A well-known North Carolina pastor who formerly served as president of the Southern Baptist Convention is responding to controversial comments about homosexuality by Andy Stanley, saying in a new column that Christians must not “retreat from” issues of sexuality and gender and must respond with grace and truth on the issue.
J. D. Greear, the lead pastor of the Summit Church in Raleigh-Durham, N.C., and a former SBC president, says in a new column for The Gospel Coalition that Christians must follow the example of Jesus, whose “unstoppable power came from being filled with both grace and truth.”
“Jesus was the only fully truthful man and the only fully gracious man,” Greear wrote. “Those concepts were not enemies in his nature – warring against each other for ‘balance’ – they were fully in agreement. … In the Great Commission, where Jesus commands us to make disciples of all people (including those with same-sex attractions), he also commands us to teach them to observe all he taught, certainly including the sanctity of marriage (Matthew 19:3–12).”
For several weeks, Christians and non-Christians alike on social media have debated video clips by Stanley about homosexuality. In one clip, he says, “A gay person who still wants to attend church after the way the church has treated them, I’m telling you, they have more faith than I do … They still love God.” In another clip, he says of the Bible’s teachings on homosexuality, “I know the ‘clobber passages,’ alright? We’ve got to figure this out. And if you don’t … you can say goodbye to the next generation.”
Stanley is the pastor of North Point Community Church in Alpharetta, Ga.
Greear’s column was headlined, “Downplaying the Sin of Homosexuality Won’t Win the Next Generation.”
North Point has not officially responded to the controversy.
Silence on LGBT matters, Greear wrote, is not practical.
“Every unbeliever who steps into our church assumes he already knows what we believe about homosexuality for at least three reasons,” Greear wrote. “First, Christians across the globe have consistently believed in the sanctity of heterosexual marriage for 2,000 years. … Second, evangelicals are known as Bible people, and even a casual reader of the Bible easily discerns the Bible’s disapproval of homosexuality. Third, the media reminds audiences of the above every chance they get in order to portray Christians as bigots.”
Greear acknowledged that Christian missionaries sometimes “remove obstacles to faith.” Such an action, though, should “never involve muting, denying, or equivocating on anything the Bible teaches,” he said.
“At the center of preaching the cross is repentance,” Greear wrote. “And repentance, properly understood, is the truly offensive thing. Jesus told a crowd of would-be followers that it means to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow him, with no conditions or caveats (Matthew 16:24). It means being willing to walk away from anything and everything in your life that competes with Jesus.”
Too many churches, Greear said, have an unbalanced view of the gospel.
“Fundamentalists like truth without grace. Liberals like grace without truth,” Greear wrote. “… To be effective as evangelists, we have to be full of both – more truthful than the fundamentalist and more graceful than the liberal. Only then will we draw people to God like Jesus did, and only then will we send them out to the world to win it like he did.”
Greear closed his column by telling the story of a lesbian couple who began attending his church. Eventually, each woman became a Christian. They also severed their marriage ties, Greear wrote. One of the women told him, “Thank you for not changing the message for me. It’s always been obvious, to both my partner and me, what the Bible says about this.”
“My intention,” Greear concluded, “is to encourage those of us who’ve been entrusted with God’s Word for this generation not to shrink back in unbelief but instead to press on in faith so we might be able to say to our generation what the apostle Paul said to his: We didn’t shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God (Acts 20:27). We admonished everyone with tears, day and night (Acts 20:31). We fought the good fight, kept the faith, and finished the race (2 Timothy 4:7).”
Related:
Pastor Andy Stanley to Host Conference for Parents of LGBT Children
Photo credit: J.D. Greear Facebook
Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.