Dear Friends,
Today, the World Vision U.S. board publicly reversed its recent decision to change our national employment conduct policy. The board acknowledged they made a mistake and chose to revert to our longstanding conduct policy requiring sexual abstinence for all single employees and faithfulness within the Biblical covenant of marriage between a man and a woman.
We are writing to you our trusted partners and Christian leaders who have come to us in the spirit of Matthew 18 to express your concern in love and conviction. You share our desire to come together in the Body of Christ around our mission to serve the poorest of the poor. We have listened to you and want to say thank you and to humbly ask for your forgiveness.
In our board's effort to unite around the church's shared mission to serve the poor in the name of Christ, we failed to be consistent with World Vision U.S.'s commitment to the traditional understanding of Biblical marriage and our own Statement of Faith, which says, " We believe the Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God. " And we also failed to seek enough counsel from our own Christian partners. As a result, we made a change to our conduct policy that was not consistent with our Statement of Faith and our commitment to the sanctity of marriage.
We are brokenhearted over the pain and confusion we have caused many of our friends, who saw this decision as a reversal of our strong commitment to Biblical authority. We ask that you understand that this was never the board's intent. We are asking for your continued support. We commit to you that we will continue to listen to the wise counsel of Christian brothers and sisters, and we will reach out to key partners in the weeks ahead.
While World Vision U.S. stands firmly on the biblical view of marriage, we strongly affirm that all people, regardless of their sexual orientation, are created by God and are to be loved and treated with dignity and respect.
Please know that World Vision continues to serve all people in our ministry around the world. We pray that you will continue to join with us in our mission to be " an international partnership of Christians whose mission is to follow our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in working with the poor and oppressed to promote human transformation, seek justice, and bear witness to the good news of the Kingdom of God ."
Sincerely in Christ,
Richard Stearns, President
Jim Beré, Chairman of the World Vision U.S. Board
IOW, “We never expected donors to revolt!”
They have revealed their heart. I will not forget.
The wise counsel of Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit wouldn't hurt either.
What I do not understand is that they said the "overwhelming majority" of the Board approved the sodomite "marriage" lie.
What happened, they suddenly got convinced that the Bible is more accurate than pagan culture we're supposed to be REFORMING into the image of Christ????
I don’t think people are going to forget that these people TOTALLLY and COMPLETELY trashed the Word of God - to accommodate the downward spiral of secular society!
Reading through all the comments here on FR, it looks like the apology ain’t gonna work, lol!
I wrote them on behalf of our church benevolence committee.
Man, there must of been a whole lot more than just me writing.
The thing is that they will not be trusted now, and we have already earmarked that money elsewhere.
The just shouldn’t have gone there.
I will forgive them. But I'm not sure I can ever trust them.
Forgiveness is a gift easily given.
Trust is a virtue difficult to earn.
as a retired pastor World Vision acknowledged its true nature when it announced it would be supportive of old testament sodomy. Sorry to hear Worldly Vision forgets that it stands for Gods truth instead it went for the all inclusive garbage, And it may as well change its name too Worldly Vision. Even with the change in policy the damage is done.
“Sincerely in Christ,
Richard Stearns, President”???
He should have his mouth washed out with soap.
IDIOTS!!! These two are TOO STUPID to keep their jobs!!<P.GAY.....GAY.....GAY.....ABORTION.....GAY....ABORTION....God will NOT be mocked!!
I still want to know how they came to the original anti-Christ decision in the first place.
They conveniently left that out of their letter.
I will conveniently leave any money out of any correspondence I send them from now on.
I can do no other because I actually read the bible and make my decisions accordingly.
Lots of wolves in positions of power at World Vision. Jesus always loved the sinner but he never accepted & tolerated the sin. The apostles faced jail for confronting sinners.
Yep, World Vision revealed their feet of clay.
Too late WV. You’ve already shown your hand.
Color me skeptical and judgemental, but I’m betting they did this more out of cost-benefit analysis of threats to their donation income, than any sense of moral right & wrong.
The initial decision to allow homosexuals to work for them is all I need to know.
No Christian organization would have even considered such a policy in the first place.
Where are the resignations of the people who initially supported homosexual marriage?
I’ll believe their sincerity when I see the resignations of board members behind this mockery of God. They have shown themselves to be unqualified to serve as leaders in a Christian organization.
Ah they read FR! Good job declare victory.
Here are World Vision’s audited financial statements for the year 2011: http://www.worldvision.org/resources.nsf/Main/annual-review-2011-resources/$FILE/ar2011-audited-financial-statement.pdf
I see a section on page 3 titled “Public Cash and Food Commodity Grants” <—— This would seem to me to mean “Government Funding” totaling $240,950 (in thousands of dollars so that must mean almost $241 million if I understand this correctly). So, they may well have been pressured by the Government. This may be what all of this is about.
It will be interesting to see how this develops. Maybe they had no government pressure so they could have a.) just decided to make the decision themselves, highly unlikely to me or b.) were pressured by another special interest group (advocates for same-sex unions, sounds logical since this is what this was about) on this matter. I will add in c.) also, perhaps a company could have pressured them too, a company that gives them commodities and supports so-called “diversity” such as Nabisco.