Mid-Week Already

Yesterday I had a full day of counselling which I really enjoyed. But before my first appointment, I had a phone call from a lady who had read our purpose statement for our church and had some questions.

On the front of our church bulletin each week is this statement:

“Our purpose is to co-operate with God in producing loving, mature, reproducing Christians.”

This woman and her family have only attended the church for a few weeks and they wanted to bring a friend, but he is a homosexual. When they saw our purpose statement and the phrase “reproducing Christians,” they interpreted it to mean that homosexuals couldn’t come to church because they can’t reproduce.

I quickly explained to the woman that the word reproducing here had nothing to do with our sexuality and everything to do with our Christianity. We reproduce who we are and in this case we reproduce Christians.

After I explained this to her, she asked about our stand on homosexuality. We had a long discussion which I don’t have room to share here, but basically I told her my belief is that homosexuality is a ‘bent’ that we may have from abuse, trauma or just a tendency to be that way. We have all kinds of bents in our lives. Some people are bent toward alcoholism, some toward anxiety, others pride, or adultery, etc. Just because we have these bents, does not mean we have to give into them, though.

Homosexuality is like any other sin. It’s wrong because that’s not the way God created us to be. God created us to walk on a healthy path called righteousness. The purpose of life is to get onto that path. Happiness and joy come from walking on that right path. Any homosexual that I’ve met – and I’ve met many through the church and outside the church, plus one of my best friends was gay – didn’t want to be a homosexual. Why would anyone want to go against society and be the persecuted one? People don’t choose that, they just feel that that is the way they are made.

Our philosophy is always to turn the lights on and not to focus on the darkness, whatever our area of sin is – and we are all sinners. When I walk into my office in the morning, I don’t grab handfuls of darkness and try to pull the darkness out, I just turn the lights on and the darkness goes away. So our focus will always be to preach the light – the gospel. We preach God’s release, salvation, acceptance and love.

So, I told this woman she was welcome to bring her homosexual friends to church and hopefully they will see something in the lives of Christians and in Christ that gives them hope and freedom. And that’s what we want and not just for homosexuals. They are no different than any one of us and whatever bent we struggle with.

I wish I had time to talk about some of my other appointments from yesterday but my books have arrived from the printer and I need to get them boxed up and shipped off to the Philippines so they arrive before I do.

Barry