Christians should not undervalue the effect of love or the gospel in relating to gays and lesbians, but faithfulness to the biblical definition of marriage also will prove costly, members of a special panel said June 17.
During the closing session of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) annual meeting, five panelists answered questions from SBC President Ronnie Floyd about how churches and pastors can minister in an American culture that increasingly approves of homosexuality and same-sex “marriage.”
Rosaria Butterfield, an author who has chronicled her journey from lesbianism to Christ, told messengers not to “deny the power of the gospel to change lives and to travel at the grass-roots level.”
“Your friendships matter,” Butterfield said in explaining how to minister to gays and lesbians.
“Don’t underestimate the power of genuinely loving people with a sense of fervency and consistency and honesty. [W]ith compassion, we’re going to speak the truth in love, but we’ve got to show up to do it.”
Ryan Blackwell, pastor of First Baptist Church, San Francisco, California, said, “Our churches should be the safest places to have conversations about same-sex attraction.”
Butterfield agreed, noting churches should be a place “to work through who I am and whose I am, eventually.”
Also on the panel were Matt Carter, pastor of Austin Stone Community Church; Russell Moore, president of the SBC Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission; and R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.
(BP)
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