Monday, February 25, 2019  |  Steve Jordahl (OneNewsNow.com)

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A group of Christian leaders gathered in Edmond, Oklahoma, over the weekend to push back against an effort to mainstream homosexuality in the Church.

Radio talk-show host Janet Mefferd, Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth about Homosexuality, and Stephen Black of First Stone Ministries headlined the conference called “God’s Voice: A Biblical Response to the Queering of the Church.” OneNewsNow spoke with Black, who explained that one of the purposes of the conference was to counter – using biblical truth – misinformation from another conference that claimed to be seeking common ground between the Church and “queer culture.”

Black

“We were concerned of the messaging that was going forth from this conference called ‘Revoice’ in St. Louis this last summer,” he shared. “And the messaging was that the church needs to embrace this new terminology called ‘sexual minorities.'”

Black, executive director of First Stone Ministries, says it’s a push already embedded in several mainline denominations and threatening to tear apart others: a message that says the Church needs to not only love and minister to homosexuals, but also to accept their lifestyles and mainstream them into church ministries. When a church embraces terms such as ‘gay Christian,’ it …Is a lukewarm churchHas no fear of GodExcuses sinMuddies the gospel messageHeads down a dangerous roadVoteView ResultsPolldaddy.com

“… Having come out of homosexuality and been in ministry for over 30 years and helping people overcome [that lifestyle], I personally felt like it was a disservice, really, to the gospel and to a message of clarity and hope,” he said.

Instead, according to Black, God’s Voice hopes to rally courageous men and women of God who will stand in their churches to proclaim bold truth – which, Black argues, is actually love. “We need compassionate communities that won’t be stuck in these word constructs,” he says, “[and won’t fall for] a merger of something that is sinful and even blasphemous in attaching it to Christ – like ‘gay Christian.'”

Those communities, he concludes, need to push back against a culture that’s fighting to marginalize the message of redemption and freedom in Christ, and against a “machine [that’s] driving this in all of our entertainment, in all of our public education, and now even private and Christian education.”

Christian author and columnist Dr. Michael L. Brown was highly critical of the Revoice Conference last summer, warning about the danger of a “big theological tent” that apparently didn’t have room for solid Christian conservatives even to attend.

Editor’s note: After March 1, the God’s Voice website will have available the audio of speeches from the conference.