A St. Stephen church is leaving its organization over its support of LGBTQ+ members.
St. Croix Vineyard Church has been a founding member of the Association of Vineyard Churches Canada since 1995.
Head pastor Peter Fitch said in 2014, the association banned performing same-sex marriages, but he continued to do so.
“The denomination had sent a letter to all pastors saying do not do same-sex marriages and do not ordain practicing homosexuals. But we felt we couldn’t follow that decree because it went against our conscience,” he said.
The church performed its first same-sex marriage that year, despite the ban against it. There have been two more since then.
“We weren’t trying to get everyone to change to think as we do,” said Fitch.
“We were trying to get them to open the door a little bit so that there could be a diversity, a wider table is what we call it, so there could be room for people like us that thought differently.
Fitch said the final decree came in January when all ‘affirming’ churches were asked to give up the Vineyard name and leave the association. Fitch said the church plans to avoid leaving angrily and created a website to invite people who have ever visited, to be honorary members.
He said he doesn’t think anything will change moving forward, and it seems like the members are all on board.
“Our church has been pretty vibrant within this community, we’ve got a huge community garden, we’ve done some work with refugees, we do a lot of different kinds of music events,” said Fitch.
“We’re just trying to do good work inside the community and we’ll just keep trying to do that.”
The church will be holding a “jazzy funeral” on March 15 to officially step away from the association.
A new name has yet to be chosen.
