This week I am going to be addressing a series of critical questions that I receive regularly in my email inbox. I live in Downtown Atlanta and The Courageous Church is launching in the downtown/Midtown area of our city in 173 days. Since beginning our $20 and a Prayer campaign last week, the question I have received more than any other has been:
How does/will The Courageous Church respond to the issue of homosexuality?
While I think all churches need a very clear, nuanced answer to this question, it is doubly important that a church that claims to be courageous and is located in the area of our city with the largest population of GLBT men and women have a clarified approach to the topic and not simply pretend like it doesn’t exist.
If you get a chance to check out our website @ www.Courageous.tv and read some of our guiding questions and values, you will better understand where I will be coming from. Feel free to leave your comments and questions.
Five distinctive things about our church will guide us in our answer to this question.
- Our mission as a church is to Build Courageous Followers of Jesus that Love God, Love People, and Prove It. (Homosexual men and women are still people.)
- The first guiding question of our church is – What Did Jesus Do? (Jesus loved all people – particularly outcasts – while simultaneously calling them to a higher standard of living)
- The second guiding question of our church is – What Does the Bible Say? (I feel pretty strongly that the Bible is clear on the issue of homosexuality.)
- Our church feels called to take a stand for issues and people that others have forgotten about or too afraid to touch. (Homosexuality is one of those issues in our culture that most churches are afraid to touch with grace and intelligence.)
- While the issue of homosexuality is relatively important, it will not become a distraction from our mission and from issues that we deem to be in critical need of attention – like salvation, the world hunger crisis and slavery.
Here are my thoughts:
It is my deepest desire that ALL PEOPLE feel welcomed and loved as a part of our church – including homosexual men and women. We are fleshing out what that really means and how we prove that we love all people and not just say that we love all people. This is the benefit of being a church plant that still has time to create new culture before launching.
While we can debate it until the cows come home, it is my strong belief that the Bible is clear that homosexuality is a sin. Jesus did not address the issue of homosexuality in the Gospels because it was not an issue in need of clarification for the culture He lived in.
I do not believe that all gay people are born that way and have had enough conversations and counseling sessions with gay men and women to know that some people become gay over time. I also believe that some people are born with a genetic propensity to be gay that is hard or nearly impossible to overcome. I have seen young children (that were not abused or "exposed" to homosexuality) that seem to have major issues, sometimes biological, with gender confusion, etc. It’s real.
With that said, I ultimately view homosexuality as one sin in a world full of sin. My job is to love sinners and build them into courageous folowers of Jesus that Love God, Love People, and Prove It. I am a sinner. My sin is not homosexuality, but I have struggled with pornography and had a period in my life where I struggled with exaggeration and honesty in the name of status and comfort. These things can lead to our undoing as well.
I would not ordain or marry any men or women who have what I view as any obvious issues of sin, particularly if they are not trying to overcome this sin. The challenge is, though, that this immediately isolates gay folk that can go down the street to the church that embraces them and does not even view their homosexuality as a sin.
I’d love to hear your thoughts, insights, and criticisms on my thoughts. Let the conversation begin…
