I had a talk with a pastor friend last week (he is also in a smaller church) and he told me that a few months ago he had what he called a "Sex Sunday". They podcast their services and they have a few dozen hits each week... but on that subject.. they have had over 175 hit thus far. wow...
I know I have asked before why is it that for something that God created and said was GOOD, we as people of God most never talk about the subject of sex??
I know that those who are not Christians do so... a lot.... and often crudely. Yet for us who are in Christ... we most never talk publicly about it.
I believe that it is even tougher in smaller churches in solo pastor settings to talk about sex. Jonathan Acuff, creator and blogger of the website called Stuff Christians Like (
http://stuffchristianslike.net/), wrote a great post on how Christians have wrecked sex.
He writes;
"I’d love to say Christianity has knocked it out of the park and ransomed the beauty of this gift from the world, but I’m not sure we have. In fact, I think we’ve caused our own damage in four ways: 1. Sometimes, we teach guilt, not abstinence.
I touched on this a little in the Stuff Christians Like
book. Lots of our churches and youth groups teach kids for years that “Sex before marriage is bad.” And I agree with that message. I’ve seen the damages of pre-marital sex hundreds of times. The challenge though is that’s only half of the message. I wish when we taught abstinence we would say, “Sex before marriage is bad, but sex when you’re married is awesome.” Because what happens is that during your formative teenage years you hear over and over again about how bad sex before marriage is. And your head and heart shorthand that idea and just tell you that, “Sex is bad.” Then you get married, on your wedding night, you’re supposed to magically, instantly shed all your guilt and fear about sex. We’re taught guilt for years and then left on the doorsteps of our marriages to figure it all out by ourselves.
2. We have very few ways to discuss it.
Because of this site, people often send me links to Christian stuff they think is funny. Every now and then, I’ll get links to “Christian sex sites.” The sites are typically forums where Christians talk in an honest and holy way about their sex lives. Now for the majority of us, that last sentence was weird. Let’s be real, our sex lives are not something we collectively talk about a lot in Christian circles. Our finances, our parenting, our jobs, our in-laws, deep regrets from the past, we’ll touch on anything in a small group. But broach some sexual topic at your next small group and people will look at you like your F to the E to the R to the G to the I to the E. That’s off limits. It’s supposed to be beautiful and holy and loving. And yes the world is attacking it everyday in thousands of ways, but you’re supposed to discuss that on your own as a couple. Maybe you’ve had a different experience in small group but we were in one that didn’t touch on that subject for the first three years or so.
3. We write 10 books about lust for every one book about the gift of sex.
God Bless the stuff folks like xxxchurch.com are doing. Buy Breaking Free
or the Samson Pirate
book. I love both of those. I’m happy for all the work that’s being done to free people from the bondage of sexual addiction. But I wish that for every time I heard about the poison of lust, I heard about the perfection of love. I wish every time someone preached on the problem of sex, someone preached about the untamed awesomeness of sex. The conversation has become very one sided when it comes to Christians and sex.
4. We’ve made the crayon box pretty small.
Have you ever prayed before sex? Have you ever applied every ounce of God given creativity you have to it? Have you ever made a Christian songs sex tape? OK, that last one is impossible, Michael W. Smith just doesn’t make music like Sisqo. But seriously, I think to some degree we’ve bought the lie that the world gets to have wild, crazy sex and Christians, holy folks like us get to have black and white, two dimension sex. But what if that’s wrong? What if the God who overflows us with love and hope and mercy, wants that part of our lives to be as big and as colorful as two married people could possibly imagine?
Those are the problems, or rather some of them, but what’s the solution? What’s the answer? What’s the fix? Those are fair questions, but there’s no way I could possibly solve the sex situation in a blog post. Here though is what I hope.
I hope that every time we say sex before marriage is harmful, we’ll say “sex after marriage is neon awesome.” I hope that some well-designed, honest Christian sex site will launch. (Feel free to use the variation, “Sexy Stuff Christians Like.”)
I hope that Thomas Nelson and Zondervan and Baker and some other folks will release some wild books about the goodness of Christian sex.
Until then though, until all of those things happen, you should at least go download Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game,” the Sundays, “Wild Horses,” and Mazzy Star’s “Fade into You.” Those are all some pretty fantastic make out songs."
Great stuff!! I have even used his comments in a pre-marriage class. So smaller church pastor, do you every talk about the "S word" from the pulpit? If so how did it go? Any advice to the rest of us?
Write away!
-K
