SAN ANTONIO (ABP) — The Southern Baptist Convention has commissioned a Texas pastor to become its “national strategist for gender issues” — a position designed to promote “ex-gay” ministries to SBC congregations.
Bob Stith, who said God convicted him more than a decade ago about how he addressed the issue of homosexuality, filled the slot June 1. He was introduced to SBC messengers during the convention's recent annual meeting in San Antonio.
Stith had been pastor of Carroll Baptist Church in Southlake, Texas, since 1970. The post is being funded by LifeWay Christian Resources, the denomination's publishing arm. The SBC Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission is providing administrative oversight.
Stith's primary emphasis will be to model a ministry to gays that goes beyond condemnation. “When pastors and churches aren't sure how to deal with it, they usually deal with it wrongly,” Stith said. “I understand because I was there; I did those things.”
Jimmy Draper, LifeWay's president emeritus, said the strategist role “has been a culmination of many years of planning and praying.” Draper and Richard Land, president of the ethics commission, were named co-chairs of an SBC task force on ministry to gays in 2002. Land said the task force was charged with being “proactive and redemptive in reaching out to those who struggle with same-sex attractions.”
While affirming the biblical passages that conservatives say categorically label homosexual activity as sinful, Draper said that belief “does not relieve us of the loving response and ministry to those who face this kind of temptation.”
As SBC leaders sought a national strategist, Land said Stith's congregation “is one of those churches that is most active in reaching out proactively and redemptively.” He added that Stith “is the one who really has had a vision for how churches can do this.”
Stith, a graduate of Samford University and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, said God convicted him in 1994 about his attitude of “condemnation and judgment” in his preaching about homosexuality. People struggling with same-sex attractions “would not have come to me for help,” he acknowledged.
“One of the things God really put on my heart is the fact that there are so many people in our churches who struggle with this, and they do so silently” because of fear of condemnation and rejection, Stith said at a June 13 press conference during the SBC event.
Responding to a question about anticipated ministry strategies, Stith said, “We don't specifically have an outline of telling churches this is what you do. We are more interested in helping them learn how to receive people who are struggling with this.
“What our church did from the beginning was for me to acknowledge that my attitude was wrong,” he explained. “We should reach out to them with compassion. … Basically what we have done is to love them with the love of Christ.”
Land said one goal to help Southern Baptist churches minister to homosexuals “is to show them a Baptist church that looks a lot like their Baptist church” that is involved in effective ministry efforts.
Convention leaders plan to “develop a strategy, and we're going to seek to be ministering redemptively and compassionately to this issue, which is a problem in a lot of our churches,” Land said. He added that “the pulpit is not immune” to the issue of same-sex attractions.
Stith noted that many churches separate homosexuality “as a sin that is different from other sins, and consequently we isolate” individuals who struggle with same-sex attractions. By contrast, he added, “I don't think God makes a distinction between sins.”
While agreeing that there's not a “hierarchy of sins in terms of separating us from our fellowship with God, I think that clearly the Bible is very specific in its condemnation of homosexual behavior,” Land said.
But the leader of a pro-gay Baptist group said any SBC effort to boost ministries that attempt to change people's sexual orientation from gay to straight will end up backfiring.
“Clients who are exposed to the inadequacy of the kind of 'help' offered by [the] SBC's new program will experience lots of frustration and disillusionment with the program and will eventually wake up to the beauty and holiness of the gift of their homosexuality,” said Ken Pennings, executive director of the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists, in an e-mail. “They will realize that homosexuality is not a sin to be confessed or a sickness to be cured, but rather, is a natural human condition.”
Pennings said he — like the majority of gay Christians who have tried such “ex-gay” ministries — ended up fully embracing his homosexuality rather than resisting it or reining it in as a result of the therapy.
“What I'm saying, in effect, is that this ex-gay ministry will unintentionally help lots of gay people embrace themselves [as] gay,” he said.
-30-