Heritage Christian University in Florence, Alabama has two really interesting events coming up.
Elevate: Spiritual Enrichment Seminar (Oct 14-16) is on “The Sexual and the Spiritual“.
From their site,
Could three days in October make a difference in your family? Could three days in October change your life for the better? Could three days in October make a positive impact on your ministry?
During the fall of last year, a group of us at Heritage Christian University sat down to talk about what today’s church needs most. We asked ourselves, “What are our central issues of concern? What topics would make the greatest impact in our congregations and in the world?” From that conversation, ELEVATE 2013 was born. The theme, THE SEXUAL AND THE SPIRITUAL, isn’t an easy one. We’ll be tackling some of the most difficult issues in the
church today, but they’re discussions in which our families, congregations, and communities must participate. From “Helping Children Cope With Divorce” to “Talking to Your Children About Sexting and Pornography”, and from “Creating a Church Culture Where Sinners Are Welcome” to “When Your Friends or Family Come Out of the Closet”, I know you’ll find, as I have, that these are real-world issues that we can’t be afraid to address if we are to be relevant and effective in our ministries. All ELEVATE sessions are open to anyone and everyone, and there is no cost to attend.The classes are divided into six tracks designed to provide options for every member of your congregation — parents, children, husbands, wives, singles, ministers, elders, and more.
I am very appreciate that they are tackling this issue and thought this information would be helpful to pass along.
Also, on Oct 17 Heritage is hosting Dr. Everett Ferguson, one of the foremost scholars on the early church and New Testament backgrounds. You can get all that information here.
3 Responses
I’m glad to see they’re taking this on. I think too many of us have just taken the “pull the covers over our heads and hope it all goes away” approach, and that will never save anyone. Paul was able to save of the early church that “such were some of you”. In those lists of people were people on the margins that we’re not very good at reaching any more. Clearly, there was something about the way they were fleshing out and spreading the gospel that we’re not quite getting, or we would be able to say much more often, “such were some of you.”
So true James. The problems are more than just “out there in the world”. They are in the church, in the pulpit, in elderships and everywhere. So glad this is being dealt with openly and on this level…not just one class in a lectureship but a whole lectureship/seminar devoted to it. Thanks HCU.
Hi James,
Here’s a thought on the matter you raised. The Early Church was spread initially by people from a Hebrew background amongst the Dispersion, a fairly puritan subculture within the probably more lax, certainly more morally diverse, Gentile peoples of the Roman Empire. In that subculture issues of moral purity were well-defined, especially when contrasted with what the Gentiles were doing (cf. Roman marriage contract variants, temple prostitution etc), and no doubt the sense of moral outrage was quite acute, making it a strong obligation on community elders to try and prevent their own from going off the rails. Nevertheless, the Empire was a theistic culture, where the influence of rationalism and secular humanism was fairly insignificant. People were superstitiously afraid of offending unseen deities, which meant that they were open to being directed to the true God determining their existence. They did not in the main suffer from a culturally-imposed moral relativism that is our bane from the latter-day rise of secular value systems. I think it’s because we are immersed in that kind of culture, where the God-denying humanist “man of lawlessness” (except for the laws that ‘he’ thinks up) constantly tries to persuade us, especially thru the media, that this is the only politically correct norm. So, unless we are zealous enough to be confident in the rightness of our purpose, we feel stressed-out when trying to reform the behaviour of other people. We’re constantly fighting against what we are being brainwashed to accept: the humanist dogmas that everyone has a right to live life however they like if they’re not hurting anybody (from their view), and that no religion or culture has a monopoly on the Truth (except maybe Science).
I hope that makes sense,
Jim