A guest speaker gave a sermon at Crossroads in Oakley last Sunday. This Sunday, a protest is planned outside the megachurch.
On July 18, David Mahan, the director of policy with Center for Christian Virtue, spoke at Crossroads about gender identity and gender transitioning. His message was met with a standing ovation from some, while others walked out upset.
Mahan said his message wasn't coming from a place of hate but a desire to encourage the congregation to stand up to policies that are hurting children.
Many disagree, saying Mahan's message caused a lot of pain.
Amy McKenzie and Jack Crofts are planning to hold a demonstration outside of Crossroads on Sunday.
McKenzie said as a Christian with close friends and family members who are gay, she understands how hard it is to find an accepting church. She said many people thought Crossroads accepted them until Mahan's sermon.
"I want to be a support for those in the congregation who are LGBTQIA+ or were hurt by the sermon and questioning if the church is a safe place for them," McKenzie said.
So she's hosting a "pop-up Pride event" outside of the church on July 25 to allow a safe space for fellowship.
Jack Crofts said she wants to hold an demonstration to demand accountability from Crossroads.
"The problem with Crossroads is their stance on LGBTQIA+ issues, and people, is very unclear publicly. If this happened at like the Westboro Baptist Church, we wouldn't have a demonstration because their views are very well-known. But many people think Crossroads is pro-LGBTQ," Crofts said.
She added that it would save many people the heartache of having what they believed to be a loving community ripped out from under them if Crossroads would take a clear stance on the issue.
'Do you want a dead daughter or a live son?': Sermon video spreads online
Video and quotes from the July 18 sermon quickly spread on social media, and many people picked it apart, highlighting the various aspects that upset them.
In the sermon, Mahan said he was frustrated that the church could no longer speak about certain issues without the fear of being canceled, and it was time to change that.
Early on in the sermon, he spoke about how about 15 years ago, many schools had speakers talk about HIV prevention.
"They weren't talking about prevention but were encouraging a lifestyle that led to the disease in the first place... I started seeing heavy obscenities even in the curriculums. I'm talking about porn, BDSM, floggers, and gag balls that they would be putting into the supplemental materials for middle school students," Mahan said.
He said schools "groomed" children into certain lifestyles and used hurt children as a human shield to push an agenda.
He also said, "if you go to a clinic in this area, eventually you'll get down to brass tacks of do you want a dead daughter or a live son."
Mahan asked the congregation what they would do if an anorexic teen came before them saying she was suicidal because she was fat.
"What is your response? Affirmation, or do you try to get her distorted mentality of herself to line up with her biological reality? What do we do? And if we do the latter, why wouldn't we do it with the same dysphoric condition of transgender?" Mahan said.
The church's auditorium filled with applause as Mahan asked the question.
He ended the sermon by reading data from a study he attributed to the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and called it the "best science we have on this topic to date."
He said the study concluded those who undergo a complete transition have an increased risk of mortality from all causes, being hospitalized for psychiatric reasons, convicted of a crime, and committing suicide.
'Takes people back to a place of being rejected'
"I was shocked," Brian Webb said, describing his initial reaction to seeing the video of Mahan's sermon. "He was saying we need to keep transgender people and activists out of the church. That causes so much pain to a group that's already very vulnerable and marginalized."
Webb was a former worship leader at Crossroads and had many friends who attend and volunteer at the church. He said those friends reached out to him, upset they didn't know what Sunday's sermon would be about beforehand and felt like passive participants to a hateful message.
He said that because of how Crossroads markets itself, many people throw themselves into the church, believing they are welcome until something like what happened on Sunday occurs.
Eric Stone, a counselor, said he is worried about the sermon's impact on LGBTQ+ individuals.
"It's invalidating, especially to those looking for a welcoming place. All of us want a safe place to worship and feel welcomed. This takes people back to a place of being rejected from a community for their identity," Stone said.
He said he's had a couple of clients reach out wanting to talk after this incident and knows other counselors are receiving many requests.
What LGBTQIA+ youth need, Stone said, is support, not more judgment or shame because that can increase feelings of anxiety or depression.
'We want to make LGBTQIA+ individuals feel welcome'
In a statement, Brian Tome, the senior pastor at Crossroads Oakley, said he wishes they handled Sunday's sermon differently in some ways.
Tome said he should have spoken to his congregation about this topic in a more sensitive way and regrets it gave the appearance they were in partnership with a polarizing organization.
"We aren't disavowing everything in the talk, but there should have been adjustments, and it should have been from one of our pastors," Tome said.
Responding to the critique that Crossroads doesn't have a clear stance LGBTQIA+ issues, Tome said:
"People will be upset because we're not going to say exactly what they want us to say... We have been abundantly clear for 25 years that God loves all people and it is through Jesus' death on the cross that we experience eternal life and true abiding love. No one goes to hell because of their sexual orientation or their sexual practices, and everyone who comes to Christ must put their spirituality before their sexuality.
We don't talk about LGBTQIA+ issues or even sex very often because people are tired of the rhetoric. But I do think that people need to understand the love of God and His instruction relative to sex. We are going to double down on that because our culture needs it."
The Center for Christian Virtue issued a statement as well addressing the backlash against Mahan's sermon:
"In today's culture, any discussion of gender identity is going to spark harsh backlash. Yet few speakers in the country understand the real-life impact of the transgender movement like David Mahan. He's personally witnessed the pressure children are under today, and has sat with parents who have been bullied and intimidated by doctors to put their children on dangerous experimental procedures for the purpose of gender transitioning.
As David has witnessed after working in the public schools for the past 20 years, children in all schools are having dangerous transgender ideology forced on them, and most parents are either unaware or unequipped to know how to respond."
Source link
