This post was originally published at Examiner.com.

Early Wednesday afternoon, around 1:50 local time, a sudden tornado traveled from south Minneapolis into the city damaging the Convention Center, a Lutheran church and a music shop. Dozens of homes and trees were damaged in the early touching down, while a different tornado crushed the roof of a North Branch middle school about 50 miles away, bringing doubts as to whether that school might open on time. The tornados were described as “weak” as the Weather Service gave both wind funnels a rating of EF0, the lowest on the scale.

Perhaps it was the “weak” designation that prompted popular Minneapolis pastor, John Piper of Bethlehem Baptist Church, to wonder on his blog whether God was giving a gentle warning to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America who were about to debate the ordination of practicing homosexuals into the ranks of their ministry. Piper wrote of seeing the cloud from distance, posted a picture of the damaged steeple of the Central Lutheran Church where the ELCA attendees were meeting and divined that the purpose of the tornado was related to the ELCA’s decision, writing, “The tornado in Minneapolis was a gentle but firm warning to the ELCA and all of us: Turn from the approval of sin. Turn from the promotion of behaviors that lead to destruction.” Not the possibility of one of the damaged houses being a crack den, or the school being a poor use of money or the music store having the name “Electric Fetus,” which, had I been God, would have received a lightning strike in addition to wind damage.

Finish reading at the Atlanta Southern Baptist Examiner