Thread by @PcaMemorial

Thread. #PCAGA is at an urgent cultural moment. The reigning cultural narrative is that “Christians hate gay people.” I hear from SSA youth who feel unsafe in our churches. Youth who contemplate suicide. Parents who lost their teen to suicide. It’s still not safe for SSA kids.

I am not just saying we're at risk of losing our SSA members. That’s a given. I'm saying we're at risk of losing the next generation. They look around & don’t see any openly same-sex attracted people in their church. The see an adversarial posture toward gays that grieves them.

They haven’t seen the costly obedience of same-sex attracted believers telling them, “Jesus is worth it!”

We can change that.

The world is saying Christians hate gay people.

Your children and grandchildren need to see you prove them wrong.

Eerdmans pumps out books promoting same-sex marriage—Brownson, Keen. Tony Campolo, David Neff, David Atkinson, David Gushee, Jen Hatmaker, Jim Wallis & late Rachel Held Evans all embrace "Christian" same-sex marriage. This is a false path, but it's convincing our young people.

The path forward is not a new sexual ethic. It is a new love for our SSA siblings.

A love, as #timkellernyc expressed to #PCAGA today, that treats all sexual attraction outside of marriage the same—as indwelling sin, whether homoerotic or hetero-erotic. That singles no one out.

A love that doesn't have one set of standards for straight people and another set for SSA people. A love that doesn't make honest questions about the relative wisdom of various terminology into rules by which we judge or evaluate people.

The question I will be asking as I weigh Overtures tomorrow is this. Does this help us become a more warm, accepting & safe church for SSA kids in our youth groups to open up, to live in the freedom of honesty, and walk faithfully, feeling known and loved in close-knit community?

Does this prove to the next generation that Christians love gay people? That SSA believers are our joy and delight and models of the sacrificial obedience to Jesus we all can follow?

As John Stott wrote, "At the heart of the human condition is a deep and natural hunger for mutual love, a search for identity and a longing for completeness. If gay people cannot find these things in the local ‘church family,’ we have no business to go on using that expression."

If an overture seems to have any other end in mind, I will vote against it.

If it looks like a power play to judge people's terminology, I will vote against it.

If it sets out a "Keep Out" to any group of obedient Jesus followers, I will vote against it.

Already British evangelicals have lost much of the next generation to liberal theologies affirming same-sex unions. We are not far behind. Fear-driven fundamenetalist control measures will not win this generation.

Love will.