BCMB 039 - Missional Thinking in Current Culture.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

BCMB 039 - Missional Thinking in Current Culture.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Bruce Miller:
I think the Lord's Supper is so striking with Judas. Jesus served him the bread and the wine. Oh, my goodness. And he knew. I mean, think about what that moment was. I mean, if it were me, I think I‘d have said you need to exit before we do this because you know, you shouldn't be here. I tried to teach - I want to disciple our people to understand that association does not convey affirmation. Here's it's the story of Jesus that we all know is that somehow he was not worried about what people would think with him hanging around sinners, that he was not worried that his association with sinful people would miscommunicate what he believed.

Speaker2:
Welcome to the BCMB podcast. Pastor to pastor. This is a podcast by the British Columbia Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches. We want to help equip and encourage pastors, churches and anyone else who wants to listen in and be more effective in their ministry. This is Episode 39, Missional Thinking in Current Culture with Bruce Miller.

Rob Thiessen:
Hey Everyone, welcome to the BCMB Pastor to Pastor podcast for church leaders. My name is Rob Thiessen. I am the BC Conference minister, and we're so glad that you have joined with us for this podcast. I am very excited to welcome our guest, Dr. Bruce Miller, who's a pastor from Texas, the Dallas area, Dallas Fort Worth area. And just going to look forward to an hour with him. Dr. Miller has been he's written a book on, I'll say, the title, Leading a Church in a Time of Sexual Questioning. And he's a pastor who has been, you know, seeking faithfully to help his church reach the community as it is as we find it today. And we all know we're living in a, in a time of of real sexual questioning and confusion and hurt and brokenness that that all of us experience. And so we're really looking forward to this and hope that's going to be a help to church leaders, to pastors and to everyone who listens. So we, Dr. Miller and I, we prayed already before and we've had a conversation, but we're going to jump into it and I'm just going invite Dr. Miller to introduce himself. Tell us a little bit about your family and also a little bit about your journey and the faith community that helped shape you as a person.

Bruce Miller:
Yeah Rob, thank you so much for inviting me to be on this podcast on a topic that frankly is quite hard. I certainly don't have all the answers, but I'm, I'm eager to be faithful to the Lord. And my own self just you asked about me, my wife, Tamra and I have been married for 38 years. God's blessed us with five kids and now we have seven grandkids. One more on the way. We're happy about that.

Rob Thiessen:
Fantastic.

Bruce Miller:
Thrilled to have been part of the team that started Christ Fellowship, the name of our church, 24 years ago. And just love being a pastor. I love the opportunity God gives us to represent him, to be His hands and feet and to help build a local body of Christ. We're in a fast growing suburb north of Dallas called McKinney, about 30 miles north of Dallas. And I've been here a long time, and one of my heartbeats is unity. So we've been quite involved with other churches in the McKinney area.

Rob Thiessen:
Hmm. So you and your wife were involved planting the church 24 years ago?

Bruce Miller:
24 years ago with a great team of people sent out from a church in Plano pastored by Gene Getz and Gene Getz is, one of the largest, most significant mentors in my life. He was a professor at Moody Bible Institute and then Dallas Seminary, he wrote Sharpening the Focus of the Church, The Measure of a Man and about 50 other books. And, still alive today. And just a real - there aren't very many spiritual heroes these days. He remains a spiritual hero, one of the few that has been faithful all the way. He's 89 years old and still on fire for Jesus.

Rob Thiessen:
Mm hmm. Yeah, I know the book Sharpening the Focus of your Church. And yeah, I mean, he led through all the church growth era. And he's one of those leaders like Ray Steadman in San Francisco and others who just pastored faithfully and imparted a lot of wisdom to a lot of pastors across the across the years. Well, that's excellent. Yeah. So our topic today is, well, specifically, you know, helping our churches and leaders sort through what's called an inclusion model. And, you know, that word is pretty nebulous, I think, to people and I think troubling to some people right away. You know, what are we talking about when we're talking about reaching out to specifically to the LGBTQ community? And I'm you know, I'm not going to try and unpack that acronym. You know, maybe even that's a loaded term. But, you know, at some point you just have to talk about what is and how people talk about things. So let's just jump into your journey and your church's ministry among LGBTQ people. How has that unfolded? You know, and yeah, that's our topic today. And talk to us about why an inclusion model is useful. Why would anybody be talking about that? What is it and why is it important?

Bruce Miller:
A number of years ago, God just really put this issue on my heart - I can’t explain it, other than that - probably back in like 2013, 2012. And I began reading everything I could read. And I started realizing, Rob, that whether we want it to be or not, the culture is making this issue a litmus test of our love. And we just put in very practical terms. One of the pastors at our church shared with me that her daughter, teenage daughter, 16 or so, said, well, I want to know if my friend would be welcomed at our church. And what she meant is a young man who identifies as gay in her high school and whether he ever came to our church was somewhat irrelevant. She wanted to know - would her pastor, would her church welcome her friend. And if not, she was going to write the church off. Now, whether she should do that or not, it's a whole other question. But I think, like you said, we have to deal with what is. And the reality was she wasn't so much interested in the doctrine as she was interested in our love for him. Would we really welcome her friend? And so, if I use that word inclusion, is would we exclude her friend or would we include her friend? Would we be welcoming in a genuine sense of the word that we would want him to be here? And so I don't, you know, we can get hung up on words like inclusion as to what exactly it means. And I don't think, I think that's a little beside the point. We start fighting over a label, and that seems like kind of the mode of the day is to throw a label on something and either identify with it or hate it.

Rob Thiessen:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah - that's a good point. We parse the meaning of words and we want to stop right there. I think out of fear of it, to stop the rapid change, the rapid erosion of values, and values are changed as words are changed. And there's a part of us, I guess, that, you know, wants to put the brakes on and say, hold on, stop a minute here before you, you know, open up a sort of a gap here with new language and then confuse everyone. So there's a natural response to want to clarify it. But then on the flip side, when you're thinking missionally, you know, you again, you have to deal with with what the people that you're trying to reach and how they use words are different than how we're using words. So we're trying to listen and understand them. And I like the way you said, well, here's a simple way to think about inclusion. Think about the opposite: exclusion. And that's very helpful, because what we're saying is, we the church, you know, definitely we understand that Jesus sent us into the world. And, you know, we have a gospel that is reaching out to people, not excluding people.

Bruce Miller:
That's where I've gone, Rob, is I see so much fear on all sides, fear of a person who identifies as someway non heterosexual, whatever. And I would want to know, how would you describe yourself? The labels are changing and moving and the abbreviations. And so I find that it's more helpful to say, well, what do you mean and how would you define yourself? I don't want to label you. And yet there's the fear on that side of someone who identifies as someway other than heterosexual is, I'm scared the church is going to hate me and reject me. On the other side, those who tend to be on the more conservative side or who would really affirm the local ethic committed to the scriptures, have a fear that - oh I’ve heard someone in my church tell me I'm scared, quote unquote, ’the gays’ are going to take over our church. And I've heard someone say, you know, I know this isn't right, Bruce, but it gets put into my face, ‘it’, quote unquote, gets put in my face in the media, everything I watch on TV, in my workplace, it's all about diversity, training and sensitivity. The kids get it at school. Couldn't the church just be a gay free zone? And they knew that that wasn't right. They were just trying to tell me how they felt. And as a pastor, perception's reality. And so I needed to, and we should, pastor people where they are and where that gentleman was at that moment in time is just frustrated with the whole issue being in his face and wishing he could just escape it and didn't have to deal with it and I understand that.

Rob Thiessen:
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I can understand that, too. I could understand how parents and grandparents and what, you know, would come into that time. So as a pastor, Bruce, how do you, like, you know it's not right. You know it's not missional. You know, if we embrace that mentality, we're just circling the wagons. And, you know, and that's not what Christ has called us to. So, how do you, where do you go as a pastor to center yourself, to renew yourself, to sort of recalibrate your compass? And how do you help your, your people? Like maybe talk about that for yourself. What, you know, what has the Lord taught you to keep you, you know, engaged and energized and hopeful through through this?

Bruce Miller:
You know, as simple as it sounds, I keep coming back to Jesus and let me unpack that. What I mean by that, because I've been somewhat undone by Jesus in a fresh way. And I think those of us who believe the Bible is the inspired, inerrant word of God, which I do, sometimes a trap there is to assume then that everything I believe is what the Bible says. And what happens then is we cease to be surprised by the Bible or challenged by the Bible because we assume everything we think is already what the Bible says, which must be what I believe. Anyway, I started looking at Jesus and I was struck by the fact that sinners are attracted to him. Mm hmm. Woman at the well, woman caught in adultery, the sinful woman who anoints his feet, Matthew. And so on. Zacchaeus. And I thought, how could sinners be attracted to him, want to be around him, when he's pure truth? He is the logos. He is righteousness incarnate. And I thought, well, wouldn't it be the case that a gay person in Jesus day would have been attracted to Him, would have wanted to hang around Him, would have invited Him to dinner, or wanted Him to come to their home for dinner? Well sure they would! I mean, that's evident. I thought, well, with our churches, we are to be the bodies of Christ, the hands and feet of Jesus. And yet the last place gay people would feel like they want to go is a church. I mean, that would be a place they would assume they'd be rejected and hated and not desired. But that's so opposite of Jesus, and yet we're to be His body.

Bruce Miller:
So how is it that as churches, as bodies of Christ, I’m being real literal here, we are to represent Jesus, we're to be Jesus, and we are His body, His hands and feet. We are the temple of the spirit. How can we be more like Jesus? Who was full of grace, full of truth, John 1. Neither one less than the other. So how can we be a place where sinners would be attracted? Let's kind of be real concrete that a gay people, a gay person or a person who is LGBTQ, somewhere identifies in those spaces, those ways, would know that, gosh, of all places, I would know that a church is a place where if I were having a hard time, they'd help me. If the car broke down, they'd help me fix it. If I was going through just a difficult time emotionally, they would want to hear my story and they would be kind to me. I know they don't agree with what I'm doing and they think some of what I'm doing is wrong, sinful. But I know they would love me. They would be there for me if no one else would. I think that's what people knew about Jesus is that when he said to the woman at the well, you know, you've been with five men and the man you're with now is not your husband. There was no confusion what she was doing is wrong. And yet she ran to Sikar and said, come meet this man who told me all about myself. She was she in some ways was the first evangelist.

Rob Thiessen:
Yeah. And folks froze there for a second. Yeah, that's it. I love the way you're expressing that, Bruce, and you know, I was thinking about today. Why, like, how do we get ourselves into a place where the church and, you know, the LGBTQ community seem to be on opposite fighting sides. And we've fallen into this sort of ideology thing that's going on today. And that maybe, you know, Jesus had a group that opposed him constantly. That would have been the Pharisees who who smelled, you know, a threat to their ideology. And so they they sort of mobilized against him. And the church is kind of, you know, gotten into a space now where, you know, in North America and I think in the west, we occupy a certain, you know, power structure. And you know, this is how people perceive the church as political, as a group, an ideological group. And now you have an ideology in the LGBTQ community that's opposed to it, progressivism, woke-ism, whatever you want to call it. So that's how the war lines up. And it's not honoring to Christ. And it's not Christ's agenda. You know, and I think I really agree with what you said. Most, I think many people I don't know about most, but many people who are coming to the church, whatever their orientation or experience sexually is, or their identity, how they identify when it comes to the church, they want to know, will I be welcomed here in this place or will this group fall into, you know, the narrative that I have assumed about them that they hate me and they're against. And yeah. So the church needs to, we need to change that. We need to get out of this ideological war and be a reflection of the love of Christ that is, yeah, shocking and, you know, transformative for people. Surprising. I appreciate the way you said that. So you wrote a book, and why the book right now? What was the genesis of you actually sitting down and tackling this topic?

Bruce Miller:
I did, out of all my study, I did a sermon series at our church, a lengthy one, five, six weeks on sexuality. And it was well-received, although controversial among the church. And then out of that, I wrote a book on sexuality that I self published, and then I'm involved with an organization called Leadership Network. They had a publishing series with Thomas Nelson, and they approached me and asked me if I’d write a book for pastors, because they said, you know, there's a lot of books on the theology around same sex issues and there are biographical books of people telling their story, like Wesley Hill. But there are very few books for pastors on how do you lead your church in the midst of all this time of sexual confusion or sexual questioning? And so at their encouragement, I set out to write a book for pastors, for church leaders on how do we lead our church as well, wisely in this cultural moment particularly in this space of confused sexuality.

Rob Thiessen:
You know, I've read through it sectionally not systematically, but as I go through, I realized, oh, there's so much wisdom in this book. And I really want to recommend it to to our readers, even when you mention the sermon series. I notice that you've got a section in the appendix and about developing a sample sermon series, which I think is going to be helpful for our listeners. You know, sexual questions and common issues, so you go through a theology, you go through the church and the dynamics that people are going to experience and then, you know, addressing numbers of questions. And so let's just talk about a few of the costs and pitfalls along the way. So what have what have you learned? What have been some of the personal costs? You mentioned that when you did the sermon series, people left the church, a few people. So, you know, just talk to us as a pastor, as you've led your church to become a more welcoming place for, you know, for everyone, for the community as it is. And what are some of the things you've learned and what have been some of the the painful lessons as well?

Bruce Miller:
You know, some of it, maybe it's ironic on this issue, but it's learning to have tremendous grace and compassion for those for whom this is a struggle. On more the conservative side. And I don't want to label - there are folks probably listening right now who, you may have just a lot of fear about this. And even as you hear us talk, you may be worried that are we going down a liberal path? Is there a slippery slope? Are we moving toward affirming same sex marriage? And I'm not in that space. I believe marriage is between a man and a woman, and all sexual intimacy is for that relationship alone. So I think to label those who are struggling with a church that's trying to be welcoming, trying to be gracious and loving to folks, to label those who struggle with that as homophobic or pharisees is condemning them. And I think on the other side, we need to have a lot of grace and compassion for those. We're facing reality about cultural change. There's been a cultural whiplash in the last few decades. The cultural change on this issue has been rapid and extreme. So for folks who've lived through it as adults, it is emotionally, beyond emotionally, it's quite difficult. And so I've got a whole chapter on my book on how to pastor well, folks for whom this is really challenging. And part of that is affirming and reaffirming and reaffirming biblical truth and that we're not moving away from biblical truth. That's just that I can say a lot more, but that's one piece.

Rob Thiessen:
Yeah, that's good. I know in the Posture Shift conference when it came here to our province and we're going to have it back out, they'll come in person, that's one of the foundation stones, you know, he lays. He said, if you're not clear on what the scripture teaches at the outset, you will lose people immediately. And I think that's important. And I've been challenged here by pastors watching and just wanting to say, are you sure you're reaffirming the scriptures clearly? And, you know, I thought I had been and I thought we were clear. But listening, I thought, well, if they’re, you know, uncertain then we need to do a better job about that. So on that front then, well, what does that look like in the context, let's say, you know, maybe it's one issue for a denomination, for leadership. But when it comes to, you know, the church that you're pastoring. So who needs to know, like you were saying, the conservative people need to know, who needs to know clearly what the scripture teaches and kind of where is that message put forward? Because, you know, is that the message you put on the church sign out front? This is what we believe that scripture teaches about sex? Or because that, you know, I think would scare people away. Like if you said, first of all, we you know, we believe sex outside of marriage is wrong, period. How do you negotiate that? Who needs to know that message? And how does that interface with the with your goal to be welcoming to people?

Bruce Miller:
Yeah, I think for me, I want us to focus on Jesus Christ and to say if there's anything at Christ Fellowship, our church is about, it's Jesus, and not get caught in the culture wars or really be about anything else. I mean, to be kind of strong, we're not about grace and we're not about the abortion issue. We're not about, you know, marriage. I can name a lot of good things - we’re about Jesus Christ. And to put Him first and foremost, rather than letting the agendas of today, like you talked about the culture wars and the battle, I'd encourage you guys as pastors, church leaders listening to rise above that or go historically before that and say, let's not get caught in our cultural moment and feel like we have to choose sides and use the fighting words of our day. But to go back to the scriptures and say, let's focus on Christ and let's put Him front and center in our churches no matter what people are wrestling with. So let me just get real practical - I think a lot of this is in personal conversations. So one story, a gentleman met with me and said, Bruce, I'm just worried about what you're saying, like you're welcoming gay people. That's good. But you're really welcoming them. And kind of what was underneath that was sort of dot, dot, dot... what if they come? And it was a discomfort on his part. And so, of course, no one is going to say we don't welcome a particular group of people to our church. I mean, yes, we want to welcome people, but I find we can say that with our words. But do we really live that out where if a person who identifies as lesbian or gay or bisexual or whatever else, polyamorous, would really feel comfortable? And so for this gentleman, he's like, you know, you kind of overdid the welcome pastor. I opened my arms wide one Sunday and said, if you identify as LGBTQ, we want you here, we welcome you here. So as we began chatting in my office, he started telling his story. And in his story, he said I was addicted to chewing tobacco. And I thought, that's interesting. And he began to tell me how difficult that addiction is and how few support groups there are, and that there are groups for pornography and alcohol and all sorts of things. But there was nothing he could find except online. And then he was delighted to tell me that some number of months ago, I can't remember, like 18 months ago, he broke free. And it's like the spirit just brought to my mind to say, well, you know what? I just want to let you know, two or three years ago, when you were still struggling, you'd have been welcome here. It was like the the penny dropped for him. His face changed. And he just looked at me right in my eyes and said, I got it. I got it. Thank you. And somehow that realization that the ground is level at the foot of the cross, that we're all sinners, we all have our stuff. And not single out this one issue as so much worse than something else, you know, that was helpful to him in that moment.

Rob Thiessen:
Yeah, that's good. Beautiful testimony of how the spirit brings revelation to people and that's one of the joys of being a pastor, right? It’s being able to share something and then see the lights go on for people. That's awesome. So with the inclusion model, with a church. So I'm thinking about, you know, how like a small church might negotiate this. And it was one of the pastors that I was talking with, he said as he was like reflected and he thought, I think this is easier for small churches because they can work relationally and just, you know, through conversation, help people along. But with larger groups of people, you start being driven by policies. You have to write things down because you're losing the personal touch, in some ways, you know, to keep the organization of the whole community on track. So in inclusion model, you know, that our church is going to be working on, so what is our policy? How do we guide? How do we inform people? So talk to us a little bit about how you work through that at Christ Fellowship?

Bruce Miller:
Sure Rob. And we are a bit of a larger church. But even then, as we started working on this, even though I've written a book on it, we realized trying to write a policy is really tricky because people are unique and their stories are different than you might imagine. Often when we think of someone and they describe themselves with the word, lesbian, whatever the word might be, when we meet them and talk to them, we find that it’s a little more nuanced than we understood when we hear one person's story. So we've resisted policy and said, you know what? Even though we're a large church, we'd rather handle it personally, as individually as we can. And then we thought we'd like to state what we're for rather than what we're against. We are pro marriage, pro marriage between a man and a woman. And pro healthy sexuality in that marriage relationship. And so that's how we state it, is that we support marriage. We believe marriage is between one man and one woman for life and that all sexual relationships are for that relationship alone. So no premarital sex, no adultery, no sex between two people of the same sex. That all of that is against, is not the way the Lord designed it. He designed sexuality to be something beautiful inside a marriage between a man and a woman.

Rob Thiessen:
So talk to us a little bit about how at Christ Fellowship this goes. So people are welcome, they’re attending. At what point, you know, now they want to volunteer, they want to serve coffee. And, you know, I had a conversation with one of our churches and said, well, would you allow this person to, like a person in a gay marriage or who's seeking who says, well, I identify as, I don't think there's anything wrong with gay marriage or I am in a gay marriage or whatever, but I'm here and I'm seeking. I'm exploring, I'm listening. Ok, you're welcome to come in and you're welcome to sit here. Would you let them serve coffee? Well, Patrick said no. Why? Why not? Well, because everyone who serves coffee represents, you know, our church. You know, so that was kind of a pretty dead end inclusion model there. How do you work it out at Christ Fellowship? At what point do you require people to adhere to your confessional convictions?

Bruce Miller:
Great question, Rob, And I, I like to at questions like this theologically, I'm kind of a pastor theologian, taught theology for a while. And we've got to think theologically, biblically and pastorally. And we want to bring pastoral theology to bear, as well, which is informed by biblical theology. So starting there, I try to teach and want to disciple our people to understand that association does not convey affirmation. And it's the story of Jesus that we all know, is that somehow he was not worried about what people would think with him hanging around sinners, that he was not worried that his association with sinful people would miscommunicate what he believed.

Rob Thiessen:
Even though it did to to the Pharisees, apparently.

Bruce Miller:
They got so upset about it. And so when we are gracious to sinners, when we associate with them, have dinner with them; to use Jesus, you know, go to a party that they're at, it's disturbing to some of the believers in our churches because their fear is that our association will communicate affirmation. That having them serve coffee will mean that our church is representing that we support gay marriages. Well, Jesus just wasn't worried about that. And it's somewhat striking, really, and I think quite convecting to us. And so let me just get super concrete. A woman came up to me and she said, Bruce, I'm in a Bible study with my neighbor. And I thought, well, that's great, way to go. And then she said, well, my neighbor is a lesbian. Or didn’t identify. And I was more excited, I said, oh, my goodness, you mean your lesbian neighbor is willing to study the Bible with you? I mean, we should, this is what we're hoping for. This is remarkable. This is missional living. And then she shocked me, she said “and I'm thinking about stopping”. And I just I mean, I kept my pastor face straight face, you know, but inside I’m like what?! Why? And I asked her and I said, why would you do that? And she said, well, I'm scared that she's going to think that I support her lifestyle. And I realized that we have, I have somehow miscommunicated or our evangelical culture has somehow miscommunicated to our folks that associating with people who are sinners means that we are affirming their sin, which we do not. And Jesus didn't do that at all. So underneath all this is an understanding that association does not convey affirmation. So if I put it another way, you know, just kind of concretely, Hugs, don't convey heresy, you know, that being loving to people doesn't mean that we are affirming how they're living. In fact, we don't at all. So at Christ Fellowship, we want everybody to come. My goodness. We would love for people who don't know Jesus to come to our church and feel welcomed and be able to engage in serving at a level that is what anyone could do. So sometimes I ask it this way, could a non Christian serve coffee? Or build the crafts for the children? Or, you know, something like that, of course, teaching the word of God - that's a different thing. So we make a distinction at a practical, pastoral level between serving and leading. And, you know, it depends on your church's polity and how you work things out. We define a leader because that gets to be the next question is, what's a leader? So just being real practical pastorally, we define a leader as someone who has followers. Pretty much out there,there's two big definitions. One is a leader has influence and that’s John Maxwell. And that means everybody's a leader. In some sense, they are. But a leader has followers, I think is a little better definition, practically speaking. And it ties into the fact that a leader is a shepherd biblically. And so by followers, I mean, you're leading a small group of children, students, teenagers, whether that's a Bible study or a small group or a Sunday school class or a team, a team of people who are saying you're the leader of the choir, whatever it might be, some ministry team leader, the ushers. And so a leader in our church needs to affirm our doctrine, affirm our statement of faith, which includes our statement about marriage. So that's really kind of the dividing line for us. So there are a lot of places you could serve at our church. Sometimes we thought about, well, we would let a non Christian be a plumber at our church. Like if we get a leak in our plumbing, we're going to hire a plumber and we want a good plumber. We don't ask them their doctrine or anything about their life. And we would say same for, let's say, running the sound board or running our lights. We would have somebody do that, even if we don't affirm all their theology or all their life.

Rob Thiessen:
Yeah, that's good. Very helpful, you know, practical, pastoral. I like the way you brought that together. There's different aspects to discerning parsing it. And I think one of the pages in your book, I think it was page 214 here, you've got a section on helping people think through, you know, it's called how do we minister well to same sex couples in our church. And you talked about the different, you categorized, you said at the risk of overgeneralizations, four broad categories exist into which same sex couples at your church most likely fit. And I thought that was helpful. And I think you're cautioning it by saying every person is unique and individual and needs to be treated that way. And that's good. But, you know, for leadership, you're also trying to organize your thoughts and say, well, you know, how do I think in a principled way about this? So maybe walk us through that, the different different kinds of situations that you typically encounter.

Bruce Miller:
Yeah, so if a couple is, I've had several lesbian couples contact me and say, would we be welcome at your church? And the answer is not yes or no. The answer is, I'd love to meet with you. I'd love to hear your story. I'd love to know - and I am! I'm genuinely curious and I care about their story. And in the back of my mind, I'm wanting to know just to review those four categories. Are they a believer yet? Do they know Jesus? Or is their eternal destiny at stake here? And maybe I'll have a chance to share the gospel with them. Maybe they're a new believer or a growing believer, and they know very little about God's word. They don't have a hardened position on this topic. They're relatively uninformed and they become a Christian and they're just barely growing in their faith. Well gosh, I want to disciple them and help them grow to know more about Jesus and grow in their maturity. Or is this person completely convinced? And they really want to make an issue out of this. They want to file a lawsuit. They want to cause a ruckus. They want to... They want to disturb the church. Ok, well, that's a completely different issue. And now that unity of the body is at stake, which is a huge issue in the New Testament. You know, perhaps the most difficult case is a same sex couple in this time, you know, thinking about different lesbian couples who do know the word of God, they're somewhat mature in their faith and they've studied the issue, and they believe that a monogamous, committed, Christ centered marriage between two women is acceptable to the Lord. And they want to serve the Lord. They believe the Bible. They want to live out the great commission. They want to evangelize and disciple, and they want to be a part of our church, but they believe from their study the word of God, that same sex marriage is fine. Well, that's a different situation now. Now, now we want to engage in a different conversation with them, which would be a little about theology and then a lot about unity. What I mean by that is, do you want to come to our church and try to convince everybody of what you believe, or do you want to come to our church because you love our preaching and you love the music and you love what's happening here? And you know you disagree, but you're willing to just be quiet about it and not make an issue out of it. That's completely different.

Rob Thiessen:
Yeah, you're giving people space. I sometimes think about, you know, at what point did Jesus know what Judas was up to in his mind, you know, but he sort of, you know, literally let Judas hang himself, I guess, you know, he left him and left him to travel along and to listen. And, you know, he didn't feel an urgency to, you know, get him off the team.

Bruce Miller:
Thinking very practically, Rob, that‘s such a great example. I think the Lord's Supper is so striking with Judas. Jesus served him the bread and the wine. Oh, my goodness, and he knew. I mean, think about what that moment was. I mean, if it were me, I think I‘d have said you need to exit before we do this, because, you know, you shouldn't be here. You know, and maybe you read the text differently. But it looks to me like Judas was there before they left and headed for the Garden of Gethsemane. And so very practically we come up with who do you serve the Lord’s Supper to? And would you serve the Lord's Supper to someone who you know is not heterosexual and maybe is even engaged in a relationship with, you know, two men together, or two women? Well, Jesus served Lord Supper to Judas. It will get at least reckoned with that. However, we think that through.

Rob Thiessen:
Yeah. Well, just talking this through with you, Bruce, you can you can see how, you know, how nuanced and how much teaching and how close we need to stay to Christ and to the heart of the gospel. It does provide an opportunity for us as leaders to really go back and say, well, what is our gospel message and how do we help people understand, you know, the radical love of Christ and how grace and truth function together.

Bruce Miller:
Rob, that is so important, because I find that, people don't usually articulate it this way, but they tend to communicate that if we increase grace, we have to decrease truth. Or if we increase truth, we have to decrease grace as if they were in that sort of inverse relationship. When actually, John 1 says Jesus came full of grace and full of truth. And so I believe we need to be full of both, 100 percent grace, 100 percent truth and that grace and truth unite in love. I think the other point you said about Christ, just a point about his outrageous love, I find that people often say to me in our environment here in Texas, Bruce, you need to be sure that they, meaning folks who are identified as maybe LGBTQ, that they know it's wrong, that they know it's sinful. And I've thought about that and I thought, well, you know, that's not the biblical truth that they struggle with generally. As I talk with gay folks and reading that literature, it seems to me that their thought is that Christians, they're completely crystal clear that evangelical Christians believe they're in sin. In fact, they tend to believe that evangelical Christians hate them, believe they're going to hell, should go to hell, and don't want them in their churches. And they're the worst of sinners. They're actually mistaken. That's not quite what I think most evangelicals would believe. But they're not confused at all that evangelical pastors, Christian churches disagree with same sex behavior. Here's what they find unbelievable, very difficult to believe is true, that evangelical Christians, Bible believing churches and pastors love them and would welcome them to their church. They find that to be laughable. That you say that to them - my wife has worked in the theater world, she was at a season of time in her life, was involved in costuming and and met some folks who would identify as gay, a gentleman who would say he was gay, lived that way. And anyway, she said, well, I'd love you to come to church... well you don't want me there. Well, yes, we would. And she went, she said, I'm the pastor's wife. You can sit right beside me. And he just felt like it was too awkward, too uncomfortable. He didn't really believe he'd be accepted. I'm not sure he really believed that we want him. And she was as genuine, she is as loving and kind as a person you'll ever meet, and she was completely genuine, and I don't know how many times she invited and pleaded. And she said, if someone looks at you funny, I'll say something, you know, I will defend you. And still, he wouldn't come. And I find out that the truth of the word of God, that we have to say more loudly is we love you. We want you in our church. We welcome you. Please come. We really will welcome you seriously.

Rob Thiessen:
You know, the enemy has gotten us totally tied up with with the ideology. So we have in our mind and ears the voices of people who are hateful activists or like that. But like you're describing, most people in there, they're under the, they’re under the burden of rejection. They feel rejected. And that's how the enemy keeps them away from, you know, from the gospel and the community. And, yeah, we have a real call to and an opportunity to communicate a different message, a message of hope. And I know we don't have too much time left and this opens up a whole nother maybe even more complex question. But it's around questions now of trans people who, you know, who are in a place where they feel a dysphoria between their biological sexual identity and, you know, it's just been a moving target, I think, even in society and division, even among trans people about, you know, what constitutes genuine, you know, trans identity and all of that. And, yeah, how has your church been wrestling with that? Is it the similar / same principles that you're applying there, or are there any sort of unique things for people who are struggling that way?

Bruce Miller:
Yeah, you're right, Rob. This is a totally different and even maybe more complicated topic in some ways. Gender dysphoria is a wide, wide ranging topic, as you well know. I think Preston Sprinkles latest book Embodied is the best book I've read recently on the topic, just came out this year, Embodied. That's where I would go for wisdom on this topic. We have a trans couple at our church right now that I'm spending time with, and some of the approaches I think are very similar. So my wife and I about, I guess four weeks ago, we just went out to lunch after church to a restaurant, and we said, we just want to hear your story. And for two hours, they just poured out their story. And many times it's just not what you expect. In this case, probably surprising, it was surprising to me is they said, well, we are morally conservative. We believe marriage is between one man and one woman. And we are theologically very conservative, like John MacArthur type. And they said politically, we'd be Tea Party people. Well you just wouldn't, I mean, just like what? And they're in their 60s. Just fascinating. And they’ve had quite a, one of them quite a history in evangelical churches, was a lay leader in a Bible church for 20 years, been married twice. So just hearing their journey, it's more confusing than you know. But I think if you go back to biblical principles and say, OK, let's go about what does the scripture say? Let me not get caught in the current trendy debates and all that. But let's go back to what would Jesus do? Let's look at his model. And I point people to three, I call them sexual conversations, but conversations with sexual sin would be the woman at the well, the woman caught in adultery and the sinful woman anointing his feet and go back and look at what did Jesus say, how to handle those conversations? Because I think there's some analogies for us, for LGBTQ altogether. Both the whole conversation about sexuality and the conversation about gender.

Rob Thiessen:
Oh, that's good, Bruce. Well, we’ll have to save that for another time to go deep into that one. But yeah, that's the world we live in. And super grateful, Bruce, for you and the way you've shared. And I know even the contact we've had just to tell our listeners that, you know, as soon as Bruce and I started texting a while back and he just said, hey, any way I can serve and help your pastors and leaders, that's your heart. And we deeply appreciate that. And, yeah, this is an ongoing thing. This fall, we're going to have a couple of seminars with Preston Sprinkle.

Bruce Miller:
Great. Oh, he's great.

Rob Thiessen:
Yeah. And helping us is his new book, Embodied, that you mentioned really a good resource. Another resource for our listeners that we've distributed to our pastors a few years ago was a book by Ed Shaw, pastor over in Britain. I think it's called The Plausibility Factor, where he just talks about, you know, is church actually a place that a person who is single, same sex attracted, that they could actually find friendship and the community that they're seeking? Because if it isn't, then, you know, we're making empty promises to them. And so I thought that was really helpful.

Bruce Miller:
Oh, we didn't even get into that. But the theology of singleness is a huge topic that really has a significant bearing on this conversation.

Rob Thiessen:
Absolutely. Because, you know, for many people that that is what they're, what the call to discipleship, once they settle it for them, they're looking at. And then they're wondering is, is that that does this church believe that or support that or do they all just talk about heterosexual marriage and, you know, you know, the family, mom, dad and the kids? Is that how this, and most of our churches honestly are totally oriented that way. And, you know, we're not against marriages, obviously, or families. But, you know, yeah, there's a wider call there, too, to embrace those who are called or required to live a single life. We need to be celebrating and supporting them. So, yeah, that'll be, that'll be topics for the future. And we're already talking about having you come up to B.C.

Bruce Miller:
I’d love to do that. This topic’s so nuanced, being face to face really helps.

Rob Thiessen:
Yeah. Yeah. And so we're looking for that maybe in the spring 2023, if the borders open and things settle down a bit. So thanks again, Bruce, for being with us. And to our listeners here, thanks for spending another hour with us on the Pastor to Pastor podcast. And look forward to seeing you or being with you again online in the near future. Bye bye.

Bruce Miller:
I pray God gives you wisdom to live out being Christ to the people that God puts in your path. Amen.

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