?He who conceals his sins will not prosper, But he who confesses and forsakes them will find compassion.? Proverbs 28:13
MINISTRY UPDATE
Dear ministry friends & partners,
I?d like to begin by sharing a deep and appreciative ?thank you? to each of our ministry supporters. These have been such harsh and difficult times due to Covid-19, but so many of our partners continued to send their financial gifts of support and pray for Love & Truth Network.
Your faithfulness reminds us that we aren?t doing this work alone. You are with us, helping to meet our practical needs, cheering us on and praying for the work that God has placed before His church.
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MINISTRY CONTINUES
While ministry travel has been put on hold due to Covid-19, Jeremiah and I have been keeping full and fruitful schedules as we study and practice, getting up to speed on the new online curriculum platform we recently purchased, as well as understanding and utilizing our new webinar platform.
Speaking of webinars, I?m very pleased to let you know that Rev. Beth Caulfield, President of the Greater NJ Weslayan Covenant Association chapter, and I recently offered a 90 minute webinar for folks in her circle of connection and influence. The topic was on a bit of my personal story, discussion of biblical perspectives of human sexuality, how those truths eventually impacted my life and called me to repentance, as well as a question and answer segment at the end. It was a great opportunity with very positive feedback. In fact, we?re planning another webinar and looking forward to many repeat and additional participants.
We?re excited that this is just the beginning of our distance ministry via webinars.
We have also developed a video training opportunity via Zoom for pastors, their leadership and/or ministry teams. While we are using webinars as a means to expose people to biblical concepts and testimonies of people who have broken free of sexual sin and LGBTQ identity, we are offering Zoom team-trainings as a more personalized and contextual opportunity to address specific needs particular churches are facing in ministry. Would you let your pastor know about this offering? I would love the chance to talk with him or her about how we can come alongside your church.
For people who may not be aware, the United Methodist Church may soon be splitting, with a new denomination started that holds to a traditional biblical view of human sexuality and relationships. I have been honored to serve toward the successful launch of a new denomination speaking as a member of the Lay-Revitalization team subcommittees. When considering what a new denomination can accomplish and the ways in which its members can reflect the heart of Jesus, the foundation of this new denominational beginning is so vital.
A new church movement cannot afford to be fatigued by and fed up with the idea of ongoing dialog about sexuality and identity. MY hope and prayer is that we allow God to use past involvement in The United Methodist Church and the extensive awareness at how compromise on these topics will cripple a church as well as a worldwide denomination, and propel us to have a vibrant message and life-giving vision.
The new church could become a leading voice?holding out hope, love and truth as guideposts for a new movement that refuses to pretend sexual sin isn?t epidemic within the church. We need a new church movement that God can use in an incredibly fractured society as well as an often-compromised and ?me-centered? church culture.
We have a fresh opportunity to be conduits of the nature, glory, passion and redemption of God for a lost world, as well as a refreshing embrace of His purpose to draw sons and daughters to become more and more like Jesus over the course of their lives: sanctification. The work of this team has been enlightening and encouraging.
You?ve likely heard the quote, ?Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.? As I have been considering what I can bring to the Lay-Revitalization team, I have been thinking back on my own history. I was raised in church, and with the exception of several years of flat-out rebellion, I have been in church all my life. I have also lived all around the country and attended many different churches.
While considering my own history, I was reminded of several crucial experiences with pastors and key Christian leaders. I believe these were opportunities God gave leaders to influence my life and interrupt the path of destruction I was on. While each of these pastors and leaders were good people who had good intentions, some of them completely missed the chance that God laid out before them to be a lifeline for a young boy and young man.
As pastors, leaders or simply as those who claim Jesus as Lord, none of us want to miss crucial opportunities to rescue and influence struggling men, women or young people. None of us want to be the person who had a chance to influence another in powerful and transformational ways, only to not recognize the opportunity, or worse, to actually drive the person further away from the God who loves them and desires to give them new life and a new identity in Christ.
I?d like us to consider how we can prepare and I?d like to give you some examples from my own life about how pastors and leaders missed opportunities God put before them, and how others seized those opportunities and are a huge part of the reason why I am a husband, father and follower of Christ today. What might we learn from these examples?
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TEACHING CORNER
?The Lord?s bond-servant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged, with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive to do his will? II Tim 2:15, 2:24-26
We read in this passage an essential teaching which applies every bit as much to us today as it once did to Paul?s young protégé, Timothy. It is the blueprint or manner in which Christ followers (His bond-servants) are to conduct ourselves when opportunities arise for dialog or teaching that could easily become argumentative or quarrelsome.
This passage is not reserved for an elite class of super-Christians or leaders. Rather, every follower?every ?bond-servant??is told that we must be able to teach and correct. We can?t leave this heavy-lifting up to our pastor or someone else.
However, the manner in which we offer teaching and correction is everything. Yes, we obviously must teach what is true, and sadly, truth regarding the authority of Scripture, sin, Lordship, sexuality, identity and a variety of other essentials are in short supply in many churches.
Yet even when we have all the facts right, all the truth ?i?s? dotted and ?t?s? crossed, we can still be terribly wrong, because these truths are not communicated in humility, love, gentleness and patience. The apostle Paul goes to great length to underscore this concept in I Corinthians 13? ?without love it profits me nothing??
I often say that everything I have, everything I preach, teach or otherwise communicate in ministry, I have received from others: spiritual moms, dads, mentors and pastors pouring in truth through their love and patience, and walking alongside a once extremely spiritually and emotionally broken man.
Thankfully there?s been some growth in my life over the years and God has gained greater ground and authority. I?m not the same man I once was. That will be true of all authentic Christ-followers, regardless of their past or current sin-bent or particular struggles with fleshly desires; over time we become more like Jesus and shed our former manner of life.
We are all called to holiness. In fact, the apostle Peter is very clear on this point in I Peter 1:14-16 ?As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; because it is written, ?You shall be holy, for I am holy?.?
I think back sheepishly on many of the childish attitudes and behaviors I functioned out of for many years, well into my adulthood. But God kept working in and stretching me, calling me into situations and experiences that were totally over my head and definitely out of my comfort zone.
Today, as the husband of Melissa and father of our two young boys, it?s kinda crazy to recall what life in the LGBTQ community once looked like. I was reminiscing on my history (not in a nostalgic way, but in an ?I can?t believe I made it out of my past alive? kind of way) and what?s more, I can?t believe how shockingly merciful, patiently corrective, and abundantly loving God has been with me. I?m forever grateful some men and women said ?yes? to God?s prompting in their lives to walk with me. I certainly wasn?t easy or convenient. But I needed them. I needed them to be the hands and feet of Jesus. I hope you?re also willing to be the hands and feet of Jesus to lost and confused people.
This is what we need more of in a fresh movement and new denomination, and in our day there?s no greater confusion, bondage or destruction than sexual immorality or misplaced identity. It?s easy to fall into either a Bible-thumping, truth waving ideology, or a permissive, ?progressive? celebration of whatever someone feels like doing or being. What?s difficult is walking within the tension of both love and truth without minimizing either. We are in desperate need of such Christ-followers?spiritual moms, dads, brothers and sisters.
The Word is clear that God disciplines those He loves; according to Proverbs 3:12 and Hebrew 12:5-11, those who never experience discipline aren?t actually sons or daughters of God. I think God was so patient with me because I grew up with a perception of God as harsh and rule-based on everything. I didn?t see Him as loving at all. Over time He carefully began unraveling my erroneous thinking.
My personal reflections took me back to a series of experiences I had over a broad span of many years with various pastors. These experiences were significant and life-shaping, both for good and bad. Each one of these pastors could have been any other Christian without a vocation in the church. Anyone could have reacted the same way, but these experiences carried additional weight that defined me because these were Christian leaders.
We aren?t looking backward to assess blame or stir up negative feelings (although, if that happens there might be some additional work to be done; such as forgiveness). Rather we want to understand what we might learn from our experiences (good and bad) and renew our commitment to serve others within the body of Christ, as well as those wondering about who this Jesus is?with authentic care, listening ears, and real answers. We want to live out Paul?s command to teach and correct with kindness, patience and gentleness. Let?s consider how we can do this more sincerely and effectively.
TESTIMONY- GARRY?S STORY
(Part #1 ? continuing this theme in future ministry updates):
The Sunday service was over. I don?t remember where my parents were or why I was still at the church. I was just seventeen years old and already attending a local Bible college. I sometimes stayed after church to practice piano and catch a ride back to school with someone later in the day. In any case, on this particular Sunday afternoon I was alone in the sanctuary, that is, except for my pastor.
My teen and pre-teen years had been hard; I was miserable. I know that comes with the territory of being a young adolescent, but I was more miserable than most. I felt cut off from men and boys.
Friendships were non-existent. I was bullied and ridiculed constantly at school. I was deeply lonely, characterized by relentless feelings of not belonging, being unwanted, too needy and neither good at or interested in anything boys were supposed to be good at and interested in.
Although I had a father at home and three older brothers, from as far back as I can recall there was no connection with any of them. I was different. I was other, but I had no idea what other; I wasn?t a girl, but if I was a boy why was it impossible to fit in with my kind? In many ways I related far better with girls and women and felt I had much more in common with them. I bonded with my mom and one older sister. I felt far safer with them than with boys, but I wasn?t a girl; what was I?
I had secrets I was terrified someone else would find out about. My longtime addiction to pornography, masturbation and sexual encounters with an older neighborhood boy were three of the biggest. I had a distinct feeling I was a freak of nature, a cruel joke, something in between, something that didn?t belong. I recall feeling like some kind of ?third-gendered thing.?
I felt empty and desperate often with nothing to hold onto and no one to tell me who I was, and that Sunday morning was no exception. I don?t remember what my pastor?s message was about or if something he said compelled me to ask, but I found myself sitting opposite from him in the back of the church. He had turned a chair around to face me.
While feelings of intense fear and shame washed over me I stammered to find words and get them out. What felt like an eternity was abruptly halted as my pastor apparently realized what I was trying to tell him. In his extreme discomfort he stood up, flipped that chair back around, gave me a little pat on the shoulder and said, ?You aren?t doing so badly? and hurried out of the sanctuary.
I sat there, stunned and embarrassed; hopelessness doubling down. If my struggle is so bad my own pastor can?t even tolerate hearing what I?m trying to tell him or offer any encouragement or direction, I really must be beyond hope and help.
In fact, only a few months after that experience a beloved and popular pastor and radio teacher spoke at my college?s commencement ceremony. I just completed a one-year Bible program and registered for my second year, while my brother was also graduating from pastoral studies as that year?s co-valedictorian.
I liked this pastor?s teaching when I heard him on the radio and felt honored that he agreed to give the commencement speech for our graduation. One day while listening to this same pastor on the radio my worst fears were confirmed. He was teaching out of Romans 1 and made the statement that if anyone engages in homosexual behavior God gives them over to a reprobate mind and there is no turning back for them.
I was driving my car at the time and felt like someone had punched me in the gut. His statement sealed my fate. ?If this Bible scholar and teacher said this it must be true,? I thought.
I Corinthians 6:9-10 and Romans 1 were passages that I quickly read past or jump over entirely because they always felt so condemning and hopeless to me. I don?t know why I (or this radio teacher) didn?t seem to be aware of 1 Corinthians 9:11 which begins with the encouraging words (after the long sin-list of 9-10 and the sharp warning that those who practice such things won?t inherit the Kingdom of heaven), ?such were some of you,? Paul writes. The very sins Paul warns about he also says once characterized the Christians he was writing to in Corinth?including homosexuality. Why was that never talked about in the churches I grew up in or the Bible college I was attending?
That statement is a lifeline for everyone who has failed and lived in patterns of sin, even sexual sin and homosexuality, before repenting and turning to Jesus, but all I felt was condemned and lost. I now know that the Church actually has the answers. It has always had the answers, often times hiding in plain sight. But church-folk need to care enough to break through the barriers of shame, fear and pride to get real with one another and start talking about what Jesus has set each of us free of.
Ironically, (sidebar here) it?s worth mentioning that just a few months ago my wife and I experienced a couple who believed the same thing I heard this radio teacher and pastor say so many years ago. They learned something about our story and went home to look up our ministry. They didn?t know us personally at all. I have never met either one of them, but they began to build a case against us, attempting to get our family kicked out of our homeschool community because they have been influenced by a pastor who embraces and preaches a false teaching: that it?s impossible for former LGBTQ people to repent and become true followers of Christ.
Yes, we get it from all sides, which we shouldn?t be surprised by. God remains faithful, as do so many of His sons and daughters. I?m happy to say we are still with our beloved homeschool community, though sadly the other family would not remain if we were allowed to stay. This, of course, was never even a question for the leaders of our community. They know us and know that we are committed followers of Christ.
Although I don?t believe there are many pastors who would now respond in the same way as my former pastor did, a large part of that is due to the fact that LGBTQ is commonplace in our society. Gay, Lesbian, Transgender self-identified individuals are prominent and highly supported in nearly every area of our society?from entertainment, to religion, to sports, to politics. However, I don?t believe that many pastors or Christians are much more prepared to have a gentle, honest or knowledgeable conversation than my pastor was when I was seventeen years old.
This isn?t only true of LGBTQ topics, but any area of sexual sin or addiction. Pornography use, adultery, and sex before marriage are all massive issues even within the orthodox United Methodist Church, and every other denomination or non-denominational church. Starting a new denomination won?t suddenly stop rampant sexual sin in this new church, because fallen men, women and young people will be there. We have to face the epidemic of sexual sin in even the most theologically orthodox churches head-on, with transparency and vulnerability, with truth and correction given in kindness, patience and gentleness.
If the power of God is still at work today (and it is), if the finished work of Christ on the cross can actually change lives (and it does), why are we shrinking back in fear and uncertainty? Why do we pretend sexual sin and idolatry have somehow been tamed since Old Testament days? These have always been two of the most destructive weapons in Satan?s arsenal against the people of God.
That is exactly why Love & Truth Network exists: to equip pastors and the church on these difficult and controversial issues, but issues that also have incredible opportunity embedded within them as well. Let?s not miss the life and transformation an equipped, transparent and effective church or new denomination offers for ?such a time as this.?
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