Orange October Q & A - Final Week

This month we’ve been asking people to text questions they had during the sermons and offering to answer some of them at the end of the message, and others through this blog. There were no additional questions other than the ones Elizabeth dealt with on Sunday, but we did have one more question that was asked in response to the message Carl gave on October 15th. Here it is:

I have tense relationships with my parents because of my spiritual values. What if my teenage children choose to be gay or lesbian? Should I denounce them or pray or what?

Such a great question about a potentially difficult and painful situation! How should we as parents respond to a child who makes choices that are not in keeping with our values? Praying and seeking wise counsel is always a good idea in such cases because our initial reaction may not be the right one. Two of our greatest spiritual values are grace and truth, and these are held together by love -- so keep talking! A breach in the relationship should be an absolute last resort. The matter of being gay or lesbian is something that deserves a more detailed response than I can give here. We’re planning to have a sermon series in January on purity and human sexuality where we’ll look at this in more detail, so stay tuned for that. If the matter is urgent, reach out to one of us in leadership at Forest Brook so we can talk.    

Thanks to everyone who sent in questions this month as we tried out this new feature during our morning worship services. We’re going to take some time evaluating this before we continue with it, and if you have any feedback on including a Q&A portion on Sunday mornings please pass it on to Jeff Knight or myself. We might return to this feature after Christmas so let us know what you think.