The article below was written by fellow Kansas Citian Andy Comiskey who is the founder and leader of Desert Stream Ministries, a ministry dedicated to helping people pursuing sexual purity. This article was published recently in the Kansas City Star and was met with varied response from the KC community.
Christian community can transform homosexuals
Andrew Comiskey
In the ongoing debate over homosexuality and the church — stoked by Haggard-like scandals and sustained by denominations caught between orthodoxy and “cultural relevance” — let me cast my vote. The church can and should offer transformation for homosexuals.
I entered into the faith as a practicing homosexual and discovered through the community of faith a clear and loving track of redemption on which I matured into the capacity for heterosexual marriage and family. Like most gays, I struggled early on with gender shame and inferiority, as well as a yearning for men sexually. I concluded as a young adult that my true self was homosexual.
My faith and the community around me challenged that assumption. Freedom came from understanding my same-sex attraction as an unmet need for love from men. Taking that need seriously meant healing from profound early wounds and a strategy for how to relate normally to men as friends. My church helped me with both.
In this process, marked by failure and halting progress, heterosexual desire began to stir within me and prompted me to engage with women, including the one I married. Together we worked out our commitment to wholeness in the community. I faced residual temptations with the help of friends there, as did she for her issues of fear and control. That’s where we discovered the power of real Christian community — disclosure of brokenness and need that invites grace and truth — the opportunity for transformation.
Faithful and grateful after 25 years of marriage, with four young adults later, my wife and I love nothing more than equipping the only community on earth that actually possesses the goods necessary to transform lives beset by homosexual desires: the body of Christ.
It’s time for the churches of Kansas City to do their jobs. We can do better than brace ourselves for another sex scandal or plan another round of dialogue. Let’s manifest Jesus, full of grace and truth, by becoming communities of healing for the homosexual.
Responses to Andy's newspaper article included a Maya Angelou poem, disagreement with the politics of fundamentalists and right-wingers and other feedback from people in the homosexual community. I'd be interested to know what your response to the article is.
Hey Bob.
ReplyDeleteI know Andy. He was one of our pastors at the Vineyard in Anaheim. He was a good guy and I liked his family a lot.
I have to admit, though, that he shared his struggles with the entire congregation when he'd preach and in looking back, it always seemed to me that Andy worked very hard to not be gay. I don't mind if he wants to change his identity and lifestyle for himself. What I doubt is how effective the transformative ministry is.
I remember he shared on two different occasions from the pulpit his white-knuckling it to drive through a gay porn section of town and not get out of the car (he apparently knew where this section was) and another time in a hotel overnight on one of his ministry trips, purchasing and watching gay porn on TV.
These were not events early in his change from homo to heterosexual. They could be seen as struggles with sin (just like a gossiper or overeater). I believe that is how he saw/sees these kinds of things.
Yet in having spent so much time listening to gays who've struggled in the church to sort out their identities and to become fully heterosexual, it seems that their ability to "stick the landing" varies wildly and so many cannot do it.
Can homosexuals be "cured"? That's the church's question. They say "yes."
Should homosexuals be cured? That's the gay movement's question. They say "no."
Having watched the Desert Streams Ministry up close, as well, I do have some misgivings about their teachings about male and female relationships too (still heavy on the headship stuff...).
Julie
Thanks for the feedback Julie. I honestly don't know where the church should be on the homosexual issue. I do think that it is not fair to call it sin and not offer programs like Desert Streams to provide support. I also feel that there is an inappropriate focus on homosexuality in Christian circles. When it comes to impact/damage to children and families, on a scale of 1-10, I think heterosexual sin is a 10 and homosexual sin is a 1. Maybe we are condemning the latter to protect the former - I'm not sure but I know that I don't like it.
ReplyDeleteI'm with Julie on this, and you, too, KB. I admire and appreciate your loving hearts!
ReplyDeleteI agree..the church is full of all kinds of "sin" and they keep focusing on "this" one. I don't know if gay can be "cured." I just know that Jesus never said anything about homosexuality; just about loving one another. I love my gay friends, and I know that if they could choose a "normal" lifestyle, they would...just to avoid the shunning and suffering they endure.