An Open Letter to the Pastors of the Vineyard Movement

From a Queer Woman who once Learned So Much From You

You are missing the movement of the Holy Spirit.

I say this because it is true and I say it to get your attention because I know that this is something you care about. You have always been a Holy Spirit movement and, if you are honest with yourselves, you know that that has been a messy proposition right from the start. In all of my time among you and after I have never known a group of people so thirsty for the outpouring of the Spirit. You are Holy Spirit people; that is part of what makes you, you.

But you are missing Her and I want better than that for you.

In August of 2014 the Vineyard USA published Position Paper 7: On Pastoring LGBT Persons and with that move, chose to designate people in gay relationships as functionally unable to minister the Holy Spirit to you. You decided in advance that the Holy Spirit would not be moving through us.

Today I was listening to the song “Faith” by Semler I found these lines repeating in my soul:

It’s not the one you preach; It’s the one we need.

Vineyard USA didn’t have to publish Position Paper 7. I know there was loads of pressure to. I know you would have lost churches if you hadn’t—more churches than you lost when you did. You didn’t have to though. You are not supposed to be popular pressure people or money people; you were supposed to be Holy Spirit people.

I remember being in Vineyard Spaces—especially in Vineyard Scholar spaces but in a few others as well—back in 2012 and 2013 and there was a chance then, and even into 2014 where you could have made a different decision. Granted, it was always a small chance, but it was a chance nonetheless. There were voices, and even leaders, in your midst calling for you to go in a different direction, urging you to watch and to see what the Holy Spirit might be doing.

I started thinking again today about the story of Peter and Cornelius. I know you know the one—us queers are forever bringing it up after all—and it’s one of your favorites as well. God tells Cornelius, the gentile—the Roman—, to send some messengers to collect Peter so that Peter could tell him and his household about Jesus. Meanwhile Peter has a vision that baffles him in which he is repeatedly told “What God has made clean, you must not call profane”. So when the messengers show up Peter is primed to go with them. Then Peter preaches the Gospel to Cornelius and his household and while he is speaking the Holy Spirit falls on them and Peter declaims “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?”

I guess you can withhold that water though or, at least, your institution can.

Peter saw what the Holy Spirit was doing and decided he had no choice but to follow Her. He wasn’t always the greatest at it; he messed it up at least once and Paul had to call him on it. He wasn’t perfect but then are we ever perfect in following where the Spirit is moving? Because, friends, that is what I am writing this letter to tell you: The Holy Spirit is moving today. She is moving and dancing over those the church has tried to exile to the wilderness. By now, if you are at all online, you have seen it expressed in a million memes and cartoons and think pieces; when the church pushes out God’s beloved children, the Spirit does not abandon them—she follows them into the wilderness.

We are wilderness people. We whom the church has discarded, have been finding one another for years now. Sometimes we find other churches, sometimes we make encampments in the wilderness, sometimes we have wandered and are still wandering, looking for places of life; but wherever we find ourselves now, we are marked as wilderness people. And we are beautiful. We are messy, and hurt, and broken; and we are compassionate, and resilient, and dedicated to finding our way outside of the spaces from which we were exiled. And many of us still remember our “homelands”.

That is why I am writing you today. I was talking with another Vineyard adjacent friend recently and we were reminiscing and I admitted to her that I can’t seem to stop caring about you. So I wanted to send you a letter. I wanted to let you know that out here, the Spirit is moving. Those who are wounded are healed, those who were blinded have been finding their sight; we have seen miracles, our elders are dreaming and our children are prophesying. I don’t really know how things are going for you. I gather it has been kinda rough. Out here, the wounds are often still raw and we are routinely mocked, derided, and slandered by those who call themselves “elect”. But out here we have the Holy Spirit. Sometimes She wears different words than what you might be used to and some of our miracles are different from what you try to perform¹ but She is moving and people are coming back to life.

There was a time when you might have chosen a different path; maybe there is still time for you to make that choice. Maybe, instead of hiding Position Paper 7 while keeping it in effect, you could officially rescind it. Maybe the institution could repent for chalking us outside of is lines—maybe. I know it will be even harder now than it would have been then. I have learned that following God is like that sometimes. The longer we put off making the hard choice, the harder that choice becomes. Are the voices of exclusion and nationalism, of bounded sets and “traditional values” stronger among you now than they were in 2014? It will probably be very hard for you as an institution to leave the comfort of your city and to find us here in the Wilderness². It will be hard for you as individual pastors and churches to do that too—they might kick you out; they probably will kick you out—I remember that Jesus once said that he came not to bring peace but a sword. He said that he would set fathers and mothers against one another and that parents would disown their children. My friend Sam (another queer woman full of the Holy Spirit) has helped me see that this is the sort of thing He was talking about. It’s hard, and it is painful. I don’t have any guarantees that it will work out either. But the Holy Spirit is here.

And maybe the risk is too great, and who am I for you to trust me anyway? So let me lower the risk with a smaller ask. Come sojourn here with us for a few days and see if this report is accurate. Go find a local affirming church, or community, or conference³ and just attend. Your congregations will survive a week or two with you gone. Be polite, be open and be kind—remember that out here, you are the guest—and watch to see whether the Spirit is moving among us. After all, “the wind blows wherever it pleases” and maybe you will hear its sound and find that we too are born of the Spirit.

When John the Baptist was in prison he sent some of his disciples to Jesus just to confirm that all of this really was the the plan, that Jesus really was who John had staked his life on Jesus being. I want to end this letter with the (paraphrased) words of Jesus.

Go back and tell your churches what you see: The blinded are learning to see again, the lamed are walking, those tainted and called diseased are welcomed as clean, the deafened are hearing, the dead are rising, and the good news is being proclaimed to the poor. Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me.

1. We don’t much go in for lengthening legs out here and I am not aware of anyone finding gold in their beard, but there is glitter sometimes.

2. The longer you stay in Omelas, the harder it gets to walk away.

3. The Queer Christian Fellowship Conference will be in January in Albuquerque and would be an excellent opportunity for you to visit among us.