We cannot and should not try to “get ourselves together” before we come to Christ—including in the area of our sexuality, which is becoming more confusing than ever before.
We want to express the loving kindness that God has for all people. Wherever we can be faithful to our convictions and still find common ground, that is our desire.
We believe that the God of the Bible is a good and loving Father who wants the very best for humanity—and He is that best. As His sons and daughters, we are created to live in a deeply satisfying and loving connection with God and others.
From the very beginning God has been socializing humanity, teaching us who we are, what our role is, and how to be just and good like Him. He taught us how to love God, ourselves, our neighbors, our bodies, and even our enemies.
We seek to ground our standards and view of humanity and sexuality in the nature of God, the teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and the clarity of Scripture.
God, who according to Scripture is not a sexual being, revealed that He intentionally created humanity “in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” (Gen. 1:27 NIV). The different, yet necessary and complementary natures of masculinity and femininity were necessary to reveal something about the nature of God.
Though men’s and women’s bodies are highly similar in their various biological systems (like nervous, circulatory, digestive, etc.), men and women are different.
A man and a woman are essential in order to have children. Our “gender”—derived from the root “gen,” like the words generate, progeny, and genitals—points to our procreative organs.
We seek to live in full agreement with His original design while advocating for respectful and excellent medical and emotional healthcare as appropriate for the very small fraction of people born with disorders of sexual development and their parents.
Sex and sin are not synonymous. God made us sexual beings before sin was a factor.
This was the blessing that He called “very good” (Gen. 1:31 NIV) and He has given us boundaries about how to express ourselves sexually. The Bible consistently addresses the complexity of our sexuality as a result of our sin.
The multitude of possible gender identities and the normalization of same-sex sexual behavior points to a society that has abandoned the desire to accurately define and socialize humanity as a reflection of God’s image—humanity created as male and female, alike but different, who produce offspring of like kind (Gen. 1:26-28).
Even more profoundly, Jesus expected His followers to not cultivate lust (Mat. 5:28)—to not treat themselves and others as less than human or mere objects of sexual gratification. Lust’s manifestations—human trafficking, porn, the “hook-up” culture, and more—destroy respect, intimacy, and bonding.
Some people experience same-sex attraction and gender dysphoria, including some in our church community—not because they were “born that way,” but because they were born human into a fallen world, and because society has disrupted and confused how we teach children who they are.
We believe that God designed us with a free will and deeply values our ability to respond to His invitation. Jesus never forced people to follow Him or punished them into change, but invited them to enter into a new way of life.
We therefore reject any and all forms of physical violence, force, manipulation, shame, or humiliation in any kind of therapy as ineffective and abusive.
It is possible to move into and out of LGBTQ identifications, and therefore freedom and access to resources should be protected, even if that outcome is to never again identify as LGBTQ.
God loves and accepts all people as they are as they come to Him, and invites them to experience the wonder of His Kingdom and the extravagance of His transformative love.