Last January, Saša Gunjević, pastor of the Hamburg-Grindelberg Adventist Church in north Germany told his congregation that he is bisexual,
“I’m bisexual. That means I can fall in love with both women and men.
I made it my mission to change the church for the better by expanding the reach of its love, which, in my opinion, should truly know no bounds.
I hope that our churches become places where queer, gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, and intersex people can feel at home, loved, and accepted. Where we can openly live our partnerships, and dress and present the way we want, just as our heterosexual siblings are able to.”
A few days after his message, the Hanseatic Conference published that it had no reason to act against him, declaring, “We want a church where queer people are not afraid of negative consequences and can live without secrecy and loneliness…”
The North German Union has done nothing to resolve this public rebellion against God and His Word. The North German Union was one of the first Unions to approve feminist headship (2012). Eleven years later they are approving a bi-sexual pastor in their territory. Feminist 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).
On March 30, last year, the Inter-European Division said they will “work with the Hanseatic Conference and the North German Union, to address this issue and reconsider the status of his credentials.” Nothing has been done about it. We have—on good record—that the leaders of both German Unions are laughing at the world church.
An April 4, last year, World SDA Church leaders called on the North German Union and the EUD Inter-European Division to deal swiftly with this pastor’s violation of our biblical moral standards. To our knowledge, nothing has changed.
At the October Annual Council meeting in Silver Springs, MD there was no mention of the German LGBTQ problem. The GC executive committee has the ability to intervene according to its working policy and the Compliance Document. To our knowledge, they haven’t.
The Hanseatic Conference pastors issued a letter on December 20, in which they defend their position on LGBTQ and call for “freedom to approach biblical texts with an open mind in order to gain new insights.” In other words, we want to reinterpret the Bible in light of evil western culture.
In a dishonest display of word salad-ing they say we need “a faithfulness to the Bible that is not restricted by church traditions.”
True to liberal norms, 60% of the letter is devoted to the celebration of victimhood and complaining about people (members) who disagree with their unbiblical pro-LGBTQ+ agenda. They are trying to justify having wolves as shepherds of the flock and paying them through tithe offerings, prompting a young person in Europe to ask “How are we supposed to live in this hijacked situation?”
Seventh-day Adventist members in Germany who follow the Bible must stand up to these unbiblical ideas and renounce pastors, Conferences and Unions who are destroying and scattering the flock of God (Jeremiah 31:1).
One Conference President is standing against this LGBTQ agenda in Germany. Are there others?
This is an existential moment for the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and we call on leaders to act in the spirit of Hezekiah, not Eli. In other words, lead.
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“I have spread out My hands all day long to a rebellious people, who walk in the way which is not good, following their own thoughts” (Isaiah 65:2).
