Description:
"When we interact with our LGBTQ+ neighbors we are not interacting with an ideology, a political movement, a social media post, a caricature from a movie, or a law being debated in Congress. We are interacting with people made in the image of God, who our Savior bled and died to redeem. We are interacting with someone God literally loved to the point of his own death."
Cultivate Community With LGBTQ+ Neighbors
Too often, fear and suspicion have characterized churches' response to LGTBQ+ people. As we remain committed to the historic Christian teachings about marriage and sexuality, American evangelical churches have also harmed a community we have not understood. Our default has been to keep LGBTQ+ people at arm's length.
But there is another way, one that resists both culture wars and the pressure to revise scriptural teaching; one that embraces people and clings to historic witness.
In Love All Our Neighbors, Tony Scarcello shows how holding a traditional sexual ethic does not have to lead toward the exclusion of LGBTQ+ people from church. Drawing from biblical theology, cultural data, and the author's personal experience as a same-sex-attracted pastor, this bookteaches traditional Christians and churches how to truly care for LGBTQ+ people. Scarcello explains how churches can and should be places of conviction, humility, and radical love for everyone.
In Love All Our Neighbors, you'll learn
- how Jesus loves LGBTQ+ people and desires to know them,
- how churches have built unbiblical barriers between LGBTQ+ people and Jesus, and
- how to dismantle these barriers and minister with care, without compromising orthodox theology.
If you're a church leader who upholds a traditional sexual ethic and seeks to genuinely care for LGBTQ+ individuals, you'll find this book both challenging and transformative. With thoughtful guidance, Love All Our Neighbors equips churches committed to historic Christian teaching to overcome barriers, fostering a Jesus-centered, life-giving community that embraces everyone with grace and love. Our churches can become environments where LGBTQ+people can find and follow Jesus in life-giving community.
Brief description:
Preston Sprinkle (PhD, University of Aberdeen) is associate professor of biblical studies at Eternity Bible College, Simi Valley, California. He is the author of Law and Life: The Interpretation of Leviticus 18:5 in Early Judaism and in Paul, coeditor (with Michael Bird) of The Faith of Jesus Christ and coauthor (with Francis Chan) of Erasing Hell.
Review Quotes:
"I will never understand why those of us who experience same-sex attractions and surrender them to Jesus experience greater scrutiny than those who experience another form of sexual brokenness. Tony Scarcello graciously helps us examine some of the problems and solutions to this issue so we can worship Jesus together."
--Laurie Krieg, author of Raising Wise Kids in a Sexually Broken World