Back in May, there was a thread discussing the issue of a PCA church evaluating an 'InterFaith' ministry:
Interfaith Ministry
It's known as 'Interfaith Hospitality Network" or "Family Promise".
Family Promise
It is an 'inter-faith' ministry to homeless families.
Subsequent to the end of that thread, I was able to contact the initiator of the thread to find out 'the end of the story', namely that his session had done what I view as the right thing, and rejected church involvement in it.
My interest was not academic, as I already knew (July '07) a 'sister' church in our PCA presbytery was trying to lead the organizing of just such a network in our county. I knew solicitation of our church to be involved would not be far behind. Sure enough, by late October I found out the diaconate was well on it's way to recommending to our session that we join up. At that point, I spoke with both the co-chairmen of our diaconate to express my concerns about it and provide them the research I had done, including the earlier thread noted above. True to their word, they noted my objections to a joint meeting of our session & diaconate when they were making their formal recommendation to join the network. That resulted in a request from the senior pastor to meet with me and the assistant pastor to discuss my concerns. At the end of Nov., we did meet for over an hour of spirited but friendly discussion where I was able to summarize and respond to them. Their responses to my objections were not what I consider to be persuasive at all. However, I just learned that the session has given approval to move ahead and join this network.
My objections to the church, as a church, being involved are:
1) This constitutes what I call 'unequally yoked ministry'
Each week the homeless family being helped in moved from one religious group (church, synagogue, mosque, meeting house, etc.) to another to share responsibility for housing them for a week. We are in joint 'ministry' with other religions in the eyes of the ministry recipients.
These networks often issues 'press releases' noting the various groups involved, which will put a public face on our linkage in 'ministry' with these other faith groups, whatever they may be.
2) There is a specific prohibition against the faith groups involved doing any proselytizing (read evangelizing). We are forbidden from having any spiritual counseling or evaluation as a required part of our ministry to the homeless. If they happen to 'ask', that's ok - but nothing spiritual can be integral to the program.
3) Working in this network will, I believe, result in an inappropriate delegation (I really want to say abandonment) of officer responsibilities and authority to an outside board that can be expected to include non-Christians, much less unordained members of a wide variety of churches calling themselves Christian.
The ministry recipients will not be vetted by our diaconate, and once a family is 'in the program', we will not have the option/power to 'revisit' their admission - all that will be decided by an outside board.
My dilemma is, what to do now - and for that I ask for your Godly wisdom. I have not shared my concerns about this with anyone else in our church up to this point, in an effort to avoid unnecessary division or disrespect of the session's leadership. The various options I can think of are:
A) Do nothing. Grin and bare it without further action.
B) Join in and help anyway as the leadership has made it's decision
C) Leave and join another church that exhibits better wisdom.
D) File a complaint with Presbytery (have no idea what their attitude will be).
E) Other?
I am inclined at this point to go with "D", but would like your input
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