What Is a Sexually Faithful Church?

For over 35 years, Harvest USA has worked with individual Christians to help them walk in repentance and renewed discipleship after years of sexual struggle in their own lives. We’ve helped spouses, parents, and other family members learn how to find godly wisdom and compassionately exercise boundaries with loved ones who are caught in patterns of sexual sin. Hundreds of churches have been equipped to help people in their church or community walk in repentance, working toward restoration in a spirit of gentleness, as Paul describes in Galatians 6:1.

And all this ministry has been necessary, and by God’s grace, it’s been effective. But everything I’ve just described is reactive. That means it’s all designed to work toward the restoration of people and loved ones who have already experienced the devastating impact of sexual and gender-related sin.

What if? What if the church were to increasingly be a place where God’s people were equipped proactively to understand his will and design for sex, sexuality, and gender? Where they were discipled to live in submission to God’s design because they understand something of God’s wisdom and grace in giving them these good gifts?

That’s what the Sexually Faithful Church Initiative is all about. It’s a movement Harvest USA is starting later this year, because we want the church to be the place where God’s people not only learn about what behavior God forbids, but where God’s people are discipled and equipped to live faithfully because they understand the character of the Giver and the nature of his gifts.

We want to help the church become more capable and confident to shepherd and disciple Christians at every age level, but particularly children, teens, and young adults, in what it means to say no to the ordinary sexual temptations they face, because they know that God’s gifts of sex, sexuality, and gender are meant for a higher purpose than selfish pleasure and a richer purpose than self-gratification.

You’ll be seeing a lot about the Sexually Faithful Church Initiative in the future. And I hope that you’ll pray and work to make your church a sexually faithful church.

This video announces the initiative as starting “later this year,” and the “over 35 years” line dates it to around 2018. If it goes on a page, give it a publish date or a short intro so the launch language doesn’t read as current.