NEC 2014 Camp Meeting: Transformed Agents

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NEC Youth

Adam Ramdin

The Gay Myth

The presentation for this time is called The Gay Agenda, Gay Myths.

It's not a subject I consider myself an expert on.

But I'm not, I wouldn't say it's my expertise.

It's the first time I'm presenting on such a subject.

So please be merciful to me in your analyzation of my skills.

A lot of what I am presenting, a few months ago I was at a GYC, you've heard of GYC?

I was at GYC in Florida, Orlando, Florida and there was a workshop being put on there by a group called Coming Out Ministries.

I went to the workshop, I went to all 6 of them, and I listened to their workshop and they have 3 or 4 presenters there.

I encourage you if you go online to go to comingoutministries.org and you hear some of the testimonies.

There's 3 men in the ministry, Ron Wolsey, Michael Carducci, and I forgot, Wayne Blakely.

And they all share their stories of a lot of them growing up in the church, leaving, living a certain lifestyle, coming back to God and to the church, and it's powerful, powerful stories.

So a lot of what I'm presenting, I've gleaned some of the ideas from there.

I'll try to adapt the the US statistics for UK statistics so it's more relevant to us here in England and so that you'll see some of the the information being relevant to us.

So before we start I'd just like to bow your heads for a word of prayer.

Father in heaven, I pray that you would speak through me at this time.

I pray that we would see from your word, we see what's clear.

I pray, Lord, that as the presentation is given, our hearts may be open, and I pray Lord that through this presentation that your love and mercy may be shown in Christ's name, amen.

By a show of hands, you always got to be careful when the preacher says that.

But the question is worded very carefully.

By a show of hands, how many of you know somebody who is gay, lesbian, whatever you wanna call it?

Okay, that's the majority of you in here.

Second question, by a show of hands, and I'm wording my question very carefully here to keep anyone's privacy or whatever you want to call it, by a show of hands, how many of you know someone in church who may be struggling with that?

Okay, less hands but still a fair amount number.

What I'm gonna be looking at in this presentation is some of the, what is commonly looked at as fact to address is that fact.

Because these things have an implication of where we stand as a church.

As a church we haven't, I would say to be quite fair, we haven't really addressed the issue head-on.

I don't believe definitely not really here in the in the NEC or the BUC and part of that is you know it's a subject that we don't really want to talk about even walking up here today a few people came to me and said oh Pastor Andrew we're praying for you, we're praying for you, oh I hope everything's gonna go okay.

Oh it's just a sensitive subject And a lot of you would echo those kind of thoughts and say, it's a sensitive subject.

It's not something that we normally talk about, right?

Most of you come from churches where if someone walked into church and said, I'm struggling with this, There may be a negative reaction.

I've talked to young people from churches here and they've said that they've heard people in their churches here stand up and say very hard things.

Now what we have to balance, there's a whole range of things to address, and I'm no way able to address everything in 1 presentation.

How we act towards those who may live that lifestyle or those that may struggle with that lifestyle is 1 question, right?

Where we stand, I guess you'd say theologically as to what we believe, is connected, but it's also another 1.

So The gay agenda, gay myths, it's a very, a subject that gets a lot of press, and increasingly as it relates to the church.

Are there 2 separate kind of ways that, you know, the church is this way, and gay is that way, and never should the twain meet?

We see some Christians, you see them maybe on the news, we don't see them so much here in the UK, but you see them on the news often in the USA, holding up signs, picketing events, coming out with a very strong stance, God hates fags, which is the American slang for a gay.

You've seen them on TV and you say, well, this is why, and they say, we're Christian, we believe in God and God hates that.

Come out clear and just say, God doesn't like it, read a few Bible texts where it says, you know God doesn't like man lying with man there.

We have nothing more to discuss Is that where we stand?

Then you have other Christians that say, well, we are gay and we are Christian and everything is fine.

And don't look at the nationality on the sign as if, oh, that's their problem, we don't have it in our country, because I could have put any country up there.

It was the first picture that came on Google.

Here we have another man standing outside a church saying, the Episcopal Church welcomes you.

Episcopal Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Network.

Then you have other churches that will put signs up and say with a rainbow, you know the rainbow's a symbol of the gay and lesbian movement or LGBT or whatever.

How many of you believe we should have a sign in our church that says all are welcome, yes or no?

We should be able to say in our churches, all, everyone, from whatever religious, national, cultural, sexual background, you are welcome in our church.

We look at these and you see in the Episcopal Church, this is I'm almost sure definitely not an Adventist church, the church of, I can't read, the Pilgrims or something.

But these issues are also creeping into the Adventist church as well.

Maybe not, you don't see it so much here, but they're creeping into the Adventist church as well.

And increasingly, in the UK, I know in America and other countries, it's going to be an issue that our church is going to be confronted with head on.

For example, because many of our colleges and universities, they receive their accreditation from the government, right?

And in order to keep your accreditation at Southern University or Andrews University or Oakwood University, in order to keep your accreditation with the National Accreditation Authority, you have to have certain things that increasingly are being pushed on universities and schools, stances on equality.

And soon it may be that if these stances on equality aren't in the Constitution of said Adventist colleges they will no longer be able to be accredited anymore.

These are the things issued, you know, in the pipeline, in the background, and so it's important for us as a church to talk about it.

Barack Obama has come out very strongly in his presidency and said, for example, same-sex couples should be able to get married.

Okay, you may agree, you may disagree, but I'm just showing these things.

Then you see these little pictures, you may see these on, you know, being passed around on Facebook or you see them on the internet.

Marriage is a human right not a heterosexual privilege and these are that you know kind of the way that the media society is pushing.

It's for all, everyone should be able to marry.

If 2 people love each other what's the big issue?

Some of you may have been at the last general conference session, maybe you were, maybe you weren't, maybe you read the report, but they were discussing the statement on marriage and they were redefining the statement on marriage that you find in the Seventh-day Adventist fundamental beliefs, the little phrase.

And people were going to the mic suggesting amendments.

This is just in 2010 in Atlanta, Georgia.

And they wanted to amend it to say that, you know, marriage is between 2 mutually—between a man and a woman engaged in a loving relationship or something like that.

And someone went to the mic, church official, from here in Europe, and stood at the mic, and you can find this article online somewhere with A&N, and said, we need to change the definition of marriage to say not between a man and woman, but between 2 mutually loving adults.

But it shows you where some in our church wanna push.

So it behooves us as a church to know clearly where we stand, what the bible says as well.

There was a film that was produced called Seventh Gay Adventist.

Seventh Gay Adventist with a clear agenda to present a particular view.

I watched the trailer, I haven't watched the film, it follows 3 or 4 couples in the film, and essentially is basically trying to say, well, you've got these 7 of the Adventists, or seventh gay Adventist, look, some people pay a very high price for their faith and it's shown these people openly living that way, this is how they are, the church doesn't accept them, the church should accept them this way.

Now some people say, okay, that's the way our church needs to go.

What I want to look at today is some of these myths that society has put out through the media that I believe unknowingly as a church we can accept and if we don't address it in a forum like this we can just believe whatever we read in other places.

Our church has official statements, those are the websites where our church does have official statements on homosexuality and on same-sex union so the official statements are there on the websites.

There are a couple of, you know, these are some of the issues around this subject, which we will not be able to address all in this.

You have gay marriage, you have how tolerant we are, loving them, and I love equal rights, nature versus nurture, is it genetics, is it possible to change?

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The Gay Myth

Transcript

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