Breakaway Church's Pastor Calls On ECUSA to Repent
by Jim Brown
August 6, 2004
(AgapePress) - A Milwaukee priest who left the Episcopal Church USA over its approval of an openly homosexual bishop says it is time for evangelical Episcopalians to move on and let the denomination "die on the vine, because it's already been uprooted."
The ECUSA's disregard for scriptural authority has prompted Pastor Tere Wilson to form a breakaway Anglican congregation called "Light of Christ Church." It is the first such splinter group in Wisconsin, and its head is urging other Episcopal congregations to follow his new church's lead.
Wilson, who has been an Episcopal priest for nearly 20 years, says the concerns of his congregation have been "absolutely ignored" by Milwaukee's Bishop Steven Miller and other diocesan leaders. Now he and members of his Light of Christ Church have parted ways with the ECUSA in protest of its approval of the homosexual lifestyle.
The Milwaukee pastor contends that many Episcopalians, unfortunately, are "very comfortable" and have not been exposed to biblical theology in any real sense for at least 40 years." He says not long ago he preached a sermon on sin and adultery, "and one of our elderly people in his 70s said he had never, in all of his years of being an Episcopalian, heard anybody say from the pulpit that adultery was wrong."
That is why Wilson believes many ECUSA members are still sitting in their pews instead of acting in protest of unbiblical practices endorsed by the denominational leadership. He says too many Episcopalians feel "comfort is more important than theology," but those who believe the Bible understand that the denomination's current stance cannot be reconciled with scripture.
"If you take the Bible seriously, you cannot sit with heresy," Wilson says, "and as nice as the people are sitting around you, if they're following non-biblical tradition and non-biblical teaching, then they're sitting in heresy."
The leader of Light of Christ Church says evangelical Episcopalians need to go ahead and "get out of Dodge," leaving the heretical ECUSA, and calling those still in it to repentance. Of those who choose to stay in the denomination, Pastor Wilson urges his members and others to pray for them and challenge them; but if necessary, he says it may be time to let the ECUSA "die on the vine."
