Scouts, FLBC strike a deal
By LPR Staff
Editor/POST-REGSITER
A compromise has cleared the way for Boy Scout Troop 215 to part ways amicably with the First Lockhart Baptist Church.
Last month, the FLBC Board of Deacons offered a recommendation that the church terminate its charter with the troop, effective at the end of the year. The decision, they said, was not meant to reflect on th
e local troop or leadership, but rather in an effort to send a message to the Boy Scouts of American on the national level. It was spurred by the Scouts’ decision to allow openly gay members to participate; that decision, church leaders felt, was tantamount to supporting what the church’s teachings deem a “sinful lifestyle.”
Before the resolution could be taken to the congregation for a vote, however, Troop 215 Scoutmaster Cody Baird proposed a compromised. He asked the Deacons to bring forward a motion to allow the troop to leave of their own accord, in hopes of sparing the hard feelings that a split vote may have caused within the membership.
“After several weeks of debate, Troop 215 approached FLBC with the request that the troop be allowed to voluntarily leave the church and search for a new home,” Baird said Tuesdsay. “We are pleased that the church has granted us this request, and we will continue to meet at FLBC until we are able to find a new charter organization.”
Baird continued, saying that the troop wants to continue to provide a place where the youth of the community can have a place to learn, grow, explore and give back to their community.
“The boys and adults of Troop 215 have always seen this as a great opportunity to grow and build a new partnership with people in Lockhart,” he said. “We would like to thank all the folks in the community who have been so supportive during this time, and we look forward to helping you in the future.”
FLBC Pastor Gary Rodgers, initially explained that the Deacon Board’s resolution asking for the church to sever the charter had been a difficult decision, but one that the church leadership felt was in line with God’s teaching.
Rodgers was unavailable for comment to follow up on this situation.
The church has taken “hush money” in the form of an optional tax-exempt status. It has no option but to comply with public policy and state law, as the 501(c)3 makes the church a fictional creation of the State. What the State creates, the State rules over, and its creation must obey.
The REAL church is the Body of Christ and can never be a legal fiction. The FLBC is going to learn that you can’t serve two masters. Either they are the Body of Christ OR a 501(c)3 Church Inc., what the Bible calls a “whore” that leaves her first love to go after the world. The real church is already tax exempt, and enticing tithes in order to take a tax write-off is not Biblical giving. Matt. 6:4
The Reformation was all about the liberty to serve the Lord without the state’s control. In 1954, with Sen. Lyndon Johnson’s collusion with the IRS, religious liberty died and the Reformation gains were nullified with the stroke of a pen. The State will often make legal by majority that which God’s Law-Word has eternally made unlawful; sodomy and abortion and theft by taxation come to mind. Churches that give tacit approval to these abominations by their willful surrender to the 501(c)3 gag order are practicing the lawlessness that is condemned throughout Scripture. Matt. 7:23
The real decision that FLBC must make is whether to continue in the lie, or to repent and separate from the 501(c)3 status. Otherwise, situations like this, and the lawsuits that accompany them, will only increase as society continues its downward spiral into perversion.
Joshua said it well: “…choose you this day whom ye will serve…”