TE Greg Johnson's speech at PCA GA 2019

Greg Johnson’s Speech against the PCA’s adoption of the Nashville Statement as “Biblically faithful"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkWdMBQyVkc

Fathers and brothers, TE Greg Johnson from Missouri Presbytery. I was not raised in a church or synagogue. I was raised by an atheist father in an atheist home and I shared that atheism…and I was his gay son. I knew I was gay at age 11. I was in a Baptist fellowship hall at my cousin’s wedding and I realized this was in the summer of 1984 that I could not take my eyes off one of the groomsmen. And I remember feeling a massive weight of shame and when I noticed that everyone was staring at me. I felt fear. It was that same day at that same wedding somebody explained that the groomsmen had a brother that the family had disowned because he was gay, and they were Christians and they could not tolerate somebody that disgusting. That was the day I realized that Christians hate gay people.

By God’s grace he pursued me and in college I became a Christian. I trusted Jesus I was baptized in a PCA church at age 20 and the next year enrolled at Covenant Seminary not because I had any interest of going in the ministry, that would come in another decade, but because I wanted to make up for lost time and I had read every single book that R.C. Sproul had written and purchased all of his VHS audio tapes and memorized them all. And I was still hungry. At this point I am 46 years old and still same sex attracted. My orientation has not changed, and for those who are exclusively SSA who are men, we don’t know even for certain of….even…I’ve talked to every head of every ministry and cannot find a single instance of SSA going away.

So where that leaves me at age 46 is that I am a 46 year old virgin who has never so much as held hands, I’ve never had a romantic embrace, I’ve never hugged romantically, I’ve had a history of struggle with pornography of which I am now 15 years sober. I am mortifying my flesh every single day, and yet that has cost. Jesus has washed me and yet I am in the fight for my life every single day and I do not regret that one bit. But the cost is this: there are no family photographs on my mantle because I have no family. The cost is I know what it is like to sit alone in my apartment on Christmas day because I have no family. The cost is that someday I will have to be buried not cremated because there will be no one to receive my ashes because my line ends with me. I don’t regret that I accept that as a calling to suffer for the sake of Jesus who says that those who give up father and mothers and husbands and wives and children and brothers and sisters for my sake will receive one hundred times more.

And I love Jesus and I wanna serve him and I am willing to suffer for him because its that beautiful and yet friends when I read article 7 of the Nashville statement, IT HURTS. Because article 7 says that it is a sin to adopt a homosexual self-conception. And we don’t do that for any other people group. We don’t tell alcoholics that it’s a sin to conceive of yourself as an alcoholic because drunkenness of sin it’s the beginning of learning to manage your alcoholism in obedience to Christ, so it doesn’t define you. We don’t tell paraplegics to conceive of themselves as able bodied because its “God’s ideal”. We wouldn’t tell an infertile woman that she needs to conceive of herself as fertile and she is unbelieving to conceive of herself as infertile because that’s not “God’s design”.

Friends, I am fallen I’m broken and Jesus has washed me and saved me and my prayer is that you would consider the damage that will be done to people like me, when article 7 says that it is a sin to acknowledge our brokenness and our shame and the suffering and sorrow that goes with that. My prayer is that we will instead do the hard work of coming up with something biblically nuanced theologically sophisticated missionally sensitive and pastorally sensitive so that people like me don’t have to go through all of the suffering I had to through because their pastors will be equipped to love people who are broken and SSA and waiting for glory, thank you brothers.

After the Nashville Statement was adopted, TE Johnson Tweeted this

Last night NS won the battle, but they will lose the war.

1. We had a seat at the table. That's new.

2. Notice the average age of the proponens and opponents. Big shift.

3. About 40% of PCA leaders rejected NS.

4. We got a study committee whose report will supersede NS in PCA.

10:23am 28 Jun 19