Although this article in the Ventura County Star doesn’t predict a new Jesus Movement, the conditions described seem to be a good foundation for such a prediction. And the information relating to homosexuality should be read by every evangelical leader.
Last night at GCC, I gave a talk to a group called God and the Gay Neighbor. This article dovetails very nicely with that talk and with what I heard from the students. A couple of students asked questions about how to counter activism but mostly, the interest was in how to love.
And then there is there is this column by Matt Barber which includes an excerpt from a paper by his little brother Jared Barber, age 19. This illustrates nicely the type of sentiment described in the polling by the Barna group, noted in the Ventura newspaper piece above.
Jared Barber wrote:
Another problem arises here, though; and it is this: Christians, as a whole, focus too much on the homosexual issue alone. They attack it solely, denounce it, and live whichever way they please. Adultery, fornication, racism, pride, jealousy, selfish ambition, drunkenness; all of these immoral acts take to the background in view of homosexuality, and so we as Christians are set up as anti-gay instead of anti-immorality. We need to end our own hypocrisy, all of us, I as much as any, so that we can more blamelessly broach this subject and others.
And foremost, we must remember that Christ preached one thing above all else: Love. We must love others, with, as [C.S.] Lewis said, “…a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner — no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment.”