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By Jeremy Farmer Guest Columnist
There’s an elephant in the room. No one wants to talk about it. But we need to. The elephants are littering our churches, our disciples and our pews. Over the next four weeks, we’re going to talk about some of the elephants in the room.
Let’s talk about sex baby, let’s talk about sex. This is one of the most avoided subjects in church these days. You just don’t talk about sex. I mean, it’s church...right? I polled our students in the Mix, our student community, as well as those on campus at the high schools/jr. highs in our county. I asked them one question: what has the church taught you about sex? They gave me one answer: don’t do it.
That’s it. I received that answer from at least 50 students. The ONLY thing that the church has taught them in relationship to sex is to not do it. I asked them what they have learned about sex outside of the church, and they gave me a ton of answers. Some good, some not. The church isn’t talking about it. The schools are. Students are. TV is. The movies are definitely talking about it. And I refuse to sit idle and have my students learn about sex from a nasty, non-Biblical point of view. Point is: if we don’t teach a Biblical view of sex, someone else will teach their view. Students won’t learn how awesome God created sex to be -- they’ll learn sex from the lunch table, and later learn about it in the backseat of a car on a country road past curfew. This is not the awesome plan of God as it relates to sex! But because we don’t have the guts to address the elephant in the room, we have church kids who are just as active sexually as non-church kids. And in the moment of decision, when they are struggling with the temptation of sex, all they have is a purity ring with their youth pastor telling them, “Don’t have sex. Sex before marriage is bad.” Shame on us for not teaching students anything else but that. If you would like our series on sex, you can contact me, and I will give you a link to our student community’s free podcast. Jeremy Farmer is the Student Pastor at Lifepoint Church, Malvern. You may contact him on his personal blog at pioneerpreacher.com or at
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