COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO - The Rev. Benjamin Reynolds, senior pastor of Emmanuel Missionary Baptist Church and one of Colorado Springs’ leading civil rights advocates, will step away from the pulpit Sunday, a few weeks after telling his congregation he is gay.Reynolds, a longtime advocate for gay and lesbian rights, revealed his sexual identity during a church meeting last month. He announced his resignation during the same meeting.
“It’s not really a happy leaving,” Reynolds said Thursday.
According to Deacon Kevin Hagans, Emmanuel’s director of operations, many church congregants feel that homosexuality runs counter to the Christian doctrines.
“The church and Pastor Reynolds have a different view as far as homosexuality goes,” Hagans said.
The 500-member church has not named a successor, Hagans said.
Reynolds, 45, grew up in Emmanuel Baptist and started preaching there when he was 14. He’s been the church’s senior pastor for nearly 16 years. Reynolds was president of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People for more than two years, stepping down from that post in 2005.
But Reynolds’ stance on gay issues — including making Emmanuel Baptist an “open and affirming” congregation for gays and lesbians — rubbed many of his congregants the wrong way, he said. That friction, not his sexual orientation, is what caused him to resign, he said.
Reynolds said it would have been difficult for him to remain once he revealed that he was gay, however.
“I think the black church has a long way to go in this area,” he said. “The oppressed, when they feel a place where they’re free, they’ll find others who they’ll oppress.”
Reynolds said part of the reason why he told his congregants he was gay was to personalize the pressing theological, social and political issues that revolve around sexuality.
He said he knows he’s “considered an outcast now,” but added that members of Emmanuel Baptist have been “as supportive as they can be.”
Reynolds said he doubts he’ll stay in Colorado Springs and plans to take doctoratelevel theology classes, possibly at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver. He says he has a “pastor’s heart,” and would like to return to a pulpit.
“I’ve not lost sight of my faith,” he said.
from The Gazette
rev reynolds is not leaving because the church asked him to. he is not leaving because he is gay, the church has known almost from the begining that he was gay and though most did not agree with it they put up with it. he is leaving however, because he knew his days were numbered-not because he is gay. but because he took a church that had no mortgage, a $270,000.00 surplus along with a scholarship fund, and ran it into the ground. the church now stands almost 300,000.00 in DEBT, the is a college fund no more, and it owes the IRS. when he was qestioned about his expenditures, he said he was the pastor- THREATEN TO SUE THE CHURCH, cut out having church meetings, and the last few months blamed everyone else for what he did and controlled.
ReplyDeletehe is not leaving because of the church, he is leaving because he made a big huge hariy mess.