Statement of Response
 
adopted by the Board of Deacons
Monday, November 13, 2006

We, Myers Park Baptist Church, Charlotte, N.C., are affiliated with the American Baptist Churches, U.S.A., The Alliance of Baptists and, since our founding in 1943, the N. C. Baptist State Convention.  Baptists believe in “local church autonomy.”  Exercising that freedom and that responsibility to interpret scripture for our own faith and practice, we have said in our church covenant that as a “community of the new creation” we are “open to all and closed to none.”  This includes a welcome to gay and lesbian persons who wish to follow Christ with us here.

            The N. C. Baptist State Convention has voted to exclude churches that welcome gay and lesbian persons.  They may ask us either to leave or to change our practice.  We will not allow our conscience to be coerced by their exclusionary conditions of membership, and we reaffirm Christ’s welcome to all persons and our commitment to a ministry of reconciliation that seeks to be a healing witness in a world of divisions and hatreds and a part of God’s dream to make all things one.