What Do I Say to a Homosexual Couple Who Wants to Come to Church?

So many of us are upset about how homosexuals are treated today ... and for good reason. I got the following email from a homosexual couple ...


From: [mailto:anonymous@gmail.com]
Sent: Sat 2/11/2012 8:13 AM
Subject: A Church Home For Our Family

Pastor,

I trust your day is going well. Recently, my partner and I moved here to
Franklin, TN with our adopted twin boys age (12). We a christian family who
wants to find a church home in our new home town.

Our family is much like many other families. We go to work, come home, and
help our children with their homework. On the weekends, we take the boys
to their athletics. We enjoy going to church, loving God, and praying.
Our faith is very strong and don't judge others. The only other
difference from most is that we are also a two dad household. My partner
and I have been together for 20 years and have been blessed by God in our
life. Our goal in life is to love God and raise our kids in a christian
home.

Given the above, we sometimes find it difficult to find an accepting
church. This is the reason for my email. If you could tell us whether
your church is an accepting loving church that would allow our strong
family to attend and grow in our faith. This would go far in helping us
find a church home.

In Christ's Love,
Anonymous

From: Bob Harrington
Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 12:29:27 -0600
To:
Subject: A Church Home For Our Family

Hi ......;

Thank you for your thoughtful, nuanced, and somewhat pointed email. There is so much that I wish we had time to talk about before answering, but I respect that you are looking for a bottom-line answer.

We are not the church you fear, and we are not the church you want …. But, if the Bible is accurate, we are probably the church that you really need.

Here is what I mean.

1. You and your family are welcome to attend our services and grow in your faith.

2. You can do this for as long as you want; you will be encouraged in the ways of Jesus, and you will not be mistreated. We believe that the Bible is God's inspired and accurate Word, and it is our supreme authority. So, you will also hear some things, from time to time, in our teaching that will challenge you and your family. We hope and pray they only come from the love of God and love of people. These words will be irregular and loving, but bible based and clear. You will also hear the same types of things about gossip, slander, greed, idolatry, hatred, discord, adultery, pre-marital sex, and the like.

3. If, and when, you elect to make Jesus and the Bible your ultimate and final authority, we will ask you to follow all that it teaches. This typically happens in conjunction with membership at Harpeth Community Church. Membership is a formal commitment, after study. We believe that members of a local church body are accountable to God and each other for their lifestyles. At this point we would ask you to follow a path similar to the one laid out in the book, Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality, by Wesley Hill. This would mean that we believe that God teaches that you and your partner are to be sexually celibate. We would love you and your family in this path, and do our best to help you, as you would be asked to do your best to help each of us, as fellow members, in our genetic weaknesses or self-chosen weaknesses, where ever our weaknesses come from.

4. The key thing is that, in humility and love, we help each other to "trust and follow Jesus," according to the teachings of the Infallible Bible.

I hope that this helps you and answers your question.

With Love,
Bobby Harrington
Lead Pastor, Harpeth Community Church

10 Focus Points for Harpeth Community Church in 2012

1. Focus upon trusting and following Jesus.

2. Continued focus on "Relational Discipleship."

3. Deepening focus upon "Love."

4. Enhanced focus on reaching our "lost and hurting world" locally (in Williamson County).

5. Focus upon John's writings in the Bible.

6. Focus on "Every One of us in our Bibles and Prayer."

7. Focus on "Team Leadership."

8. Focus on "Developing More Leaders."

9. Focus on the "Relational Discipleship Network Ministry in North America.

10. Focus on "Supporting our Missionaries: The Robinsons and Siscos."

Apple's Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs's Best Quotes ... After Steve Jobs resigned as Apple's CEO, The Wall Street Journal ran an article with some of Jobs's most quotable quotes over the past thirty years. Here are a few examples about leadership, communication, and creativity:

On simplicity: "Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean and make it simple."

On quality: "When you're a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you're not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though nobody will ever see it. You'll know it's there, so you're going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night … the quality has to be carried all the way through."

On focus & self-denial: "It comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don't get on the wrong track and try to do too much … it's only by saying no that you can concentrate on things that are really important."

How Do We Make Disciples?

Jesus, the apostles, and the writings of the New Testament tell us how to make disciples. It is important to note, in this regard, that teaching is at the heart of discipleship. Discipleship is not just example. Discipleship is not just service. Discipleship is not just relationships. Discipleship is not just sharing life. To be sure, if Jesus is our model, discipleship will include all of these things and more. But at heart, Jesus tells us that discipleship involves learning, the receiving of practical instruction that enables us to trust and follow Jesus.

In Matthew 28:18-20, the great commission tells us “to go” and “to make disciples.” In the Greek text, “making disciples” is an imperative command. The passage then tells us how we are to make disciples: by “baptizing them,” and “teaching them to obey everything Jesus commanded” (these two statements are participial phrases – linguistically formed in the Greek to tell us how to make disciples)

In this sense, then, biblical discipleship always involves teaching, guidance, or instruction. At the same time, Jesus showed us, by his life, that discipleship must be grounded in love, service, and friendship. The environment for discipleship in the gospels was relationship. Yet it was goal oriented; Jesus was asking his disciples to trust and follow him. Without discipleship, acts of love and service are simply acts of love and service. These are good things and are often the basis upon which discipleship is built, but by themselves they simply express the love of Christ without directly pointing people to Christ.

Sometimes showing love – with no strings attached - is the best and only thing that we can do for another person. We just serve someone. Maybe like the good Samaritan, all we will ever be able to do for another person is take care of them in their need, for that time of difficulty (Luke 10:25ff). This is true love and it honors God and reflects the fact that we are disciples. But, by itself, it is not discipleship because discipleship involves directing and teaching people in the way of Jesus.

We believe that discipleship, modeled after Jesus, equals directed relationship. Discipleship is directed because it has a goal: to enable people to trust and follow Christ (Matthew 28:18-20; Colossians 1:28-29). Discipleship is relational in that it is always done person to person.

Here are ten questions that churches use to help them address how they make disciples :

1. How does our church define discipleship?
2. What does a disciple look like?
3. Do we have an intentional process of discipleship?
4. Does our church know this process?
5. How does this process relate to the purpose of the church?
6. Has our church prioritized distinct practices that relate to the discipleship process?
7. Does our church practice the principle of abandonment based on the idea that activity doesn’t always mean productivity?
8. How does our church measure maturity?
9. How does our community describe our church?
10. Do our church families spend more planned time in a week at church with each other or in the community with non-believers?

There is nothing new or striking about these questions. But they show that wise church leaders must be thoughtful about discipleship. Since discipleship involves careful training and guidance, we want to pursue it with wisdom.

Apple's Steve Jobs on Death ...

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything—all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure—these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked."

Steve Jobs Best Quotes, The Wall Street Journal (8-24-11)

Summer Reflections

School is about to start again this week here in Williamson County. I am gearing up for the fall, but I am also trying to make sense of my summer.

-In June, I traveled to Sierra Leone, Africa. I spent 10 days with folks from Harpeth Community Church and the The Raining Season, at an orphanage and trying to discern the need to plant churches in that country.

-In July, I traveled back home to Canada for two weeks and spent quality time with family and friends.

-In late July, I spent a week at Real Life Ministries in Post Falls, Idaho with friends Jim Putman, Luke Yetter, and Jerry Harris planning for the new Relational Discipleship Network. I also spent quality time with Jim Harris - future Harpeth Community Church staff member and Relational Discipleship trainer at Harpeth Community Church.

-I then went back to Calgary, Canada and spent an intense 3 days with the leaders of three churches in Calgary, 2 of which will likely close their doors by the end of the year.

So, what are my reflections on all these things moving forward?

1. Relational Discipleship is the most important Christian direction to follow. I see nothing that is as Biblical and needed as this direction. "Love" ("Relational") is the quintessential hallmark of a true Christian (John 13:34-35) and "Discipleship" is the fundamental mandate of the church (Matthew 28:19-20).

2. Poverty of money (Africa) and Poverty of Spirit (Canada/USA) both leave people without a clear sense of what life is all about. I baptized two prostitutes in Africa because they had no other way to make a living. Within weeks, I met with two of my high school buddies from Caglary, who sat down with me, as they were drinking beer, and telling me about how they are becoming millionaires, but they have no clue about meaning in life. There are two kinds of poverty - material and spiritual - and they both devastate human beings.

3. Something is going on in the world, and I cannot put my finger on it. It just feels like there is no center, that old ways of making sense for people are no longer working. Maybe it is my age; maybe it is my level of exposure to diverse people in diverse places ... I am not sure. Maybe it is something else ...

4. I just know one thing: I am sure glad that I hold on to Jesus Christ as my center point and that my center is the same, whether in Sierra Leone, Africa; Calgary, Canada; Post Fall, Idaho; or Nashville, Tennessee.

The Art of Christian Love....is largely the art of persistence

Our culture teaches us to be consumers. Get the best for yourself ... jobs, friends, clothes, houses, you name it. People then bring that same attitude to church.

Who can argue with the Christian who says, “this church is not meeting my needs anymore and I need to go to another one!” There is no quick and easy answer. Who wants to question a person’s freedom of religion? (its un-American). Who can easily tell another person what is best for her and her family? What argument answers the statement that another church “has a ministry that better meets my needs”? So church members often say little or nothing except, “we will miss you, but wish you God’s best.” It is a polite and graceful response, but if we are honest, it is also a little shallow. “Can’t we talk more about this first,” we say to ourselves. Or the tacky southern's just say, "bless his heart."

Individual freedom is a core value to Americans. Yet something important has changed in the last thirty years. Americans used to value both freedom and community commitment. Now, because of consumer training, marketing, mobility, time pressure, and the inflated value of self, Americans are losing the value of community. The pursuit of individual freedom and happiness now readily justify such things as

• easy divorce
• easy nursing homes for old people
• shallow friendships, always changing
• and, for many, church hopping.

It is a Failure of Love - a lack of agape love described in 1 Corinthians 13.

4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 8 Love never fails.

Karl Beck wrote. “Its beginning to strike me that the greatest strength of American Christianity – the principle of free association – may also be what sounds like the death knell for serious discipleship in this country,” …. “Why . . . hang around the church when conflict flares, as it inevitably does any place where ultimate issues are on the line? Why not move along instead to the next congregation on the block?”

If you want the best for yourself ... AND are HUNGERING FOR DEPTH … LET ME TELL YOU HOW TO FIND IT.

Stay. Work it out. Suffer through the pain of disappointment. Say "no" to the more exciting. Say "yes" to the hard work of developing relationships through the thick and thin. Don't be a consumeristic, shallow, "think I am a better then them" Christian.

A deeper Christianity is not so often tried and found wanting, as much as ... tried, found difficult, and left untried.

If you want to really love … like Jesus, you have to DIE To SELF. Love when it is hard.

Beck: Weathering crises, sharing joys, working out dilemmas, evolving new understandings of the faith together, hanging in with one another when its fun and when its just duty – these are the most precious gifts the saints give to each other.

To all church hoppers: We become more like Christ, in part, by sticking with each other and learning to love each other. This is especially true when there is conflict or disappointment and we would prefer to leave for something that looks better.

This is what Christ-likeness looks like. This is what real love is like ...