A reflection on using the Christian Sexuality Course
Andy Morgan, Youth Ministry Leader of Chichester Baptist Church, offers the following reflection on a course his church offered to their young people.
'There was disagreements and ongoing questions, but pleasingly all in the right tone,' he writes. 'Setting the tone every session, something that would have become a little repetitive for the young people, I’m sure was key to this.'
Like many ministers and youth leaders, we have been keen to help equip our young people as they seek to live for Jesus in the area of sex, sexuality and relationships. Sometimes the challenge of wanting to demonstrate grace and truth, compassion and conviction when addressing human sexuality can seem too delicate and challenging to navigate that it can be easier to say nothing. This approach simply allows the unchallenged, ‘inclusive,’ anything goes voices of wider culture to disciple our young people. What we needed was a helpful resource, that would provide some clear and gracious biblical input and allow us to create a safe environment to explore relationships, sex and sexuality with our young people.
I was recommended the Christian Sexuality Course at a youth leaders network meeting, hosted by Dreaming the Impossible. A course that aims to ‘To faithfully present our Creator’s design for our bodies and to help Christian youth and young adults follow Jesus with their sexuality’.[1] Along with fellow church leaders, we took some time to explore the material, which is a collaborative resource from the centre for Faith, Sexuality and Gender. Seeing past the Americanism, the combination of powerful testimonies, engaging and fun hosts, clear bible teaching and input from experts in this field led us to use this material with our young people.
In both our planning and communication, we were very careful. Like many churches, we have recently re-visited with our leadership team what the Bible teaches about sexuality, singleness and marriage, and they had the chance to view the content first. We also ran a pilot of the course, showing half the video sessions, with a small number of 16-18 year olds, and invited their parents to see the content and be part of a discussion group as well. The pilot included looking at the session on same-sex attraction (7) and gender identity (8). The pilot helped inform how we would host the group times, in an open and respectful way, building on the clear and gracious input from the video resources.
When it came to running the course, I communicated with both youth and parents via email a few months before running the course to allow for further conversations with parents and youth team. I was pleased that some parents were able to ask more about what we were teaching and be reassured that no young person would be ostracised because of their sexual orientation or holding different views to the orthodox Christian view. I recognise that the church has not always made it easy to talk about these things, and as a youth leader and minister I’m committed to making church a safer place to talk about these subjects, especially when they are of a personal nature. It is the task of leaders to help God’s people, both youth and adults, to engage in God’s word for themselves. It was a real privilege to listen and partner together with parents in being faithful to God’s word, and caring, loving and understanding of all in the group.
We chose to run the course using our small groups, (a group for year 9/10 and a group for year 11-13) which importantly is something young people come to by choice, rather than being forced to attend. When it came to the course itself, each session began with a clear introduction about what we were looking at, and outlined the need for everyone to listen well and be respectful of all views, as well as having an anonymous question box available and information about other safe places young people could talk pointed out. Attendance in both groups was high, perhaps higher even than normal, although like is often the case not everyone was there every week.
It was so helpful to cover the foundational topics of God’s love story (1), the authority of God and scripture (2) and shame and forgiveness (3), before looking at sex and marriage (4) and singleness and intimacy (5). The video input was followed by conversations that mainly took place in same sex groups, which was particularly helpful for the session on porn and masturbation (6) – a discussion that had various levels of awkward about it depending on the groups.
For our discussion times we attempted to create the space for those to share who wanted to, whilst making it ok for some to simply be and listen. The questions we used were based on the excellent resources provided for leaders, and there is video content and further resources made available for leaders too. The course material comes at a cost of $199 and is available for 18 months, with 50 log in codes that we made available to parents who wanted to, or young people who missed certain. It has been money well spent.
I think sharing the material with parents was a really healthy thing to be able to offer, and it was good to receive some feedback throughout the course from both parents and young people that enabled us to improve how we ran the sessions. The parents that I heard from were grateful we were looking at these themes together, and some initiated a commitment as parents to pray as we met each week.
On many occasions in recent years, I have been asked questions by youth, adults and children about homosexuality and gender identity and it was so helpful to explore this, having completed the foundational sessions first. Christian Sexuality explored these themes with both compassion and clarity, combining stories of same sex attracted believers, and how they had wrestled with the scriptures themselves in same sex attraction (7) and chosen to live celibate lives, or in one occasion that we found confusing and unexplained, mix-orientation marriage.
Some of our group commented on how they found the personal stories and the spectrum of ‘Attraction – Temptation – Lust – Sexual activity’ explanation helpful when considering how the Bible’s teaching on same sex attraction can be lived out. There was space and grace for individuals to question the Bible teaching on this, and I was pleased some of the group felt able to do this.
The Gender Identity (8) session again combined stories of those who had experienced gender dysphoria, some of whom had transitioned, with biblical teaching on sex and gender, as well as informed input from medical experts. Considering gender stereotypes was particularly helpful and led to a healthy conversation from the whole group about this subject. In both session 7 and 8, the discussion questions concluded with how can you be a good friend to someone who shares they are experiencing same sex attraction or gender dysphoria. This course was not isolated and detached from biblical engagement but encouraged a pastorally sensitive and biblically informed real life response to these important topics.
Our younger group had less questions, and by this point less enthusiasm for an extra session on LGBTQI questions (9), so we skipped to the session on Dating and Friendship (10) before concluding with Living for Jesus in the secularised world (12). Whereas our older group had further and more complex questions on LGBTQI, which I felt were well handled with clarity and grace, but some members of the group were dissatisfied with the answers given.
Again, I was pleased that they felt they could share their questions and views, and it has been helpful to point those wanting to explore more to further resources such as ‘Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say’ by Preston Sprinkle and his pastoral paper '15 reasons for affirming same-sex relationships – and 15 responses’ that comes with the course material.
The sessions on dating and friendship (10), provoked helpful conversations about the purpose of relationships, and the significance of building friendships. This enabled some helpful conversations about boundaries, and we did some group exercises to help explore this.
Exploring Sex in the iworld (11) was enlightening for the group too, exploring how technology has influenced this generation’s sexual awareness and increased exposure to porn. Some of our group thought this was being overplayed, but we were able to talk about the growing trend of ‘sexting’ and how to withstand the pressure to join in with this.
The final session ‘Living for Jesus in a secularised age’ (12) painted a picture of what it means to follow Jesus, in a culture that is far from following God’s blueprint for sex, sexuality and relationships. This was incorporated into the wider picture of discipleship, where we are called to pick up our cross and follow Jesus. Surely something that is required of all believers, as we seek to be faithful to Jesus’ teaching, in our own discipleship, leadership and teaching.
Views about sex, sexuality and gender are being shared right across our culture. Some subtly through music, film, advertising and TV programmes, and others more obviously through what is taught in schools, changes in legislation and discussed among peers. What Christian Sexuality allowed us to do was bring God’s word to the heart of the conversation and create a space where we could openly and respectfully explore what it looks like to follow Jesus in these areas of life.
In our course there was disagreements and ongoing questions, but pleasingly all in the right tone. Setting the tone every session, something that would have become a little repetitive for the young people, I’m sure was key to this. I always had in mind, how does this come across to someone who has lost their virginity, is same sex attracted or is questioning their gender identity? Asking questions like ‘does anyone have a different point to share’ or ‘would anyone like to ask a question’ helped model that it was ok to share differing views.
Alongside this, we regularly came back to ‘what does the Bible teach about this theme’, and ‘what does it look like to follow the way of Jesus in this area of life?’ I acknowledged that we can’t answer every question perfectly and we made further resources available and made ourselves as leaders available for ongoing conversations. Some young people are still talking some of these themes through with us, and no doubt others are continuing to process what we have explored together.
I hope this resource may help equip other churches to faithfully teach about these topics, and create a safe, loving and caring environment to explore these themes together.
[1] christian-sexuality.com
The Revd Andy Morgan is a Minister and Youth Ministry Leader at Chichester Baptist Church.
For more Christian resources on sexuality, click here