Kim Davidson is Administrative Assistant to Dr. Randy Stinson and a friend of CBMW. We post this two part series with our gratituded to her.
Here are live blog summaries of the final three sessions of the recent "Connecting Church and Home" conference that took place at Brentwood Baptist Church in Nashville, Tennessee.
In Session #4, Brian Haynes, the Associate Pastor overseeing Spiritual Formation at Kingsland Baptist Church in Katy, Texas, answered the question: "What are you getting yourself into?" He gave the following four answers.
1)You get yourself into the glory of God. Psalm 78, among other passages shows the extending the gospel to the next generation serves the glory of God. 2) You get yourself into a spiritual battle. Youth ministry is claimed ground. The devil will not tolerate an effective ministry to young people. 3) You get yourself into an extremely biblical church. How can we link the gospel with the charge to families in Deuteronomy 6? The answer is to become more extremely biblical. 4) You get yourself into the hope of generational impact. The goal of student ministry should be nothing less than cultural redesign.
In Session #5, CBMW's President Randy Stinson spoke on the charge in Scripture for men to cultivate manhood (1 Kings 2). In the face of encroaching feminization of our culture and even the church, mature believers must cultivate in boys a sense of biblical manhood.
Dr. Stinson's sounded a climactic charge: "If you will go back to your churches and hold up the banner of biblical manhood – call young men into battle – remind them that they were made for battle. They will be the ones to lead the charge. They will be criticized and challenged. They will be called to think of others more than themselves. But, don't sit around waiting for an endorsement from the world. Be strong and prove yourself a man."
In the final session, Mike Glenn, pastor of Brentwood Baptist, asks thematically, "Are we doing the right thing? There is a shaking going on in the churches of North America. God cares more about the lost then our comfort."
He suggested that in a victim-making culture such as ours, hope is in short-supply. Only the church can give hope in Jesus Christ. Christ's hope provides assurance, identity and purpose. "The world tells you that you are a victim, the gospel assures you that you are not." Christ became a victim for you.
Pastor Glenn closed with this sober, yet hopeful, commission:"We are on mission. We are not a Christian nation. Our culture does not support our children's growth in Christ and in the knowledge of God. We are a people in exile."
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This new curriculum is aimed at Christians who are facing challenging questions with the rise of LGBT ideology on topics like homosexuality, transgenderism, gender dysphoria, intersex conditions, preferred pronouns, and more. The study is broken down into eight chapters that guide readers through the Bible’s teaching on gender, sexuality, and marriage. Male & Female He Created Them gives Christians with a biblical foundation that starts in Genesis 1 and 2 with God’s good design in making mankind male and female in His image.
Male & Female He Created Them: A Study on Gender, Sexuality, & Marriage can be purchased online at Christian Book, Christian Focus, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.