In its 97 years, Crescent Heights Methodist Church has flourished and floundered. As recently as 2004, the congregation was growing so much, it asked the many 12-step programs meeting there to find other spaces. The West Hollywood Recovery Center was started as a direct result of the church closing its doors to the 12-step programs there (12-step groups have since been allowed to meet there again).We could always count on 12-Stepping losers being outside smoking, & get a laugh from announcements of the show tunes services.
During that time, Pastor John Griffin was holding Sunday services that incorporated Broadway show tunes, bringing in a lot of new members. But when Griffin was reassigned to a church in Long Beach in 2005, the people who loved the Broadway tunes left with him.
No more.
"I'm a gay, pro-medical marijuana pastor," Pastor Scott Imler told West Hollywood Patch. "The United Methodist Church is becoming increasingly conservative and our church is too gay for them."
8 comments:
funny how so many churches seem to believe that refusing and alienating new members is a viable strategy.
Yeah and wtf happened to Jesus' teachings that we don't fucking judge people, we care for them all?
Rotten fucking bastards.
Church too gay?
The cardinals say nay!
(At least, the cardinals I follow chirp that.)
~
Purity Editor:
Nay-chirpers? You may be following the wrong cards. Or Cards. Or Princes of the Church.
It's generally agreed that Jee-zis was a hippy sissy & the vengeful, wrathful war-gawd of The Hebrews is still right, no matter which Geez quotes are taken out of context.
As in, no faggy pot-smokers in OUR chiurch!!
""I'm a gay, pro-medical marijuana pastor," Pastor Scott Imler told West Hollywood Patch. "The United Methodist Church is becoming increasingly conservative and our church is too gay for them."
I honest-to-gosh LOLed at this quote.
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While I'd hate to ruin the good laugh folks are getting from the aforementioned quote, as sometimes happens in news reporting the quote and what I actually said don't exactly match.
What church officials perceived as "too gay" was our local church revitalization proposal, which would have reordered our ministry toward the actualities of the community rather than mere lip service about inclusiveness and the occasional Showtune Sunday: one an evermor-elusive aspiration and the other an ever-pervasive stereotype.
The District leadership has yet to actually give a credible explanation for why they targeted Crescent Heights Church for closure in the Spring of 2008, when despite the showtunes exodus, we were stable, growing and financially solvent.
My own suspicion is they wanted the West Hollywood facility shuttered before "marriage equality" became the law of the land. Past that it was just a good old fashion "land grab" that would blush the cheeks of Mulholland himself and allows the denomination to walk off with a 3.6 million dollar property.
Pastor Scott T. Imler
Pastoral* Editor:
It's convenient all around for the church, innit, no matter what its real motivations are.
Just out of curiosity, what would be the correct quote?
*We are quite offended that religious types consider members of "their" parishes to be sheep, apparently to be manipulated & used.
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