Comment on What Happens When an Evangelical Church Welcomes LGBTQ Members

Pastor Adam Phillips was one of the young, emerging leaders of the Evangelical Covenant Church (ECC), until he expressed openness to welcoming LGBTQ members into his new ECC congregation in Portland, Oregon. “We always were about being an inclusive community, because I think that Jesus included everyone,” Phillips says. “So, of course for me inclusion meant including our LGBTQ sisters and brothers.” The denomination withdrew all their funding and support from his church in 2015 and abandoned Phillips and his congregation.