A pastor who struggles with same-sex attraction shared how God has used his experiences to equip him in his ministry and reflected on how the Christian community can best support same-sex attracted individuals in their midst.
During an interview on The Church Leaders podcast, Shaw, the pastor of Emmanuel City Centre in Bristol, England, said the thing that God has most used to make him grasp the Gospel of grace and equip him to be a pastor is his experience with same-sex attraction.
“When pastoring somebody who is same-sex attracted, rather than thinking, ‘The thing I need to sort is their sexuality,’ you know, you want them to become more and more like Jesus. And actually, you need to be open to the possibility that God is going to use their sexuality … to help them become more and more like Jesus,” he said.
Shaw serves as the director of Living Out, a ministry that seeks to encourage Christians, equip churches, and engage the world with God’s plan for sexuality and identity. One of the best things pastors and church members can do, he said, is to acknowledge that there are people struggling with gender and sexuality in their midst.
“For a pastor and for a leadership team in the church, thinking through these issues, one of the first things they need to think through is, we will probably already have people in our midst for whom same-sex attraction, questions around sexuality and gender identity are big things that they’ve perhaps never felt able to talk about in the context of an evangelical church,” he explained.
This is an article from the Christian web magazine Christian Post. To read more, please visit https://www.christianpost.com/news/pastor-confessing-struggle-with-same-sex-attraction-helps-in-ministry.html
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