Seattle's Mars Hill Church is a popular mega-church that is renowned for being hip and cool. It has stoked controversy in the past for its beliefs that women will be submissive to their husbands and for its strict discipline of church members -- including the shunning of people who have been cast out from the church for a variety of human failings. Now the church is in the local Seattle news for establishing a new location within that city's gayborhood so that it can, in part,
minister to the gay people with AIDS:
The Mars Hill Church Downtown Seattle’s new home is blocks from Capitol Hill, which is known locally as the “gayborhood.” The church plans to use the new location as a base to minister to the city’s business people; the homeless; and the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
“Being closer to Capitol Hill is a blessing as we are serving and ministering to those who are infected with AIDS on the hill,” said Tim Gaydos, lead pastor of Mars Hill Church’s Downtown Seattle branch said in a release to KOMO News.
Mars Hill Church will gladly welcome any LGBT person with AIDS to join them in worship, but
what about those gays who are so touched that they decide to commit to the church?:
I asked Gaydos, “What about gay people and people of other faiths? Are you comfortable working with people like that?”
“Absolutely,” said Gaydos. “We want to make this a great city where everyone flourishes and that means loving everyone of different backgrounds and beliefs. Actually, we have a lot of gay people coming to the church.”
To be clear, GLBT are welcome to attend and participate at Mars Hill Downtown. They are not able to become members of the church.
So we're good enough to come to the church and I'm sure they would even welcome our tithes, but any attempts towards membership will be rebuked. That's Mars Hill Church's right. But hopefully those LGBT folks who have sought a place at Mars Hill's table and instead found themselves sitting on the floor, hopefully somebody will inform them that
there are gay-affirming worship options in the Seattle area that they should instead pursue.
