Sisters, Should Your Church Talk About How to Be Sexually Faithful Women?

Should your church’s women’s ministry talk about sexual faithfulness? Yes or no? If “no,” why not? And if “yes,” then how should the women’s ministry in your church address topics that are connected not only to sexual sin, but what it means to live as sexually faithful women, whether single or married, younger or older?

Maybe you read the title of this article and had a response like that of a woman who saw our Harvest USA information table at a large Christian conference. When she found out what we do, she soft-yelled at me with exasperation: “OH! I’m so tired of hearing about all this stuff!” After her unfiltered and frustrated lament, she promptly turned and walked away. Ouch.

Maybe that’s how you feel too. I get it! Some days it seems like chatter about “all this stuff” is the surround-sound noise we can’t escape; it’s easy to experience sex-talk fatigue. The consistently loud voice of culture, troubling stats on porn addiction, the disturbing (if not terrifying) reality of AI for sexual deviation, and sex scandals involving church leaders can prompt us, including women in the church, to wish it would all go away. I mean, shouldn’t we focus on basic discipleship, evangelism, and reaching the nations for Christ?! Shouldn’t women invest their energies into nurturing the faith of others through intentional relationships, cultivating love for the Lord and his Word, and practical training for discipleship? If your answer is “yes,” then I hope you’ll see that addressing sexual faithfulness and sexual sin with the gospel is an application of all the above.

Global Missions, Church Ministry, or Harvest USA?

2007 was significant for me as I prayed, explored, and pursued the next season of ministry. Three possibilities emerged to serve the Lord with the gifts and ministry desires he planted in my heart. First, I could return overseas to cross-cultural ministry, a passion of mine. Next, a surprise path opened toward a large urban church, to serve as a ministry director giving oversight, coaching, and encouragement to leaders. Finally, Harvest USA! The job description was ideal, yet I had to wrestle through some tough issues.

• Fearfully, I asked, “Really, Lord? Sexuality, sexual addictions, broken marriages, hurting family members? That seems beyond me. I’ve had close to zero training in these areas, not to mention little experience.”
• Pridefully, I asked, “Really Lord? I’m willing to go overseas to the unreached, and you want to keep me in the U.S. focused on Christians struggling with sexual sin?!”

Yet my fears, self-righteousness, and insecurity did not prevail, and I excitedly joined the Harvest USA staff in 2007.

One year in, I remember a day when I “got it.” My passion for the global work of Christ, local church ministry, and discipling people to love Jesus all came together in what I was learning through Harvest USA. How so? I heard story after painful story of Christian women so bound up in shame. They were hopeless due to struggles with pornography, promiscuity, same-sex desires, and dark secrets. Wives unburdened their hearts in my office, sharing about life-wrecking revelations in their marriages. I realized how the household of faith is being crippled and, in some cases, paralyzed by sexual sin and the ripples of impact that touch families, churches, and—dare I say it—the church.

Local churches needed help addressing and engaging these gospel opportunities, and believers in Jesus needed faithful disciplers to help them walk out true repentance by learning what it means to be sexually faithful women. I realized that my role in this season was to engage God’s global cause, and it was also to build up the universal church. God called me to do both of those things through ministry focused on sexual strugglers. And remember, my role was 100% focused on ministry to women.

My role in this season was to engage God’s global cause and to build up the universal church—God called me to do both of those things through ministry focused on sexual strugglers.

I gained experience, and ministry consultation requests began to grow as women involved in local church ministry contacted me. Seasoned women of the Word, Bible study teachers, and lay counselors needed guidance and encouragement for nurturing sexually faithful women. Some were seminary-trained, and had strong grounding in biblical counseling, yet didn’t know how to apply their Bible knowledge and training to matters of sexual sin.

Women in Ministry: The Church Needs You!

Women under your care need you to humbly learn, teach, and apply the gospel to sex and sexuality. The fallout is painful when we, the women of the church, are reluctant to weave honest, dignified, compassionate, biblical discipleship regarding sexuality and becoming sexually faithful women into our church’s ministry. Here are two of the ways women may be hurt when their leaders are silent.

1. Women learn that they must figure things out on their own. That includes interpreting experiences with sex, physical arousal, and sexual things said or done to us. Closely connected to this is arriving at conclusions about who we are as girls and women based on a variety of voices.  Friends, porn, social media, sexual experiences—including abuse—become the grid for interpreting life. We also have an enemy, Satan, the ultimate false teacher, who seeks to distort our thinking with lies and deceptions.

When our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs aren’t synced up with God’s truth, we will be led astray from our closeness with Jesus and the gospel truth which protects and provides for us. Oh, how we need, my sisters-who-lead, to courageously apply the hope of Christ and the truth of God’s Word to our sexuality. We must learn to do this for the sake of women and girls in our congregations who:

• Discovered self-comfort as little girls, when touching their genitals. Habits formed and stayed through the teens, into adulthood, and maybe into marriage. I can’t stop . . . I’m so confused about sexual desires. Are they good? Dirty? Just a physical response that’s no big deal?
• Were surprised by emotional crushes on other girls, and maybe adult female friends, and physical boundaries got crossed. How did I get here? Was I born this way? Have I been suppressing my true self all along?!
• Hate their bodies and/or all things ‘girl world,’ though no one knows. What does it mean to be a woman, and is that really my gender? Why am I so ‘other’ from the girls and women at church?
• Accidentally (or intentionally) found porn, then couldn’t stop looking at it. Or discovered pornographic books in the world of erotica, romance, or romantasy. They love it, hate it, can’t stop, feel guilty, crave it. Can I really be a follower of Jesus and enjoy these things?! What’s wrong with me?

In response to this confusion and pain, we can’t be silent. We can’t let the world be the persuasive voice or the lens for interpreting these experiences. The idea of  “sex education” needs to be reframed as discipleship regarding our sexuality and the suffering and sin we experience in connection with it. All this needs to be woven with the goodness of God’s provision for living as sexually faithful women, as those who can have broken hearts made whole by our indwelling Healer.

2. Girls and women are often left to feel ashamed, hopeless, and defeated. If they aren’t exposed to teaching about how the gospel speaks to these things in their lives as women, it’s so difficult to understand how he can help us—the very One who came to rescue us from sin and heal our broken hearts. If discipleship groups aren’t addressing sexual addictions, or women’s Bible studies never bring up the realm of sexual sin, women seek answers elsewhere. It’s sad that many conclude that Christianity doesn’t have anything to offer them in these areas.

Discipling Sexually Faithful Women

We can’t go back in time, but I wonder about the woman who audaciously pursued Jesus with extravagant love—you know, the woman named “sinful” by a religious leader in Luke 7. She was known in the city for her prostitution, and she was judged. But did anyone break protocol to go to her with words of rescue, compassion, and practical help?

When we consider the Samaritan woman in John 4 who had been married to five men and was currently sinfully living with another man outside of marriage, I wonder whether she was shunned by other ‘respectable’ women in her village rather than pursued with help and care? Did anyone seek to protect her, find out about her story, show her compassion? Did anyone offer to take her in?

Or the woman referred to in 1 Corinthians 5:1 who was involved sexually with her step son! Did anyone explain to her the Father’s gracious love for her in Christ and the destructive nature of what she was doing?

We don’t know the answers to these questions. But we do know that today, the body of Christ needs to keep growing in how we teach believers about what it means to be transformed, sexually faithful women. And women must take up the mantle as disciplers, friends, and older women in the faith to invest in honest, real-deal conversations about these aspects of our humanity in which we all need help. Let’s do it together, seeking to build up the body of Christ toward maturity, wholeness, and holiness.

Please pray for Harvest USA staff who are developing a Church Leader Training Resource to assist women and men to become equipped and confident-in-Christ to minister to those under their care.