Gospel Coalition Council Member and Pastor, K. Edward Copeland, Urges Grace Amid Online Disagreement

Gospel Coalition council member and the Senior Pastor of New Zion Baptist Church K. Edward Copeland speaks at The Gospel Coalition 2009 National Conference.
(PHOTO: K. EDWARD COPELAND)

The recent online sparring between leaders within and outside the Gospel Coalition because of new revelations in the Sovereign Grace sex abuse scandal and Tullian Tchividjian’s departure from the Reformed movement unfortunately keeps the attention off the the sexual abuse victims, says a coalition council member.

Gospel Coalition council member K. Edward Copeland, who is the pastor of Zion Baptist Church in Rockford, Illinois, told The Christian Post that “situations like this kind of show something about the Christian community that we need to work on and that is finding ways in our disagreement to be more gracious and to be more willing to listen to what each other are saying before we respond.”

“I think [that victims of sex abuse] deserve more from all parties involved since they are the actual victims and they’re the ones who need our support and understanding even while all the facts are being ferreted out,” Copeland said.

The Illinois pastor clarified that his words were “coming from somebody who has not been intimately involved in terms of personal knowledge in relationship to what has been going at Sovereign Grace or with Tullian and various debates that he has had with various members,” but that it seemed to him “that a lot of the blogosphere from whichever angle you want to look at it from has not been very gracious.”

Copeland suggested that he often found internet discourse to be full of “arguing or replying to or responding to things that are actually not being said and caricaturing people as opposed to recognizing that in all of these matters there’s some humility that needs to be exercised and there are nuances that cannot be fully articulated in a 140 character tweet.”

Copeland stressed that the Gospel Coalition was not a convention or denomination where all of its participants had similar theological perspectives or could speak for one another.

“The Gospel Coalition is not monolithic. It’s a network of networks. It’s a fellowship of Evangelical pastors an others, who, though we have different perspectives and might even theologically have different views of things like baptism, or things like that, we’re held together in the center,” said Copeland.

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SOURCE: The Christian Post
Morgan Lee