Outreach, LGBT, and the month of June.

Picture captured at a Christian event in Dallas where people testified of leaving the LGBT to follow God. During the event, we noticed a halo around the sun. Read the article here.

You may have heard that Wellspring has an evangelism team that is slowly coming together. The team is a bit of a grass-roots effort at the moment, but we hope to launch it in the fall. For now, we get together once a week to go share the good news of Jesus with whoever will listen. This month, we plan to go to the Fort Worth Pride Festival on Saturday, June 28 to share the good news with anyone there who will listen. Sharing the Gospel at a Pride Festival is not a walk in the park, but it is not as hostile as you might imagine. 

This will be my 4th year to do this, and one thing I've noticed is that when I approach a person and tell them I'm a Christian, I see a look on their faces, not of anger or disgust, but of fear and insecurity. When I say I'm a Christian, people tense up, expecting me to insult them, call them an abomination, brow beat them, etc. Instead, I tell them that Jesus loves them and laid his life down so that they can 1) be forgiven of sin, 2) be empowered to walk away from sin, and 3) enter into a relationship with God the Father that is pure and holy. 

Once people can see that I'm there to talk and listen, many people stick around. Often we disagree, but I work hard to let them know I care. 

One time, I spoke with a woman who had transitioned and begun living as a man. She and I talked for a long time and ultimately disagreed about many things, as you might imagine. After we talked, she and her son went into the festival for an hour or so, but they came back out and just sat down on the ground with our team and hung out. 

Even after we disagreed, for some reason, she just wanted to be around us. That kind of response is not uncommon. When people can tell that you actually care and are willing to listen, they feel appreciated and loved even though you disagree about important topics. In the end, I don't know if she believed anything I said, but she gave me the time of day to tell her the good news of a God who laid his life down for her.

___________________

One of the first callings I received in ministry was to minister to the LGBT community. At the time, I didn't know anyone who identified that way. I didn't have much experience at all with that world, but I believed that Jesus was enough for anyone.

Since that time, I've gotten to know several people who have turned away from living the gay or lesbian lifestyle because they discovered that Jesus was better, and I've gotten to walk with a few brothers as they figured out how to resist homosexual sin, live as Godly men, and even minister to others who are not yet out of the lifestyle. 

At Wellspring, we talk about LGBT issues from time to time on Sunday mornings. We talk often about sin in general, and we believe all sexual immorality both heterosexual and homosexual must be resisted along with all other forms of sin. However, homosexuality has been made into a special case in our modern time because it has been promoted (in the mind of the modern world) to the status of an identity rather than merely an attraction or a feeling. 

Here are some of my theological thoughts on what the Bible says about the LGBT issue.

Anyone can become a Christian and live a godly Christian life, regardless of feelings of same-sex attraction. Jesus calls all people to sexual purity just as he does to all forms of righteousness (Matthew 5:27, Mark 7:21). If a person is tempted toward any form of sin, we are told to put on the armor of God to stand against the devil (Ephesians 6:11), resist the devil (James 4:7), and walk by the Spirit so that we don’t give into fleshly desire (Galatians 5:16). If a person is attracted to the same sex, a life of Godliness looks like continually rejecting the urges to act on those same-sex attractions in the same way that a person with any other sinful temptation must not “let sin reign” in their body (Romans 6:12).