The mainstream media wants you to believe that a conservative evangelical church deep in the Bible belt has refused to bury a Gulf War veteran because he was gay. Some in the Christian media want you to believe that the church hasn’t shown the love of Jesus to a dead man’s family. Neither is anywhere near the truth.

Here are the facts. High Point Church, a non-denominational church in Arlington, Texas, had been praying for Cecil Sinclair after Cecil’s brother, Lee (the only member of the Sinclair family who was a member of the church) requested prayer for his brother who had been awaiting a heart transplant. When Cecil Sinclair’s health became critical last week, the family called a staff member from the church to be with them at the hospital. In the hospital, in the moments immediately following Mr. Sinclair’s death, the family asked the staff member if the church would be open to holding a memorial service for their loved one. The staff member assured them the church would be available to help the family in any way appropriate, a response any pastor would give in that situation.

Cecil Sinclair was not a member of High Point Church, yet this church selflessly and sacrificially ministered to his family in the wake of his death, preparing and delivering food for the family and one hundred relatives and friends, along with many other expressions of kindness. The church offered to produce a video retrospective of Mr. Sinclair’s life for use during the memorial service. When the family provided the pictures to the church it was then that the church learned of their intention to make the memorial service a celebration of Cecil Sinclair’s gay lifestyle. One of the photos provided by the family “showed a man with his hand touching another man’s genitalia,” along with other inappropriate photos, according to a statement on the High Point Church website.

The family also requested that “an associate of an openly homosexual choir” officiate at the service and that the homosexual choir sing during the service. “It became clear to the church staff that the family was requesting an openly homosexual service at High Point Church – which is not our policy to allow,” the statement on the church’s website said. After initially agreeing to host the memorial service, the church informed the family it could not do so based on the direction they were taking service. The church then secured – and paid for – another location for the memorial service, which the family declined. The church also produced the memorial video without the inappropriate photos.

High Point Church did not refuse to host the funeral of a gay man, as is being widely reported in the mainstream media. The church refused on biblical principle to allow a celebration of the homosexual lifestyle in its sanctuary, a decision most theologically sound churches would make under similar circumstances. 

It’s not surprising to me that the mainstream media would misrepresent the facts. But the response of some in Christian media has been even more disappointing. High Point Church and its leaders are being accused by Christians of not showing love to the family by not hosting a celebration of his gay lifestyle. I suppose visiting Cecil in the hospital, sitting with his family after he died, preparing meals for the family, paying the rent on an alternative venue, and producing an appropriate memorial video don’t qualify as “showing love” to the family? Others are calling it a “missed opportunity” for the church to reach out to the gay community. Still others have suggested that because homosexuality is a sin like any other sin, the church’s decision not to host a gay man’s memorial would prohibit it from holding memorial services for anyone because, after all, we are all sinners.

These people are missing the point. The church did not refuse to host the memorial service because Cecil Sinclair was gay. They refused to host the memorial service because the family was turning it into a celebration of the man’s sin – his homosexual lifestyle. Churches and ministers bury sinners every day. But we don’t highlight their sin on the big screen while we are doing it. We exalt Christ. We proclaim the gospel. And we celebrate the triumph of the cross over sin and death, none of which the family had in mind for Cecil Sinclair’s memorial service.

High Point Church’s principled and biblical decision was the right one, as is evidenced not only by just how unpopular it is with the main stream media, but also by the knee-jerk and ill-informed response of today’s culturally-savvy, but biblically illiterate Christians.

Listen here to Paul’s interview with Pastor Gary Simons of High Point Church.

All I know about High Point Church in Arlington, Texas is what I have read in the media, plus what I have learned perusing their website. I now know that the church is pastored by the brother-in-law of Joel Osteen.

The MSM wants you to believe that a conservative evangelical church deep in the Bible belt has refused to bury a vet because he was gay. Nothing could be further from the truth. Those of you who know how I feel about Joel Osteen should also know that I am not defending this church for any other reason than that it did the right thing.

Follow this link to read the church’s side of the story, one you aren’t getting from the MSM or even Christian Talk Radio:
High Point Church Could Not Allow an
Openly Homosexual Service in the Church

UPDATE: Paul speaks on-air with Pastor Gary Simons of High Point Church. Listen HERE.

John Piper wants to accept into local church membership persons who were baptized as infants and for conscience sake do not want to be re-baptized as believers. He argues that by doing so he is not accepting their interpretation of what Scripture teaches about baptism. His point is that the mode and timing of baptism should not keep a genuine believer outside the local body of believers. Wayne Grudem seemed to originally agree with that position, but now in an update of his popular Systematic Theology, he has changed his mind.

John Piper writes,

When I weigh the kind of imperfection involved in tolerating an invalid baptism because some of our members are deeply persuaded that it is biblically valid, over against the kind of imperfection involved in saying to a son or daughter of the living God, “You are excluded from the local church,” my biblical sense is that the latter is more unthinkable than the former. The local church is a visible expression of the invisible, universal, body of Christ. To exclude from it is virtually the same as excommunication. And no serious church takes excommunication as an invitation to attend the church down the street.

Piper arugues that when he accepts into church membership believers who were baptized as infants and never baptized as believers, he is not giving any ground at all on his position that baptism is for believers:

I will spend the rest of my ministry trying to persuade you that you and your children should follow through on the full obedience to Jesus and be baptized. In admitting you, I do not give up on my view of baptism. That is the whole point. We are finding a way to work on this disagreement from inside the body of Christ in its local expression.

Read Piper’s position here.

Justin Taylor presents Grudem’s position here.

Mark Steyn reports that NASA has revivsed its previously released data on the hottest years on record. Turns out the 1930s were hotter than the 1990s, and FDR did nothing to stop the climate change!

They’re not issuing any press releases about it. But they have quietly revised their All-Time Hit Parade for U.S. temperatures. The “hottest year on record” is no longer 1998, but 1934. Another alleged swelterer, the year 2001, has now dropped out of the Top 10 altogether, and most of the rest of the 21st century – 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004 – plummeted even lower down the Hot 100. In fact, every supposedly hot year from the Nineties and this decade has had its temperature rating reduced. Four of America’s Top 10 hottest years turn out to be from the 1930s, that notorious decade when we all drove around in huge SUVs with the air-conditioning on full-blast. If climate change is, as Al Gore says, the most important issue anyone’s ever faced in the history of anything ever, then Franklin Roosevelt didn’t have a word to say about it.

Read the full column here: Warmongers and cheeseburger imperialists

Robert Novak gives us excellent insight into precisely why the Federal budget deficit will always be a deficit. At least one congressman with integrity stood on principle against the entire House of Representatives as he demanded justification for millions of dollars of earmarks that aren’t needed nor have they been requested by various departments of the government. These earmarks serve only one purpose: rewarding constiuents back home for their support.

Read Mr. Novak’s excellent column: House of Corruption?