community in America began to be flooded with new terms and players
using new words for human sexuality, gender and sexual norms. These new
speakers like Sam Allberry, Rosaria Butterfield,
and a small herd of others, began making the rounds at conferences and
working to ever so gently to move the church toward a new
“understanding” of sexual minorities (LGBTQ ) whose “civil rights” were
on a fast track into the mainstream. Although in conservative circles
the assertion was that conventional Biblical perspectives were being
retained and defended, the talking points were being changed and the
language and terms were nuanced just in time for the massive redefining
of sexual norms and marriage. This new language came from respected
heavy hitters in conservative evangelical circles like Albert Mohler and
Timothy Keller whose influence on next-gen pastors is immeasurable. As
their endeavor surfaces several glaring realities come into focus.
- The church is being asked to rethink (a favorite progressive term
for overhauling the past position) its rhetoric if not its stand on
homosexuality and marriage. - The church leadership has constructed a unified approach to
accomplish a task, for whom and to what ultimate end is not YET in
focus. - The effort has brought to the “Conversation” some interesting
players including a gay priest from the UK / Church of England whose
ministry Living Out is
pushing the “same-sex attracted”/ SSA language, inclusion and
understanding, seasoned with a good dose of guilt and shame for the
churches’ past failures to understand and distinguish SSA from
homosexuality. - Another major player in the conversation is a former lesbian and (as
yet) quiet liberal academic whose professional specialty and activist
training was in Marxist/Freudian / Darwinian flavored Critical Theory specializing in “Queer Theory” – Rosaria Butterfield, who has no theological background to address the issue with the conservative church. - The church is suddenly being told that the “ick factor” recoil to
same-sex desires is “sin” and is being asked to abandon 2,000 plus years
of Biblically-based language and understanding of homosexuality, sexual
temptation and desires.
WHY CHANGE THE LANGUAGE NOW?
The earliest use of the term “SSA Christian” and “victim of the
church” internal talking points for evangelicals appears to be from the
preparations of statements for the 2010 third Lausanne Congress of World
Evangelism in Cape Town South Africa. This would place the insertion of
SSA language and the emotion-packed narrative in the 2009 documents for
the lead up to Cape Town 2010. The ministry to homosexuals is based on
Lausanne’s partnership with Exodus Global Alliance (a
distinct organization, according to its website, from Exodus
International which famously abandoned the mission of rehabilitating
homosexuals and apologized for hurting homosexuals in 2013). Exodus
Global worked directly with the Lausanne committee to draft 4 essays on
how the church is to minister to homosexuals.
Downloads are available here.
NAME / DESCRIPTION
Essay 1 Sexuality, Truth and Grace
Essay 2 Homosexuality and the Church
Essay 3 God’s Work to Redeem People Involved in Homosexuality
Essay 4 Equipping the Church to Respond
Examples of The New Talking Points and Approach
According to the Lausanne Global Conversation, homosexuals number 155
million worldwide and represent an “unreached people group.” Here is
some of the narrative on “Homosexuality and the Church”:
“Some of the souls who are impacted by same sex
attraction are Christians, and some are not. People dealing with
same-sex attraction wander the streets of communities all over the
world, and many of them are perishing because no one has seen them as
worthy of evangelism and ministry.”“Each of these persons represents people marginalized in the church.”
“The church can learn something from the fact that so many prominent
gay activists and personalities share a common upbringing in the church.
Their struggles began, in some way, in the church.”“As these people share their stories, it is clear that condemnation,
warning and fear can work to restrain someone dealing with same sex
attraction for a time. At some point, however, these tools no longer
work. Christian rules, Christian regiment, and Christian tradition will
only go so far.”
Time and space do not permit going into greater detail and quoting
more sources but the contents above show the tone of the essays. Gays
are victims – not of homosexuality but mostly of an unaffirming culture
and church and an old-school approach to the Gospel. REPENTANCE and
saving FAITH are not discussed as the remedy as millions of us have
historically left sins behind us in the traditional Christian faith. The
CORE message of the new talking points? The church is at fault and
MUST change.
EXODUS GLOBAL ALLIANCE SPOKESPERSON
Mike Goeke, pastor of Stonegate Fellowship since 2010 is now
associate pastor of First Baptist San Francisco. Goeke authored several
of the Exodus essays including the quotes above. In his testimony “Homosexual and Married,“
Goeke recounts his homosexual desires and online indulgence until
finally departing from his marriage to pursue life as a gay man.
Eventually, Goeke abandoned gay theology and homosexuality and returned
to his wife and family. Though parts of his testimony reflect a clear
repentance yet his family and Christian community’s support and loving
outreach hardly confirm his espoused view that the church is mishandling
ministry to homosexuals. And the Exodus/ Lausanne collaborations
plainly call the CHURCH to change by asserting its failure in compassion
toward homosexuals.
Goeke cannot be making these assumptions and assertions in the
Lausanne essays from personal experience since his wife and family
prayed and waited and believed. Somewhere in what should be an
otherwise wonderful testimony is a confused narrative of mistreatment
that did not come from the Christians in Goeke’s personal experience.
Yet to date, as of 2017, he asserts that Christians retain homosexual or
SSA desires well after conversion. These retained desires now in the
broader narrative are not temptations but taken as proof of
“orientation”. One of the primary contributors to this determination is
psychologist Mark Yarhouse. He was commissioned by DA Carson of The
Gospel Coalition to develop this ideology for TGC and TEDS “Christin on
Campus Initiative ” and it was applied as the gold standard on
sexuality and to the general topic of the church and homosexuality in
2010 (same time as the Lausanne Movement South Africa meetings launched
the works it had commissioned developing the SSA narrative and elevating
Tim Keller – Carson’s co-founder at TGC). Yarhouse assertions that
Sexual Orientation is proven and a reality then concludes a person with
homosexual temptation has a homosexual of LGBTQ+ “Sexual Identity ” . If
that individual holds to a faith then they also have a “Faith
Identity”. If that faith does not affirm LGBTQ+ identity or practices
then they resulting “conflict” must be resolved. The Yarhouse resolution
is to merge the Sexual Identity with Faith Identity in an acceptance of
a “Gay Christian Identity “. If that individual’s faith tradition does
not affirm homosexual behavior then the critical piece of the process
for resolution is to advocate celibacy or mixed orientation marriages
where one opposite-sex partner identifies as homosexual the other as
heterosexual. THIS is the answer that Lausanne, TGC , and others who
follow in their wake have decided to develop and promote to the church
and from the church to a lost world. The question for the reader? “Is
this the Gospel and the Power of Christ sacrifice to save sinners and
make us saints? A simple study of scripture and the testimony of
millions of redeemed souls no longer in bondage to past sins or the
temptations to engage in them – and no longer defined by nuanced
language to coddle and preserve them – stand in total opposition to this
sad and false set of unbiblical beliefs.
The approach to SSA Christianity mirrors the “once an alcoholic
always an alcoholic” of Alcoholics Anonymous and does not reflect
Biblical salvation. SSA begs acceptance by the church of a sexual
orientation to homosexuality. Therefore, if orientation exists as an
inborn trait, then homosexual attraction is something that cannot change
and the church “must begin its journey toward acceptance” of the new
science, understanding, language, and an era of inclusion. The only
verdict yet to be determined is whether we in the church will continue
to REQUIRE celibacy by the newly labeled victims of SSA as the
determinate for inclusion in the faith and in the church and in
leadership roles within it.
WHERE WE ARE NOW
You can see from articles linked below where this 2010 development of
and 2013 full launch of the Lausanne Movements SSA branding and
language have taken the church thus far. Sam Allberry /Living Out
ministry has introduced a “Church Audit on LGBTQ+ Inclusion ” which will
be coming to the States in November 2018 through TGC affiliated 9MARKS
churches of Southern Baptist Mark Dever. Tim Keller was the keynote
speaker at the June 2018 meetings of Living Out where the Church
Inclusion Audit was launched.
In the lead up to the June meetings with Keller in London, Living Out
endorsed the radical Revoice Conference” for out U S audience ” which
is “promoting “LGBTQ+ flourishing ( a favorite word of Keller and
Lausanne and their associated think tanks ) in historic Christian
traditions”. Both the Revoice group and Living Out want the Church to
Rethink and Revoice the conversation of homosexuality in the church .
The word salad and nuancing that was drafted in 2010 and launched in
earnest in 2013 by Lausanne, The Gospel Coalition, Christian media , and
a host of others- continues to mute the voices of opposition and
distort and twist the scriptures , muddle clarity , and promote the
normalization of a Gay Christianity to an unsuspecting evangelical
church on a global scale. Key research articles tracking this decline
into full compliance -acceptance- welcome and eventually affirmation of
the global LGBTQ+ agenda by the global church can be found at this link.
Here are a few key articles related to the advance of the SSA narrative
and the decline of Biblical perspective on the issue of the Gospel and
LGBTQ+.