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 Rev. Richard Elseroad, Senior Pastor - relseroad@usa.net
Pastor Rich has been Senior Pastor of Grace since November of 1993. He is married to Susie (originally from Kankakee, Illinois), and they have four children: Stephanie, Stuart, Stanton and Steven. He founded Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Gardendale, Alabama and served there from 1979 to 1993. Pastor Rich is a native of Baltimore, Maryland and graduated from Valparaiso University, Indiana in 1975 and Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri in 1979. He loves being a pastor and especially teaching the Adult Inquiry Class and seeing people become Christians for the first time or recommitting themselves to Jesus Christ. |
 Rev. William D. Miller, Associate Pastor - millerpw@live.com
Pastor Will came to Grace in June of 2008 with his wife, Ana, after graduating from Concordia Seminary, St. Louis. He is currently serving to direct international missions, pastor to our young adults, discipleship of our middle school youth through confirmation instruction, and director of the adult Sunday school program. Pastor Will is a native of Nashville, TN and an alumnus of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His wife, Ana, is a native of Novo Hamburgo, Brazil. |
Message from the Pastor
Response to the ELCA decision | 10.21.2009 @ 13:28 est |
In their National Assembly, the ELCA (The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) by a two-thirds vote approved homosexual clergy who maintain monogamous relationships. Prior to this decision pastors were defrocked on grounds of Biblical immorality. Earlier this same assembly voted to “recognize, support and hold publicly accountable life-long, monogamous, same-gender relationships.”
My response to this was shock and incredulity. I truly did not believe this would be the outcome, because I knew many Biblically faithful ELCA pastors and church members who on solid grounds rejected this departure from the Scriptures.
This decision clearly contradicts the word of God. I would also argue that it is an unloving response to those living in sin. To accommodate ourselves to those behaviors that God calls sinful is to enable and lead people away from their Lord and Savior. Some may say homosexuals were born that way (or created that way). I would counter that it is a result of original sin. The womanizer or the alcoholic could also claim God made them that way. But instead the Bible clearly calls such deeds as sinful and something we ought to battle and “put off.”
In humility, as a Pastor of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, I will admit we are not all that we should be. Nevertheless this issue and the ELCA’s resolution stand out because it so clearly contradicts God’s Word in both the Old and New Testaments. I pray that the ELCA would reconsider this decision and return to their once faithful adherence to God’s holy Word.
Listen to these words from Ephesians 5 and see if they don’t pertain to this very issue.
But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore do not become partners with them… Ephesians 5:3, 5-7 |
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