Q & A "Christ’s Voice to the Sexually and Relationally Broken" Part 2 Sunday, October 7, 2018 PM

Right after that, okay? But thank you so much for being here tonight and giving attention to the helpful council, the scriptural council and the council from experience from these folks. So it is good to now turn our attention to some Q &A.

I have a lot of questions here, and many of them I was just noting sound somewhat the same, and yet they're all very personal. And for each person who has turned into question, I want to thank you for that.

And I hope that even if we don't get to your question in particular tonight, I'm going to try to give a cross-section of different types of questions so that hopefully something there will ring true to your situation, okay?

So I thought I would start off with a couple of questions that deal with the either the I don't know or it hasn't been said yet kind of situation, okay? So one question is this, and then I'll read a second one.

The first question is, I have a 13-year-old effeminate grandson being raised by his mother who is struggling with his gender identity. How can I help him? And I thought that it goes with another question as well, and maybe you'll see that.

What can we do if we have an extended family member who is gay but hasn't come out to the family? How to minister to him? So have you had that experience that maybe if you've dealt with some folks that maybe there's like on the edge, I don't know, it hasn't been said yet, but how do we stop just crossing our fingers and hoping it'll go away to actually doing something?

How can we help people like that?

Helping a Gender-Confused Grandson and a Closeted Family Member

I'm sure everybody has a comment about that. I think the first thing we start out with general human sexuality, and that especially when we're talking 12, 13, 14, even older, is that there is a clear understanding of a Judeo-Christian worldview on human sexuality that allows for a segue of talking about everything that's going on in the culture, because if we don't talk to them about it, they're going to be talked to about it.

And more than likely, if a 13-year-old is demonstrating being very effeminate and sensitive and artistic and emotional, he's probably already at school being labeled, even at a Christian school, being labeled a queer, or they may even be nice about it and say, well, you're just gay, you need to accept it.

That's actually what we're hearing more in public schools because of the anti-bullying. And so there's a mindset, even in the public schools now, that gay is good and gay is okay, and that we all need to get along.

So there definitely needs to be an intervention of teaching about human sexuality, and then, of course, it is the parent's responsibility. Now, the other scenario may be that there is not the ability to do that because of unbelief and not following the Lord.

But you can still, not even from a biblical communication, still bring up the idea in a friendly way to start the discussion, so that something that is secret can actually be relationally, through the relationship, opened up, and that there can be the discussion that helps mentor the son or daughter in the right direction.

We have had some success in our ministry where we've had teenagers. As a matter of fact, Jim and I, two years ago, we had a family bring a teenager, who at the time was 16, and he came in with his family and basically said, I'm gay, I'm mad at mom, had an okay relationship with dad, but it was distant, classic stuff, and I'm gay, and I'm going to be gay.

Well, you know, we, and they came from a Christian family, from, you know, way, way away from here, and Jim and I, you know, we said, well, we just want to befriend you, and that's how a lot of ministry is going to start, is just by being present to somebody, rather than trying to force your views, and so mom and dad, and in those places, we'll take mom and dad and remove them from the room, and they're good with that, and we try to find out if we can or cannot minister to somebody, and in that case, we did, and I mean, it was amazing, right?

I mean, he literally got to the place where he accepted us, then he started accepting about the idea that maybe God had something better, then he finally surrendered to doing a study with us, and we spent a year going through a Bible study specifically on gender and healthy sexuality, and now he's going into college, and guess what?

He surrendered to Jesus, and he no longer considers himself gay, so the relational component is extremely important in any segue to getting.

The truth to people. I just say you can't change, only Jesus can transform the heart, but we can come alongside people in love and in truth, and walk with them, you know, see things from God's perspective, see them through God's perspective, ask God for his heart for them.

God can make us conduits of really awesome truth in the life of someone who's struggling. If they don't get acceptance in their family unit where they're supposed to get love and nurture, all that, they are going to get it from the world,.

And it does have an impact. I would add that I, oftentimes when I'm in the parents group, or I'm, you know, listening to Stephen, how he ministered to his kids as they were going through puberty, I did not get any of that.

I was the kid that was looking for the sex stuff, you know, I was, you know, I was looking for, I was craving information. I was angry at Dad for not having conversations with me, and I needed it. I needed somebody to step in and say something, you know, befriend me.

I mean, I would have been terrified at the conversation, but I craved it, and so I think, I think that you need to know that the person that you're seeing, you know, the fear, Laura talked about this fear and the stuff that's going on inside of them, they're really looking for answers, they're looking for information, they're looking for peace and joy, they're looking for some sense of normalcy, and you can be it, you can give it, you can bring up a conversation, you know, once you've established the trust, you can talk to them about what maybe you remember from that time frame, or maybe you have your own kids, and you can bring up some of those conversations in a safe way.

It'll be much better at the amount that you can give them than the thing that they don't have at all.

Loving LGBTQ Family Members Without Compromise

Well, I have another type of question, and this question, I think, deals with the concern that many of us have about people whom we aren't able to have an ongoing, close, discipling kind of relationship with.

I mean, and so there's, someone says, my friend's niece has recently married her female friend, so how does my friend now relate to that relationship in a way that is loving but not a compromise? Connected with that, there are two other questions, and they're both fairly lengthy, but they come down to this.

I have family members who identify as LGBTQ. They're not saved, and they don't want God. Now, and so there's this, anywhere from, you know, three visits a year, kind of the holidays, and then communication here and there, special occasions.

How do we as Christians, with such a brief amount of time, how do we lovingly and yet without compromising, relate to.

Folks like that? Great question. I'm living it myself. My nephew, who's, I want to say 40 now, is living gay identified, very openly gay, and has a husband, and in my family, you know, we always have Boxing Day every year, when all the family comes together.

That's where, you know, my mom is from England, so we do this tradition, Boxing Day Christmas for the.

Extended family. Day after Christmas, Boxing Day. What? Day after Christmas. The day after Christmas,.

Yeah. So we have our Christmas party the day after Christmas with the extended family, and they're always there, right? And one of the things that, years ago, I would be, I was, I had such an angst, because I was the one that emceed everything, and, and I, you know, you know me, you get to know me, I'm all about it being black and white, heaven and hell, better preach the gospel, you know?

And so I had this, all this terrible angst about it all the time, and, and so the Lord just made it really clear that through all of this, that we be kind, but we live a life. And I love the, the quote that is attributed to St. Augustine, and also St. Francis, which is, you know, preach the gospel all day long, and if necessary, use words.

Now that's not complete in itself, because we know that Romans 10 tells us that they won't hear unless, you know, somebody says the truth. So they know what Uncle Stephen is. They know who I am. And that would be one of the first things is, are you known by your faith?

Are you known by the way that you live your life? That you are an uncompromised, sold-out believer in Jesus Christ? And you don't, again, we've said it several times, you don't have to make it about their homosexuality.

You can even ask, the conversation can begin with, what do you think about Jesus? So my wife recently with, because we've had some tension in our own home, my wife is the extreme of me, okay? She's super mercy, introverted, doesn't want conflict.

I'm confrontive, prophetic, want to confront everything. So she went to their house to buy jam, because the husband makes jam. And which gave her an opportunity to befriend them, and the God question got brought up.

And so again, it goes back to a very organic way of being relational to speak the truth. And, you know, here's the deal with family members, or even extended family members. There can be, you know, an expectation within ourselves that this should not be happening.

And so we're angry, we're hurting, or we're dealing with our own shame. And that has to be dealt with first. And then, you know, having adult children, you know, and a lot of us have adult children, and can you control them?

Can you, you know, do what you wish they would want, you wanted them to do, and you can't. And the reality is, is, again, with all of our loved ones, we have to live a godly life. And, you know, for some of us getting older, and you've seen a lot of death, I've seen a lot of death, having a legacy, when you die, of being able to preach from the grave.

And some of you know, you have loved ones that are actually preaching from heaven right now, because they live such a godly life. And as you remember that loved one, they're preaching from heaven. And as parents, or as grandparents, if we live a godly life,.

We can even preach from heaven. Let me say something, too, about the young man being raised by a mother. You know, if you're in good contact with that family, something that people don't consider is, what does it mean to put good, safe men in a young man's life?

I don't know, I'd hesitate a little. So, good, safe men into that young man's life to befriend him, to share his interests, and share yours with them, with him. Come around his life, and actually help this mother provide stability and structure for the young man.

It might make all the difference. One thing Stephen mentioned last week, and I think it's really worthy to consider, is, you know, that softness in a guy, or that mechanical ability or sports ability in a girl, it is being tagged, you know, out there.

But we can actually put it on foundations, on tracks that may help. You know, I was so encouraged to know that that God built his temple with skilled people, and put inside of it artistic people who built his temple.

And these people sewed clothes and fashioned ornaments for God's holy temple. And it's a beautiful testimony to people like me, looking and saying, oh, you know, God God's as black and white as Stephen is.

But that reality is that this is the way the Lord works. If he is putting the lonely into families, who are the people that they're going to relate to? And who are they going to see themselves in? And I needed to see, even as an adult at 30, turning to the Lord, you know, I needed to have people emulate for me what it meant even to be a good woman.

I didn't quit having tools, skills, you know, but it did help me learn to dress a little. And, you know, I think that's helpful.

Gender Identity, Ambiguous Genitalia, and Transgender Ministry

Thank you. Another set of questions, I think, one of them has to do with gender specific, and then the next one is, what do you do if the gender is not clear? So the first one is, you repeated the need for healthy same-sex relationships to be molded, modeled, sorry, when ministering to a family member who identifies as gay, how would you adjust or change the way that you reach out to them if they are the same gender as you, or the opposite gender?

So it's a very gender specific question. So we'll start with that one.

I don't think that we address anyone with a worldview other than male and female ever, no matter what is going on. And we make it known in all of our relating as believers in Jesus Christ that we have a worldview that God has created us in his image, male and female.

And you begin with that foundation. Now, dealing with the gay person or the person who identifies as gay, you, again, you're wanting to reach out in a way that you are going to be able to relate to them.

And if you're a parent or a family member, it's great if you can do something that you can have commonality. Have you ever been to a ballet and they're wanting to go to a ballet and you're going, well, I don't know that I've ever, I've never been to a ballet.

So we'll go, I mean, try to do something to where you're in that person's world, to where you can build relationship and don't make it about the identification and actually in that relationship, then to begin to affirm them in their, their God-given gender.

And you would do the same thing also with a transgender person or a person who would have ambiguous genitalia. The reality is, is even with ambiguous, what would be such deformity, that you don't, they don't know if it's a male or female, or they would think that it's a female because everything is inverted.

And in those cases, then now doctors have the ability to do genetic testing, bone structure and things that conclusively still with somebody like that, what we used to call homomorphism. Now we call it intersex, which Joseph has a type of intersex cross.

I don't, we'd call it a disease. It's actually a genetic anomaly. And so he has that, but there are other forms. And because of that, they can actually look and still see that they are conclusively male or female.

So that answers that, that we still continue to help a person. And if you're dealing with that in a family situation, you need to get the medical and psychological care. Now jumping to the trans person, the person who is actually, maybe they've completely transitioned into what they now, a male who had surgery and proclaims himself as female.

And we have people like that in our lives. We have somebody sometimes even comes to things like this. And, and, and I'll, you know, he's written a book and he always wants everybody to know that he's, you know, that he is a Christ centered, um, born trans person.

And so he has a mindset, his theology that he actually believes that God has made him trans and that a lot of, and he'll even say a lot of transgendered person aren't really transgendered, which is very confusing.

I know. So that's where it's very important to know your Bible. And I do not address this person as her. And, um, he did come to our screening, but to be polite to him, I address him by his name and not to try to cause conflict because you want to, you want to try to love somebody so you don't, you know, make it already a conflict.

And if you're going to even try to minister to them by, you know, not demanding, you're not going to use the right pronoun, you know, so I will never call you a her, you know, if you do that, well, you've just made it to where, uh, you have an impossibility.

Um, now, but if they ask you to compromise, it may be a conflict. And he actually, this particular person actually knows that in our ministry that we won't compromise. And, um, and yet he's been very respectful, hasn't he?

And he said to my wife and I at the screening, this particular person, knowing that we had this contingency of, um, uh, protesters coming. And he said, I, you know, these people obviously don't know you guys.

And this was a man that I knew before he had became a woman and I administered to him and his wife. And he said, you've always been so kind to me and yet you've not compromised. And I respect you for that.

And so you're going to have people that will actually respect you, even though they don't agree with you. And the one thing, the whole world, I mean, who wants hypocrisy? Nobody. And we see through hypocrisy, right?

So it really is important to be.

Integrity, a person of integrity. And I, are y 'all hearing her? No, we're not hearing her. Trying to love is really difficult. Not, not because you have to conjure it up, but to love into a situation where, where there's a lot of pain and difficulty, where there's deception and unbelief, you feel you're full of love are going to feel actually under that.

And it feels it actually been hearted love at times for people and feel that, um, that rejection or that pain as you try to offer something real to people. And, um, I think it's, I think it's a test certainly in our Christian faith, whether, whether that pushback or cause us to become a bitter ourselves or to be offended.

And so I just kind of wanted to present that next.

To what Steve said. That's really good. I mean, I don't know that we've all been doing this ministry for decades. Uh, well, not all of us, but a lot of people, I know a lot of people. And honestly, uh, with some of the pushback that we're getting now, where they're trying to make it illegal, what we even do, where they're, uh, being really hostile towards us, um, it's broke us.

It breaks us. And, uh, we have to choose love and forgiveness because if we don't, then we become undefiled vessel and everyone in this body, everyone in the church, we are going to be challenged. And I think the days of the American church, uh, not being challenged is over.

And, uh, unless we get a revival that changes the landscape of things. But right now there is this, this, this darkness that is ready to take over if it can politically, culturally, emotionally in this environment.

And it's actually posing and posturing itself to actually come into the church full force with the whole gay Christian thing. And people that are not going to compromise on this issue are going to be persecuted.

And when we do it in love, when we walk this thing out in love.

The Church, Culture, and the Pressure to Compromise

So just briefly, do you, do you sense that, um, the, the position where you are coming from in this terms of, of love and really seeking for, uh, the good and the healing of the people that you encounter?

Uh, do you think you guys are in the minority or in the majority? Uh, of the church? Well, um, say of, of, of the church or in terms of Christian counseling?

Well, certainly even in Christian counseling and counseling abroad, we are certainly in the minority. Um, and certainly in the realm of psychological understanding and higher learning and in the medical community, uh, anyone, um, in the last 20 years that has gone to school for medical or counseling has been inundated with this for the last 20 years.

And now we have people that are coming into some pretty strong places of authority, uh, in community and politics. Um, and so those 20 year olds are now 40 year olds and they have a mindset that's very liberal on this issue.

And so culturally that's happening across our nation. Um, even in, you know, what we would call, you know, conservative, uh, elements like the Republican party. I mean, you think Republicans are conservatives, they're not on this issue.

Uh, matter of fact, I would say more than half of them are not conservative on this issue. And then the contingency in the church, like I mentioned earlier, this is a huge growing problem when you have a lot of the mainstream denominations have already capitulated on this.

And now you have it coming into mainstream evangelical churches with the erosion of beginning with gay Christianity. So our mindset of a Judeo Christian worldview based upon the Genesis is now the minority.

Everywhere. Stephen, what are the larger denominations that have capitulated? And then the second question is, what's the status in the Southern Baptist Church regarding, uh,.

Denominational Drift and the Rise of Gay Christianity

Our stance with this? Yeah. Um, I, I'm pretty sure that the Southern Baptist at, at large, especially people like in your position, the pastor, um, across the nation have a pretty solid, uh, biblical worldview on this.

The problem is, is what's happening in the seminaries and the teaching centers in the last 10 years, just in the last 10 years. So now they're putting out these new seminarians and new, um, people that actually are buying into, uh, Mark Yarhouse's, uh, mindset, which is, um, I mean, you have this at the SBTC S that's why you have Nate Collins, who was Albert Moller's, you know, young protege who is now leading up revoice and many in the gospel coalition.

Um, when you've got the president of the gospel coalition endorsing single gay Christianity, that should be a huge red flag for all of us that the leaders have bought into that orientation rarely changes is what Mark Yarhouse's synopsis is.

And for that, then we have now what are called sexual minorities, and we need to accept celibate gay Christians. And certainly I'm the first to applaud somebody choosing to be celibate and yielded to the Lord in their sexuality.

But the problem is, is they're bringing in an identity that is corrosive and eroding. And you cannot put this construct of gay or lesbian or trans or bisexual, or in there's, they're calling themselves this queer, queer Christians.

Okay. Not making this up folks, not being derogatory at all. These are people that are calling themselves queer, lesbian, gay, Christian, and to have that come into the church. And we have churches here in Oklahoma city.

I have sat down with people that people would be shocked that this is actually going on in some of the churches here in Oklahoma city. It's happening in my own church. It's happening, it's happening everywhere.

So the idea that we're not dealing with this is wrong. We are dealing with it everywhere. And so again, it's going to have to be our pastors willing to step in and say, we're going to form policies and procedures that are biblical and that are going to give forward momentum to keep the ecclesia, the church healthy and holy.

And then yes, let the home groups or other ways bring in people that are lost. I was in a meeting recently with some of the elders of my own church. And the question was, well, we want to let all the gay people come in.

I'm like, well, wait, wait, you know, what about the children? What about the family? What about, you know, people that have, you know, not a very strong worldview. It was like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. We don't want to do that.

It's like, oh, okay. That's good. Yeah. Because we don't want all the gay people to come into the church because you also have so many legal problems. What happens? You do that and you say, all the gays are welcome.

Come on in. And then two lesbians or two gays want to get married in your church. Oh, well, you're not a member, but we invited you in. There's going to be legal problems that are going to happen. So yes, we want to be welcoming, not, and see, that's where you get into trouble is when you make it only about those sexual minorities and even the whole minority thing.

You know, it's like there's a push in this social justice movement to actually erode away some of these things that really are healthy boundaries. And so the, yeah, there's a lot going on in the church and we have to educate ourselves and be wise to it.

So wise as serpents and harmless as doves.

Exactly. There's a lot to that. I think you just made a sales pitch for our elders to have you back for one of our meetings and talk a little bit of policy. So I appreciate that. Yeah, policies are actually very important.

There's some good questions here. I think we just ran out of time though, but it's important to, I think, to see, just an observation that I don't think that the position that folks in the ERLC and the TGC and Southern Baptist Convention and the positions being purported by Covenant Seminary and the PCA and stuff happening at the Evangelical Theological Society and so on, it doesn't seem to me that these things are static.

It doesn't seem like they're finding a place to land. It seems like this is one step forward on a long journey heading in a direction. Does it seem like people are landing somewhere statically and we say, okay, we've come to the end of our understanding?

Or it doesn't.

Seem like to you that things are moving? It is eroding. It's not static. That's the problem. And so there's all this discussion and you've got real well-meaning, well-intentioned, and I would say even very loving people that are promoting some of these ideas under the banner of compassion.

That's why I was saying at the end, we cannot succumb to a false compassion that allow for these really needed strong black and white issues of human sexuality to be concrete in place in the church. And there's a blurring of that with this whole sexual orientation thing.

That's what's happening.

How the Ministry Is Supported and Why It Needs Prayer

Well, the last question I think was a great one here for us very briefly. How is First Stone Ministries supported? How can we help?

That's a great question. Yes. Yes. But first, Laura, would you answer that question? Because these three actually are in deputation, which is support raising. I actually have a salary as the director.

I want all of us to have salaries, but it's going to take.

It's going to take faithful men and women of the church and organizations coming alongside to actually do that. As Stephen mentioned, Joseph and Jim and I are all, we raise our individual support. That means we go and meet with people and we make an appeal.

And God in his mercy, sometimes we'll use those people to give and sometimes he will use it, bring people that we never asked. And that's a miracle. But we are supported on a monthly basis by people who give like that.

But so is First Stone Ministries. We do groups and those groups are not the primary way that finances come to First Stone Ministries. We actually run the groups with the money from the groups and we invest in the people and do what we have to do there.

So even the ministry fund, the general fund is also funded by churches and donors who give and we're really grateful. There's a third element too that happens and that is we do discipleship care and this is something that we do not charge for.

We don't charge for our time, but people give free will offering for that time. And a portion of that will go to the discipleship minister and a portion goes back to the general fund of the ministry. But those are the primary ways.

So it's just the generosity of God's people, seeing who we are and seeing what we're about and saying, you know what, honestly, we want to send some of our support there. So we're grateful. Did I miss anything?

No, that's really good. There is one thing that is happening or happened during the Obama administration, which has really been upsetting, is that anyone that would try to give more than $10 ,000 a year, the IRS now requires that that person's name be reported in the 990 of the filing of the 501c3.

Well, what that did immediately was with a few of our donors that used to give, stopped giving because they were afraid. One particular person's wife said, we cannot do that because of who they are in their ministry.

But this is another wonderful thing that did happen is the National Christian Foundation is an organization that allows people to give large sums of money and it's given to them and then they can give it to us.

And so then it doesn't go on the 990. Why is it serpents harmless as doves? It's right. That's right. And we we actually do have an administration in DC that are actually noticing that there has been a war against the church.

And so pray, people pray for our government because there was a war that was so dark that if we did not get the print and I'm not a Trump, big Trump guy. I was a never Trumper until recently. I'm not a never Trumper now.

But honestly, the last administration had put things in such a place that if we would have had a president, Madam President, share her first order of business two weeks before the election said at a gay rally that she was going to put the laws in place by a presidential proclamation, presidential order to make it illegal to support and to finance anything that was discriminatory to LGBTQ.

And that would have been all businesses and all ministries and all churches. So we were that close, folks, to an all out war against the church. And so we need to be praying with that. Let me pray. Yeah.

Father, I thank you so much for.

Gathering us together tonight. I thank you for Stephen Black. And I thank you just for the ministry. Thank you for his staff. And Lord, I do pray that you would raise up many supporters of this ministry.

And Lord, I pray that you would take the time that we've had together with them and that you would use it in our hearts to equip us and energize us to the work of loving others and patiently discipling them and being willing to to risk relationship for the sake of Christ.

We pray these things and looking only to Christ as our savior. Amen. Amen. Thank you.