Saša Gunjević, pastor of the Hamburg-Grindelberg Adventist Church in north Germany, announced to his congregation on January 7 that he is ‘bi-sexual’.
Four days later, the Hanse Conference in North Germany issued a statement of affirmation, supporting Saša Gunjević in spite of his bisexual announcement. President Dennis Meier signed the statement of affirmation. Some excerpts:
“It is important to us (Hanse Conference) that we do not discriminate against people for their sexual orientation.”
“We want a church where queer people are not afraid of negative consequences.”
“We will decide whether to keep him as a pastor in the Hanse Conference on March 19 at our Association meeting.”
The Hanse Conference had their March Association meeting two Sundays ago and concluded the following in another statement:
We have received a complaint regarding Pastor Gunjević’s sexuality last year. Coupled with his admission of being bi-sexual, the Hanse Conference decided that there was no reason to remove his credentials as a pastor. He stays, as a bi-sexual Seventh-day Adventist pastor.
Our Commentary
According to the Bible, this man is completely unqualified to be a pastor in a Christian church. He should be removed at once on the basis of the biblical principles in 1 Thessalonians 5:22 and 1 Timothy 3:2. Justifying unholy lust in your life is not “abstaining from every appearance of evil”, but rather celebrating it.
Justifying unholy lust in your life violates the biblical qualifications of an overseer being “above reproach, faithful to his wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach” (1 Timothy 3:2).
Announcing that he is bi-sexual to his church congregation wounds the spirit of those listening to him and extends permission to impressionable young people to do likewise.
Keep in mind that the North German Union was one of the first Unions to vote for female headship (2012). Here we are 11 years later and they are approving a bi-sexual pastor in their territory. Like the rebellious Columbia and Pacific Unions, they are currently under a formal warning from the General Conference Executive Committee (October 15, 2019). Female headship and LGBTQ+ share the same ethical trajectory, the former loosening the anchor pins of the gender binary and the latter uprooting the binary altogether. It starts with women wanting a man’s job and ends with men wanting to be women (and vice versa).
The North German Union has been under a formal warning from the GCEXCOMM since 2019. That’s three and a half years. The 2018 Compliance Document outlines three steps that will be taken if a Union persists in non-compliance. The next step is a formal rebuke, and the third step is the dissolution and restructuring of that Union. A failure to implement the discipline outlined in the Compliance Document has emboldened these rebellious SDA Church entities.
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“Because the sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil” Ecclesiastes 8:11).
