I am a people person. I talk to numerous people everyday. My mind and my body stays busy with my job, my little league team, and my wife-to-be, planning a wedding and honeymoon etc. I have to remember dates, times, places, and all the things that people say that are important. I like to stay focused, and I like to have a plan. I can’t let one aspect of my life interfere with another in a negative way.
The reason I said all that is to set the scene for something I just CAN’T get off my mind.
Sometime around the middle of February, I was asked to speak at a youth gathering in South, AL. I was also scheduled to preach the very next week here, at Broad Street on Sunday morning for a “Keep in touch” weekend. I had already began preparing fro “Keep in Touch” and I had done enough digging to discover that the pornography industry is one of the largest industries in the world. As a Christian, a youth minister, and a concerned possible parent one day, this presents a serious problem, a conflict of interest if you want to call it that. I read somewhere that “porn leads to secrets, and secrets lead to lies” so I take this issue pretty seriously.
Anyway, back to what I was saying. The pornography issue was a component of what I was to speak on at Broad Street, and since I had done research on the numbers end of the porn industry, I figured I could incorporate it into my lesson for the area-wide youth event. As it turns out, I had a meeting with the elders and minister before I spoke about a possible job opportunity serving as the youth minister for this congregation. I had no idea that this would be a job opportunity, nor was I necessarily interested. So, I went, did my lesson (which had references to, among many other things, the problem of pornography) on being honest with yourself and with God, which can then lead to confession and repentance, and then being a leader in your unique way for the sake of God’s Kingdom.
About a month passes by, and I get a phone call that I couldn’t answer at the time from my friend, the minister at the congregation. He didn’t leave a voicemail, but the next day I returned his call. I asked him how things were going down there with the church, and he says they hired a youth minister. I was happy to hear that and I wished them the best. He proceeds to tell me that some people were upset that I spoke about pornography.
I can’t get this off my mind. I don’t care about the job. But what I do care about is how naive some people are. What is the line that I crossed? Who made this line? Who is the judge of this line? Growing up around “church” people, I have heard the term “salvation issue” hundreds if not thousands of times. It is always in reference to music, or baptism, or something like that. Why do people get bothered by serious salvation issues. Maybe this is the problem with the church. We worry about what songs other people sing, or how other people dress, or what translation other people use. WAKE UP! Salvation comes from Jesus alone. If people get bothered this much by the mention of pornography, it makes it easy to see why Christians are having such a hard time reaching our influence potential. We can’t even get along. Smaller groups such as homosexuals and atheists are having a greater impact on todays world than Christians are. This is mind-boggling and somewhat depressing.
If you are more interested on the impact pornography is having on society and your own children, here’s a website to check out. An example of what you will find – the average age a child first views pornography is… 11
http://www.familysafemedia.com/pornography_statistics.html
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Great, great post. It is high time we learn that you cannot address social issues with a tract rack — we must be willing to engage our culture and speak freely concerning our enemies. Putting our head in the sand is a poor option, yet one so many of our churches are willing to take.
Daniell,
Important deat, here. You are absolutely right. People who don’t won’t you to preach about this are often unaware of it’s impact. Here are a few stats from my sermon this past Sunday morning, my first in a series of sermons called “This Is Huge.”
90% of kids eight to sixteen years old have been exposed to pornography on the internet; 60% of Christian men have sought out some form of pornography; the largest consumer group of pornography is men between 35 and 49 years old.
Another good website/article for personal help is
http://www.christianitytoday.com/le/classics/war3.html
Richard
Sorry for the typos and misspellings there.
Hey Daniel,
Don’t let that phone call bother you. Your emphasis here is right on. More light needs to be shed about this dark world.
I remember speaking at a youth rally when I was probably around your age. My topic was “Sex, Drugs and Rock-n-Roll” of all things. I addressed it without flinching, but did try to lighten it up with a few humurous stories. An old brother afterward- all red in the face- accused me of being too “flippant” with the topic.
Everyone will not always appreciate your best, honest efforts, but God will.
Great stuff Daniel–I often say we are more worried about what takes place in the building on one hour than the fact that folks are dying ion sin all around us!
Excellent post, Daniel. Keep on writing. I know you’re busy, but you have a natural talent to develop there! This is an important subject…no matter who gets offended by it. (And my guess is that some who are pretending to be offended feel close to being ‘outed’.)
Preachers need to be preaching on real problems and porn is a real problem. If some people were upset that you spoke about porm, I wonder how they would react if you told them that their teens were sexually active. These are not problems that we can ignore and hope they will go away.
Cecil III
Great post. It is too bad that so many people are hiding their heads in the sand about what is all around them. I recently heard about a great website called covenanteyes.com that is supposed to be very useful in helping people who have problems viewing pornography on the Internet and also a great tool for parents and others to monitor computer use. This type of software would not be necessary if this was not a problem. If we don’t train young people the reason why this is so destructive then they will not learn anything except dos and don’ts. Maybe some of those feeling offended are in truth having their toes stepped on? Keep on preaching it!
I hate to read that. I bet they would have had a problem with Paul’s epistles being read to them at an assembly. Think about it, we have so many precautions for what should be said that we would keep Jesus and Paul out of the pulpit.
Paul would not be able to preach about sexual sins (which he addressed often in his letters), and Jesus would not be allowed to serve because he wasnt dressed up like the priests under the old law (no sandals are allowed on a preacher).
I understand your frustrations. Keep up the good work. THe ones you help the most are the ones you may never hear from. I hope to see you at BCC sometime!
Thank you for the comments everybody. If problems in the church like this weren’t so ridiculous and devastating, they would be somewhat funny.
Pornography can be defined in many ways, but in common parlance, it usually means material that is sexually explicit and intended primarily for the purpose of sexual arousal (Cline, 2000). pornography leads men to broad-ranging sexual addictions, breakups in their marriages, and severe depression. and the ever-increasing number of people hooked on pornography indicate that the solution is not quite that quick and simple–and that over and over, the pattern is the same: addiction, desensitization, escalation, and acting out. http://marriageandfamilies.byu.edu/issues/2002/September/trap.aspx