the baptique. And now here's something I
didn't mention about Shawna. Shawna's a lesbian.
And I honestly didn't think that much about it when it happened.
But there were some other churches in the denomination who
got really upset. And they got so upset that they
actually took it to the guy that had recruited me.
And he said, well, no, I, we knew that this was the church
was going to be like this, you know, we're OK with it,
whatever. Well, they, you know, couldn't
get what they wanted done with him.
And so they took it all the way to the head of the denomination.
Internationally, it's based out of kind of the Midwest and they
opened to this huge investigation over a period of
years. We went through an investigation
our our leadership team, me specifically had to give
testimony a number of times, all of these different things.
It basically came down to the fact that, well, there was
nothing in the bylaws of the district against this.
And so the denomination basically ordered the district
to rewrite their bylaws so that there was something against it.
And then they came to us and said, you have to sign these
bylaws. And we said absolutely not.
And they said, well, then you're out.
And so they kicked us out. This was summer of 20, or excuse
me, March of 2019, when we were officially kicked out.
But it wasn't just that. The denomination actually
stripped me of my ordination. I had to mail my ministry
license back. I wanted to shred it and mail it
back. Amy said I couldn't do that.
My wife, she said I wasn't allowed to do that.
And then I got an e-mail from the executive director of
theology for the entire international denomination in
which he said, quote, I am concerned for your salvation and
the salvation of those to whom you minister.
Now, I wish I could tell you this is the only time that
something like this has happened due to our support of full
inclusion for the LGBTQ plus plus community, but it's not.
We've been called an apostate church.
We've been kicked out of not just that denomination, but a
number of different church networks, even an office space
here in Austin we were kicked out of.
We lost a bunch of funding over the years, and I've been told
I'm going to hell more times than I can count.
But honestly, none of that comes close to the joy that we have
experienced from seeing LGBTQ plus folks who have come to
faith at Restore come back to faith at Restore and found a
church where they can fully participate for the first time
in their lives. The conversations and messages
and hugs and tears I've been able to share with people from
the queer community make all of the hate totally worth it.
Now, I also know that what we've been through is nothing compared
to what LGBTQ plus folks have endured.
The queer community has been called abominations, disowned by
their families, condemned to hell, and even tortured and
abused through conversion therapy, all at the hands of
Christians. These are not just statistics.
These are stories. And these stories didn't just
happen to random people. That happened to people that I
love, people in this room, people I consider to be my
closest friends. One of these friends was locked
in a basement and repeatedly assaulted during her Christian
conversion therapy. One of my friends was kicked out
of a church during their transition, and the pastor told
everyone in the congregation to, quote, treat him like he's dead
until he repents of his perversion.
Another one of my friends came out to her parents and the first
words out of her dad's mouth were You've ruined our family
and brought the wrath of God upon us.
But do you know what I find most incredible about these folks is
that somehow through it all, they have not given up on Jesus.
The faith of LGBTQ plus Christians astounds and inspires
me. Just last year, I met a gay man
who's been pastoring for over 25 years.
He grew up in fundamentalist churches.
He was actually a student at Bob Jones University, which is one
of the most prominent Christian colleges in America.
He was there at the time when Bob Jones's president marched in
Washington, DC to oppose civil rights being given to LGBTQ
people and said in his speech in front of the White House, quote,
I guarantee it would solve the problem post haste if
homosexuals were stoned. This gay pastor has experienced
more hate than I can imagine and yet still follows Jesus with
everything he has, including dedicating his whole
professional life to the church. And when I asked, how do you
keep going? How do you like faithfully
persevere through all of this junk?
He said I'm not going to let anybody take Jesus from me.
For far too long, Christians and churches have tried to take
Jesus from LGBTQ plus people. They have been marginalized,
excluded and even attacked in the name of Christ.
And that's why we were spending this morning talking about
homophobia and transphobia in the church.
And we're in the middle of this teaching series called All
Inclusive, God's Big Beautiful Family.
And we've been looking at these stories from the life of Jesus
and the early Church of how God radically included people in his
family who had previously been excluded or marginalized.
Now, I usually spend about a week writing a sermon.
I've been writing this one for two months.
I've been preparing for it for what feels like a decade.
I've spent more time on it than any other sermon I've ever
preached. It's not even close.
Because you see, I come from churches where queer people were
called evil and abominations and every slur you can imagine.
I've ignorantly participated in marginalization and exclusion of
LGBTQ plus folks. And for that I am deeply, deeply
sorry. But about 10 years ago, things
started to shift. And they started to shift
because I met a few gay people who were faithfully following
Jesus and they didn't conform to any of the stereotypes, the
things I've been told about what they were like, right?
This caused me to start kind of digging deep into Scripture and
reading widely from a variety of perspectives.
And since then, I've read about 20 books on the subject, as well
as countless and of articles and sermons.
And today I'm just going to share some of that journey with
you as we look at Scripture to help us understand how God sees
sexual and gender minorities. We'll also talk about the
handful of verses commonly used to justify excluding or
marginalising LGBTQ plus folks in the church.
Now, my guess is that this message is going to make some
people a little uncomfortable, maybe even displeased, and I
understand that. But here's my request.
I'm going to pray in just a second.
As I do, I want you to ask God to open your heart, to give you
an open mind as we walk through this together.
OK, let's pray. God, we thank you for this
morning. Thank you for your church.
We thank you for your scriptures.
I pray that as. We dive into.
Your word that you would illuminate it for us.
You would open our hearts, open our minds to the truth that you
have for us this morning. I pray that the words that come
from my mouth would be inspired by you.
God. You would lead us as a church
family to who you've called us to be.
In Jesus name I pray. Amen.
Thrown out and condemned. This may be the story of Austin
Redeemer Church, but it is also the story of many LGBTQIA plus
individuals who likewise have been told that they must deny
who they are, who God created them to be, or who God has
called them to be. There was so much in Pastor
Lambert's words, but this paragraph has really stuck with
me. One of my friends came out to
her parents and the first words out of her dad's mouth were
You've ruined our family and brought the wrath of God upon
us. But do you know what I find most
incredible about these folks is that somehow through it all,
they have not given up on Jesus. The faith of LGBTQ plus
Christians astounds and inspires me.
Thank you Pastor Lambert for your tenacity, your insights and
your wisdom. The next in this four part
series from Pastor Lambert, Part 2.
Trans, cisgender or intersex, join us next time.
This is Elton Sherwin. Stay safe and God bless.