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A Lutheran pastor from California was elected a bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) on Saturday, becoming the first transgender person to serve as bishop in a major Christian denomination in the US.
Rev. Dr. Rohrer says, "It's an honor to serve...Lutherans have once again declared that transgender people are beautiful children of God. Thank you to everyone who has been praying for me and my family as I accept this call."
So, how ought biblical Christians pray for her?
Be informed, not misled.
Rev. Dr. Megan Rohrer has been pastor of Grace Lutheran Church in San Francisco and community chaplain coordinator for the San Francisco Police Department.
Rohrer became the first transgender person to be ordained in the Lutheran church in 2006, according to an ELCA statement.
The statement says Rohrer will be installed on September 11 at St. Matthew Lutheran Church in Walnut Creek, California.
Rohrer will oversee 180 congregations in northern California and northern Nevada which represent more than 36,000 individual members.
The ELCA statement claims they have nearly 3.3 million members in more than 8,900 churches across the 50 states and in the Caribbean region.
They're known, they say, as the church of "God's work. Our hands."
And they say, "The ELCA's roots are in the writings of the German church reformer Martin Luther."
About "God's work."
The statement also notes that the ELCA emphasizes the saving grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ, unity among Christians, and service in the world."
Over the years I have been a guest speaker in several, not many, but several ECLA churches. I did not adjust my message and was invited back.
I have also been asked to give my opinion to ELCA pastors on certain issues here in the Northwest.
Not all ELCA churches are moving in this direction.
In 2017 Cosmopolitan Magazine published an interview with newly appointed pastor Megan Rohrer about faith and gender as an "out transgender minister."
Rohrer told Cosmopolitan, "I'm a pastor. I'm a parent. I'm transgender. I am a work in progress."
Rohrer told Cosmopolitan that "they" [Rohrer's preferred pronoun] "grew up in a heavily Lutheran community in South Dakota, was constantly harassed, but despite the hatred found a way to rise above and use faith as a source of love and acceptance, did a lot of studying and ended up becoming a pastor."
Rohrer says I was "just trying to vocalize what I knew in my gut, was OK."
Our "gut" or heart, is deceptive.
The Bible is inspired by God. Our "gut" is not.
The Bible is clear-- There is a way that seems right, but the end of it is destruction.
The Bible is also clear that God created male and female, and God is not the author of confusion. Satan is the father of lies and confusion.
In fact, God created male and female in His likeness and image.
Rohrer also told Cosmopolitan, "Using faith to tear other people down is not good news. We need to be as loud and as angry as the people who want to declare that there are types of people that God can't love."
Therein is the lie. There are no people that God does not love, and no biblical Christian believes that.
Christ died for "all." And "all" have sinned, regardless of what our "gut" may be telling us.
Megan needs a Savior and deliverer, not an affirmation of the sin. This is clearly a matter of the blind leading the blind---an issue Jesus Himself addressed in His teaching.
Megan Rohrer needs help, not greater spiritual leadership opportunities.
No one is "born that way." There is not a single thread of biological evidence that supports that idea.
God doesn't make mistakes. We do. And God offers forgiveness, deliverance, and restoration from sin to all who confess and ask Him.
Martin Luther was clear on the issue of marriage and human sexuality.
The Evangelical Church of Finland has taken a strong biblical and "Lutheran" position on marriage, and they have produced a comprehensive study on the subject. If you are a Lutheran or have further interest, check out the study.
In Luther's Large Catechism, he says:
[God] has established it [marriage] before everything else and therefore created man and woman differently (as our eyes prove), not to commit knavery but to stay together, to be fruitful, beget children, feed and raise them to the honor of God. Therefore, God has most richly blessed it, more than other estates...Thus, martial life is no jest or presumption but a serious thing and [a matter of] Godly seriousness. For to Him all power lies in it, when one raises people that serve the world and promote [it] in God's knowledge, blessed life and in all virtue, and in fighting against wickedness and the devil."
Luther also expressed this teaching in other texts such as "On Married Life" and "The Exhortation to the Teutonic Knights."
He also wrote: "For it is not a matter of free choice or decision but an essential and natural thing, that whatever is a man must have a woman and whatever is a woman must have a man...[it] is not a command, but more than a command, namely, a divine ordinance which is not our business to hinder or ignore."
And Luther said this:
"God's Word says in Genesis 1 [27-28] and 2 [18-25] that I am a man and you are are a woman, and that we shall and must come together to multiply; no one is to prevent us from doing that, nor can anyone forbid us to do it; neither do we have it in our power to vow otherwise. We dare to act upon the basis of that word...We were all created to do as our parents have done, to beget and rear children. This is by God laid out, commanded and implanted in us, which is proved by our bodily members, daily emotions and the example of the whole world."
Takeaway.
Indeed. God has placed His work in our hands. In fact, Jesus told us we, as his followers and empowered by His Holy Spirit, would even do more than He did because we are scattered all across the world.
The gospel of Jesus Christ was given in love to transform and deliver us from our sin, not affirm us in our sin.
Paul wrote in Romans 12:2,
"Be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God."
Gender dysphoria is neither good, acceptable, nor is it the perfect will of God. It leads to destruction.
To my Lutheran friends, pay attention to your colleagues in Finland. And to Martin Luther.
Most importantly, all of us must pay much more attention to God's Word, than "our gut."
Be Informed. Be Discerning. Be Vigilant. Be Prayerful.