When Christians live communally, outsiders find intimacy within the family of God.
Some believe that we live in the midst of a moral revolution, with “liquid modernism” flooding into the bulwarks and mainstays of post-Christian cultures. Others call this sort of talk “alarmist” and believe that we live in the days of happy progress, where we can finally realize a true melting pot of human potential. No one feels this tension more than Christian parents whose children are, for a season—perhaps for a very long season—lost to the LGBT community and its values. It can feel shameful to admit to others in your church that you are torn between your faith and your child and that you fear losing one for the other.
For others, perhaps you feel the weight of those in your church who struggle with same-sex attraction and are faithful members of your church, forsaking sin and living in chastity, but still feeling torn between the culture of the church and the culture of the world. Or perhaps you are someone who also struggles with same-sex attraction. You are silent, though, and the hateful things people in your church say make you more silent every day. If you are someone struggling with same-sex attraction in God’s way—forsaking sin, drinking deeply of the means of grace—then you are a hero of the faith. Nothing less.
For all of these burdens—parental, communal, or personal—the Bible has the answer for it: the practice of daily, ordinary, radical hospitality. I believe that if Christians lived communally, then people who struggle with same-sex attraction would not be driven away from the church for intimacy but instead would find real intimacy within the family of God.
Where should you start? As a church community, designate a house where members live ...
from
http://feeds.christianitytoday.com/~r/christianitytoday/ctmag/~3/vctJ365S-OU/lgbt-sexuality-and-gender-how-to-evangelize-your-neighbors.html
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