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Epiphany pastor wants answers to same-sex clergy issue

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By Jill Kelley, Staff Writer Updated 3:11 AM Sunday, December 12, 2010

CENTERVILLE — The Rev. John Bradosky, senior pastor at Epiphany Lutheran Church, recommended to his congregation in a letter dated Nov. 30 that it should vote officially whether to part ways with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

The proposal is the latest effort to address disagreements within the congregation regarding the ELCA’s August 2009 social statement regarding is acceptance of gay clergy, other issues within the ELCA and differences of opinion in leadership within the church.

Bradosky said the division within Epiphany, which has campuses in Centerville and Washington Twp., started years ago when the social statement was in the discussion stages.

“There were those who opposed my perspective and teaching and sought out other staff whose perspectives were more closely aligned with their own,” he wrote in the letter. “Instead of trying to find common ground, the polarization grew.”

In the past year, there have been multiple efforts to unify the congregation.

In February, members passed a resolution to stay with the ELCA and “agree to disagree” regarding the gay clergy issue. In wake of that resolution, Bradosky wrote, attendance and offerings began to drop.

He said the resolution caused a deeper division.

“It was clear that I was the primary target of this group, but their actions also compromised the strength of our ministry,” wrote Bradosky, who could not be reached for comment for this story.

He has said this process has been devastating for him personally and that he has been called “a hate monger, a bigot, engaging in a personal vendetta against those in same-gender relationships, divisive and trying to destroy this congregation.”

Bradosky wrote that he does not judge those in same-gender relationships any harsher than he does himself, but he believes that Scriptures teach that same-gender sexual activity is sinful.

In November, the congregation was asked by Bradosky and the church council to participate in an informal straw poll as to whether the congregation should amicably split into two groups.

Out of its 3,000 members, 387 voted to stay together and 168 voted to split.

Since that time, Bradosky said he has reached the point that he can no longer stay with the ELCA.

“The ELCA has departed from the biblical and theological center that formed and shaped my identity as a pastor, such that I can no longer support it nor can I continue to be associated with it,” he wrote

He continued that these differences in theology are why he is suggesting that the congregation vote — not later than Jan. 16 — whether the church should split with the ELCA,.

If members agree, the congregation would take two votes within 90 days, per the ELCA’s constitutional process.

Bradosky said that if Epiphany chooses to leave the ELCA, it would affiliate with the more traditionally focused National American Lutheran Church.

If the congregation votes not to split with the ELCA, Bradosky wrote: “I believe that a new mission congregation for the NALC would be formed by those who also have decided that they too can no longer stay in the ELCA.”

If that happens, he wrote, he would want to start a new mission congregation with the Rev. Todd Kornahrens, an associate pastor at Epiphany.

Kornahrens could not be reached for comment.

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