Author: Robert
PT’s Recession Antidote: Comment and Win a $25 Amazon Gift Certificate
Leave as many comments as you want on the following post and you could be the winner of an $25 gift certificate for Amazon. It’s a great way to save money on summer reading or for books for the fall semester. The comment should be relevant to the post.
The Rewards of Gospel-Shaped Giving
Mr. Thomas Gouge in a book he wrote in the 1850’s called such an idea - the surest and safest way of thriving. Before I list the rewards mentioned in Isaiah 58 a warning to keep us focused with gospel eyes.
Site Updates Today
I am continuing to roll out updates to the site throughout the rest of the week. I hope you can excuse the mess around here as some functions and links may not work correctly and some content will not display properly at times.
Two Questions You Need Answers to if You Are Going To Reach Young Generations
In class this week we were having a discussion about about tolerance. I told them that most young people determine the tolerance level of a church by how they answer the following two questions:
1. Do you consider other world religions to be valid paths to God/heaven?
2. What do you think about homosexuality?
These are the litmus test questions of emerging generations. The students pretty much validated that these questions are at the forefront of the minds of Spanish students as well.
Spain: The Gay’s Are Not Allowed
Today (Wednesday) we considered several situations which really got the students thinking hard about how they plan to setup their future ministry or how they plan to change their existing ministries.
Here are some of the questions we discussed/debated:
1. What would you do if you were interviewing a college student for a leadership position in your college ministry and he/she told you they were sexually active? Would still hire them?
2. What would you do if you hired the student and then 5 months later he/she told you that for the past month they had been having sex with their girlfriend/boyfriend?
3. Would you allow someone to be an elder if the following were true: (1) 45yr old, (2) left homosexuality 20yrs ago when he accepted Christ, (3) is only attracted to men, and (4) realizes that acting out his homosexual desires is a sin. Would you let this man be an elder?
These prompted lots of valuable discussion. But one scenario prompted the most discussion/debate. How would you respond if you were a pastor and received the following letter:
Hello. A friend of mine invited me to your church. I have to confess, church was the last place I ever wanted to go, but I have to be honest that your approach, the entire church’s approach has me hooked! Hooked on Christ! I really never thought I’d say that. I’m trying to do things to learn, to bring me closer to Christ and to be more open and less judgmental towards organized religion. But now I’m afraid. I want your church to be my church home, where I come for comfort, for guidance with my hopes and dreams, failures, everything. What initially got me to attend was the philosophy “Come as you are.” But you see, I’m a homosexual. I am in love with another man and we will spend the rest of our lives together. This may not seem like a big deal, but I have Christian family who oppose our relationship to the nth degree. So my question is: Are we welcome and supported within your church? I guess what I need is some assurance from you that I’m not going to hell because I’m in love with a man.
I took this letter from the book No Perfect People Allowed by John Burke. Homosexuality is something the students told me the church in Spain needs to have more discussions about because there is a lot they do not understand about it. In a culture that is becoming increasingly sexual I encouraged them to think carefully about how their church is going to create a culture of healing and acceptance while at the same time standing firm on their beliefs about the sinfulness of homosexuality.
As students began to answer how they would respond to this guy I got the impression that for a couple of them, they say their goal is to love the sinner and hate the sin, but in reality their actions leaned more towards hating the sin and the sinner.
In a lot of American churches it seems to me that we also hate the sin and the sinner even though we say we love the sinner and hate the sin. I think this is reflected in how we hold up “God hates fags!” signs. And how we spend more time fighting gay rights laws than we spend actually trying to build relationships with gays and befriending them. Maybe I am making an inappropriate generalization about the American church but it has been my experience that I have heard a lot of inappropriate comments about gay people among Christians. And some of these are coming from people who have never had gay friends or have never known anyone who was/is gay. It is my opinion that this attitude either subconsciously causes us to intentionally shy away from building relationships with gays, or we ignore them altogether.
Are you interested in knowing how I would answer the above letter? I’ll tell you but you have to tell me first how you would respond.
Spain – Can we be best friends with someone who is not a Christian?
A student disagreed with my story about my friend who was struggling with God sending “innocent” people to hell. The student said he did not think it was proper to be friends with someone who is not a Christian. Another student interjected and said, “My best friend is a Muslim.” This guy came from a Muslim background and his best friend is still Muslim. My question to you is, “Do you think it is acceptable to be friends with someone who is not a Christian? If so, is there a limit to how far the friendship can go?”