A Call to Conversation and Discussion

The church cannot claim to love and welcome all, and then turn around and remove a pastor's license for just talking about how the church should have a conversation about loving and welcoming all. It seems counter to Jesus' teachings. What message does this send to people who identify as LGBTQIA? They will look at the church, and hear a message of love, but then lose the pastor who wrote about making LGBTQIA people feel more welcome and accepted, they will add it to their long list of wrongs at the hands of the church. And possibly leave a church or they will wash their hands of all churches. Do not listen to the angry mob that is claiming to love Jesus...listen to the people who are standing up for other's rights. There is no question, to me, where Jesus would side on this (he also wouldn't be consulting a manual for the rules and regulations on how to handle these situations).

We stand together! We need more conversation, not less #istandwithDee #westandtogether

I am aghast, ashamed, inflamed and riddled with a massive sense of protestive injustice at the most recent situation with pastor Dee, at the very derivative core of the institution in which my Great Grandfather selected to pastor, leaving his Methodist position to promote the more loving Nazarenes. There my grandfather met my grandmother in a small pioneer church in Broadwater, Nebraska. He moved to Denver, where he met Lyle and Grace Prescott, who would become missionaries to Cuba, their children including Ruth learning Spanish as native speakers. Lyle was my grandfather's best friend, my mother and their children spending countless hours fishing, camping, and bonding. Utter love! While at then PLC I spent hours in the Prescott prayer chapel at the dire injustice playing out against my beloved lifetime friend and Spanish professor, Ruth Prescott, and searching for calm in my walk as a gay man at a Nazee institution. She was disciplined for having a glass of wine with dinner in a restaurant in Mexico, having been seen by one of the Jr. Nazee SS spies there. One only need read the first edition of The Blunt which I was moved to co-found along with friends Steve and Calvin where we had brainstormed the idea in their quad in Young Hall, incensed over inequities playing out in our campus lives that were counter to all we held dear, moral and true. LuAnn, Sylvia, Neal, Mike M., Susan, and others joined the conversation, and we wrote articles... you can see the passion, feel the just protest, and know the campus issues of that day. Steve and Calvin related struggles within the editorship of The Point, of which I was not a part. We had no idea how far it would sink by today. Neal and I sold ads, Allan joined in periphery, as did others who volunteered to assist in distribution. LuAnn often touted the wise platform and irony she saw between the great Phineas F. Bresee, and the college in Pasadena/Point Loma. As the founder of the faith and of the college gone uni, his

There has to be a better way to deal with differing views…❤️

Please be on the right side of history on this”issue”. Our LGBTQIA+ siblings are watching.

I have been a member of the Church of the Nazarene for decades and am a graduate of Point Loma. Just as it was controversial in 1963 when my mother attended a school dance (and didn’t dance) and when my aunt was chastised for wearing nail polish, the CoN seems to always be out of step. We need our churches to be focusing on love and good character and leave the judging to God. The CoN seems perplexed why their congregations don’t have more young people.

Y’all need to be open to dialogue and shifts over time from rank and file or else it’s just a small ruling elite making decisions, aka fascism. These actions are not impressive, especially to anyone connected to worlds outside your church.

Dee Kelly is a wonderful pastor, and a wonderful human. So loving, and so very LOVED.

So very sad for COTN leadership to refuse to be willing to come to the table to discuss how we can love those whom Jesus loved. How is Dee’s actions amiss when we have so often gracefully accepted the actions of others in leadership who do or have participated in many different fruits of the flesh without accountability.

Dismayed that dialogue and disagreement are on par with disobedience. It’s not too late to make right the wrong done to this faithful pastor.

Nazerenes were started to support the black sheep of society. To now turn their backs on people that are oppressed in today's modern society is hypocritical at least.

I’m a former member of First Church San Diego on the PLNU Campus.

We need to do better as a denomination. We need to show more love and compassion and be open to dialogue.

This is a man who is showing love and grace through his leadership. This action by the Church is one of fear, ignorance, and bigotry. This is why the Church is fading and acting more and more desperate all the time. Now they are trying to take good people down with them.

#IStandWithDee

The church should be affirming of all its people.

By every account the decision was faithfully correct.

These kind of actions are the reason our family left the Nazarene church.

I feel a great sadness at times that the the church that brought me love and compassion I have later understood to have only brought that because I was heterosexual. I have to talk about my history with the Nazarene church with shame and it being such sadness to me.

Grace upon grace is needed in this situation.