The plight of Syrian refugees has largely dropped out of the news cycle, but for most the painful road continues. On Friday evening, I attended “Faith Rising,” an event sponsored by Partners International, highlighting the work being done by Arab Christians to bring help and hope to those still trapped in refugee camps in Lebanon. While the protests of the Arab Spring in late 2010 and early 2011 seemed like they might freedom to many living under corrupt and oppressive dictatorships, in Syria they led to a civil war that has claimed nearly 200,000 lives.
Last week I wrote about Christopher Yuan’s remarkable testimony of faith and transformation. Having walked the road that he has, he’s in a unique position to educate the church on how to minister more effectively to people from an LGBT+ background. The reality is that there are almost certainly people within our congregation who experience temptations toward same-sex attraction or transgender identity and yet our words and attitudes can vilify them and communicate that we’re not safe people who can be approached for help in dealing with these issues. The following are some of the lessons that I learned from Christopher’s workshop.
In the last decade, public opinion on issues related to the LGBT+ community has shifted so rapidly that many Christians are still trying to catch up. It’s never helpful trying to understand an issue from a distance but the reality is that many of us have never sat down and had thoughtful conversations with people who have a first-hand understanding of same sex attraction and transgender temptations and are also fully committed to the Scriptures as the Word of God. That’s why I found Christopher Yuan’s workshop on “Christianity and Homosexuality” so helpful. Let me share some of what I learned.
Wisdom doesn’t just sit on the side of the fence that feels most natural. It maintains a biblical balance especially where it confronts our blind spots. David Murray helps describe this tension: “Patient waiting doesn’t excuse us from teaching, correction, discipline, exhortation, etc., but it does save us from exasperation, exhaustion, and expiration.”
People think their church is friendly because they have developed friendships with others in the church who are, of course, friendly to them. Jesus taught us that that kind of friendliness doesn’t really say much about our faith, “If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.” (Luke 6:32). Being a friendly church isn’t just about being friendly to your friends; it really comes down to how friendly you are to the people at church that you don’t know.
Questions can make hermits out of us, driving us into hiding. Yet the cave has no answers. Christ distributes courage through community; he dissipates doubts through fellowship. He never deposits all knowledge in one person but distributes pieces of the jigsaw puzzle to many. When you interlock your understanding with mine, and we share our discoveries, when we mix, mingle, confess and pray, Christ speaks.
Convictional leaders need to differentiate between convictions and preferences, and they often have trouble doing so. They need humility to avoid excess but are often given to pride. They need to listen as much as they talk but are often strong in the latter but weak in the former.
There are a lot of exciting things happening right now in the life of our church! Did you catch the announcement on Sunday about the launch of our Life Groups? We have eight groups meeting in various places and locations this month and I’d love to have you be a part of one.
Great marriages take work. And with the challenges to marriage and faithfulness in our society today, that work is probably more needed than ever.
This winter in the Learning Centre we did a series on outreach and evangelism based on a strategy developed by Dave Ferguson. We talked about the SPAM that fills up our in-boxes despite the fact that almost no one ever responds to it. Spammers keep sending out their junk e-mail because it costs so little and might reach a few. It’s possible to approach evangelism like a junk e-mail spammer: caring very little for the collateral damage as long as we get the message out.
