Lead Them Home

Unity FB Post

2022-06-29T18:36:00.001-04:00

When our nation's unity broke down over slavery, it led to a Civil War that could end. Today, unity is broken down across am ever-growing list of topics. The "sides" differ depending on the topic, so there is no clear Side A versus Side B. The new factor is not that people have a wide spectrum of views; rather, it is an absolutism of rightness (or justice) that demands "you must agree with or submit to my view" or else you are [fill in the blank.] Some people are cutting off their family, because of differences in views on abortion, gun control, immigration, etc, etc, etc, etc. Simple humility could cure this disease or else relational

05/30: Boston - Posture Shift

2015-05-30T10:00:00.000-04:00

Lead Them Home presented Posture Shift at a leading Boston area church today. To learn how Lead Them Home can train and equip your ministry team, contact us today.

05/28: Minneapolis - Posture Shift

2015-05-28T21:12:00.000-04:00

Lead Them Home presented Posture Shift for leading church teams in the Minneapolis area today. To learn how Lead Them Home can train and equip your team, contact us today.

05/27: Minneapolis - Reach Teens

2015-05-27T21:11:00.000-04:00

Lead Them Home presented The Gospel and Sexual Identity: How the Reach Today's Teens in metro Minneapolis this evening. Lead Them Home can help your youth leaders reach the next generation. To learn more, contact us today.

05/17: Boston - Posture Shift

2015-05-17T21:06:00.000-04:00

Lead Them Home presented Posture Shift at a church in Boston this evening. To learn about our nationally leading training seminar designed for church leaders, simply contact us.

04/29: Boston - Posture Shift

2015-04-29T22:00:00.000-04:00

LTH shared Posture Shift with a leading youth ministry team in the Boston area.

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04/28: Boston - Posture Shift

2015-04-28T23:26:00.000-04:00

LTH presented Posture Shift at a leading Christian outdoor adventure club in New England. What a joy to be among the next generation of church leaders who really "get" what it takes to love people in Christ!

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04/24: Kansas - Posture Shift

2015-04-24T19:24:00.000-04:00

LTH shared Posture Shift with nearly 300 church leaders in Kansas earlier today. LTH will train nearly 7,000 national, regional and local church leaders in 2015. To train your team, simply contact us and request a proposal.

Add your thoughts. Share this post with others. Reach us at leadthemhomeinfo@gmail.com.

04/23: Los Angeles - Posture Shift

2015-04-23T19:20:00.000-04:00

LTH presented Posture Shift for nearly 300 national, regional and local church leaders in LA earlier today. CHURCH LEADERS: Request Posture Shift today! Booking into 2016.

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04/21: Boston - Posture Shift

2015-04-21T21:37:00.000-04:00

Lead Them Home was pleased to present Posture Shift in the Greater Boston area earlier this evening. To learn more about our training, church leaders can request a proposal.

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We Will Fix Your Car!

2015-04-17T19:00:00.000-04:00

Lead Them Home strongly discourages Christians from making a (distorted) faith statement by denying basic consumer services to LGBTQ persons. Such actions are unacceptably discriminatory.

For the purposes of THIS post, the divisive issue of services involving same-sex wedding ceremonies is not considered. The focus of THIS post is "everyday" consumer products and services.

"One" believer posting on Facebook seems to instantly and globally represent all evangelicals. One Christian business owner who lives out the Gospel by denying auto repair service to LGBTQ customers casts a wide shadow over the entire evangelical community. This is tragic.

This post offers ZERO judgment toward the auto shop owner involved in this situation. Our experience tells us that he is likely a very kind person sincerely seeking to please God in his business practices. The discriminatory posture is a blind spot - and all humans, religious or not, operate with blind spots. You - and I - are no different than this man.

That said, this kind of Christian witness must be addressed. With humility and sincerity of heart, Lead Them Home will offer a FREE 2-hour Skype Posture Shift seminar to ANY Christian business owner who thinks it is godly and biblical to deny service to LGBTQ customers. Our training will NOT compromise your biblical position, but it will radically shift your posture.

To the LGBTQ Community, Lead Them Home is not in the auto repair business. If we were, we would definitely fix your car! Thankfully, there are MANY evangelical business owners who do this every day!

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04/15: Burlington VT - Identity

2015-04-15T23:00:00.000-04:00

Lead Them Home was pleased to present IDENTITY for Christian students in the Burlington (VT) area this evening. Who are you? More than you can ever imagine. Schedule IDENTITY at your ministry today.

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04/14: Burlington VT - Posture Shift

2015-04-14T21:39:00.000-04:00

Lead Them Home was pleased to present Posture Shift for nearly 60 Burlington (VT) church leaders. In 2015, Lead Them Home will train over 7,000 national, regional and local church leaders. To train your team, church leaders are invited to request a proposal. (your identity will be verified)

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04/11: Central MA - Family Care

2015-04-11T21:27:00.000-04:00

Lead Them Home presented Family Care Seminar today in Central Massachusetts. Families gathered to hear a biblical message for engaging LGBTQ loved ones and connected with one another. Family Care helps families across America connect with one another.

Catch Family Care across America:

May 27 - Minneapolis
Jun 25 - Nebraska
Aug 17 - Indiana
Fall 2015 - Houston
Nov 2015 - Boston

To host Family Care at your church, simply contact us.

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National Training Agreements

2015-04-10T10:00:00.000-04:00

Lead Them Home recently signed two six-region training agreements with national ministries. These agreements will equip over 3,000 national and regional ministry leaders across 48 states plus Canada.

Church Leaders: Ask about Posture Shift today.

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04/09: Boston - Guest Lecture

2015-04-09T19:14:00.000-04:00

Lead Them Home was pleased to present Posture Shift in an evangelism class at a local university. We offer a host of effective messages for the collegiate academic setting. Contact us to learn more.

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03/31: Boston - Guest Lecture

2015-03-31T10:00:00.000-04:00

Lead Them Home was pleased to guest lecture an evangelism class at a leading university in Boston earlier today. We offer a host of effective messages for the collegiate academic setting. Contact us to learn more.

Add your thoughts. Share this post with others. Reach us at leadthemhomeinfo@gmail.com.

03/25: Maryland - Posture Shift

2015-03-25T18:14:00.000-04:00

Lead Them Home was pleased to present Posture Shift to 50+ staff and elders at a leading Maryland church earlier today. What a privilege to engage church leaders who aim to love people so well.

FOR MINISTRY LEADERS: To request a Posture Shift proposal, simply contact us.

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Spring 2015 News!

2015-03-21T10:00:00.000-04:00

simplebooklet.com

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The Elusive "Third Way"

2015-03-19T15:00:00.000-04:00

Church leaders face the complex challenge of contextualizing the Gospel in our rapidly shifting culture. With Gospel passion, we strive for insights and strategies to bridge the gap between modern culture and historic biblical understanding.

The third way is a prominent tool we employ to bridge this gap. With this tool, we find more effective ways to share Christ and make Him accessible to seekers (and those we wish were seekers).

All such endeavors are honorable for we serve a personal God who does not want anyone to perish. And neither do we. Anyone who has experienced the love of Jesus wants others to encounter His Amazing Grace.

Without minimizing or judging others, our ministry trustees do have concerns about how the third way plays out. From a decade of work in a really complex area - trying to bridge relational and spiritual gaps between evangelical and gay communities - here are several insights.

First, moving culture tends to move people - even believers. Being a family of faith in the industrial revolution did not prevent the loss of family togetherness. When you stack family tradition against cultural shifts, culture so often wins.

Culture wins because it hits humanity like a sonic wave: it disrupts us; and moves us. Radically and rapidly. We see this impact looking back at prior generations, but we rarely note it happening to us in our generation. We act as if we are above the fray, but culture is always moving us.

Some will protest that Christians typically move too slow - not too fast. Agreed. After decades of inaction, though, we are prone to dramatic movements in order to catch-up. The fear of being left behind or deemed irrelevant triggers a fight-or-flight reflex in us.

The culture war generation represented the fight. The emerging social justice generation represents the flight. This is a perfect storm: the errors of one generation trigger opposite errors in the next generation.

Second, moving culture tends to move ideas - even biblical beliefs. When the church and its' Gospel are interpreted as outdated, we will do nearly anything to flee such perceptions. If we are not careful, this can propel us fast-forward toward an unintended destination.

Others made the Gospel too harsh and exclusive. We sat on that too long. The world changed. Our judgment was exposed. We were labeled haters. Pressure kept building as culture kept shifting. Soon, we panic and seek to make Jesus cool again. And possibly, as church leaders, we want to be viewed as cool too.

This drive to be progressive in a social justice generation is a temptation for every leader. None of us want to be known as the haters. All of us want the Gospel to be relevant in today's world. There are good intentions behind any errors we might make. It's a level playing field: we all get it wrong.

It turns out, then, that the third way is neither a conservative nor a progressive idea. It is a person named Jesus who perfectly lives out the Gospel in ways that we humans cannot. We veer to one side or the other. We are either so rigid that we judge people; or else so flexible that we find hard truths entirely unacceptable.

Jesus never does this. He honors holiness, upholds God's Word and addresses immorality, but He never takes the religious hammer to peoples' heads (other than people who use the hammer). Likewise, Jesus cares about people, compassion and mercy, but He never bends God's Word in order to accommodate sin (though He pays this debt for sinners).

He will always forgive sinners; but He never says sin is holy. This is not easy. It is not comfortable. And it certainly is not very cool. Rather, it is very costly: to-His-death costly.

One truth is clear: we are not Jesus. We get the Gospel wrong - both ways!

In prior generations, we sinned against God by excluding sinners from the church even as we were (and remain) guilty of the same things. (Romans 2:1-4) We turned the biblical fight against our own sin nature into a fight against other people.

Today, we make the opposite error which is no worse or better. In our attempt to escape hateful stereotypes, the flight instinct in us tries to make the Gospel so accessible that everyone will like Jesus - and our church - and us.

We err when we try to make the third way cool and comfortable. We sin against God when we attempt to remove ancient boundaries intended to govern our lives according to God's original design and purposes. Like the haters who dictate heavy truths against others, we dictate to God what we will or will not accept.

In light of this, we must face a very difficult but radically Jesus-like conclusion. The biblical version of the third way calls us to so love the Lord with our whole heart, soul, strength and mind that we actually enter into repentance regarding the ways "we" fall short of God's glory; and like unto it, to so love ALL other people whether they ever repent or not.

This way of viewing the Gospel has implications for enhancing our inclusion of people we might view as living outside the biblical box. If we are not being called heretic and demonic for the people we seek to include, then we likely are being far too exclusive on legalistic grounds. Particularly when we consider that our right beliefs cannot quite cover our own wrong behaviors in the sight of our Holy God.

Truth be told, we too live outside the biblical box.

But this too is true: the opposite of being exclusive is NOT to change the biblical box and say that sin is no longer sin. The third way tells the truth about sin; and invites all sinners to come to the Cross.

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03/18: Seattle - Consulting

2015-03-18T08:30:00.000-04:00

Lead Them Home is pleased to offer our nationally leading consulting services to a Seattle-based ministry today.
Our consulting is designed exclusively for key decision makers who must navigate how to enhance inclusion and access to Jesus for all people while maintaining clear biblical beliefs in an atmosphere where the belief gap across all matters of human sexuality is widening. The goal is to help evangelical ministries radically love without threatening sound orthodoxy. This is a rapidly growing segment of our ministry services to the evangelical community.

If you are a church or ministry leader, ask about our consulting services today. If you are new to working with Lead Them Home, it is highly recommended that you first invite us to train your leadership team on Posture Shift. Get a brief glimpse here. After Posture Shift, we can then consult with your decision makers around structuring inclusion in a manner that preserves orthodoxy and cares for people well. To obtain a Posture Shift proposal, contact us today.

Add your thoughts. Share this post with others. Reach us at leadthemhomeinfo@gmail.com.

03/17: Tacoma - Posture Shift

2015-03-17T13:48:00.000-04:00

Lead Them Home was pleased to present Posture Shift for 80+ Pacific Northwest evangelical leaders in Tacoma (WA) earlier today. We have trained nearly 250 national, regional and local leaders in the Seattle area in the past two weeks.
Other training events are booked in Maryland, Massachusetts, Vermont, California, Kansas, Texas and Nebraska in the next few months.

Posture Shift is a national model for helping evangelical churches and ministries enhance outreach to and pastoral care for LGBTQ (and SSA) persons. Get a "brief" e-glimpse into Posture Shift here. This does not do the training justice as the seminar is four to six hours in length, but it will offer a brief introduction.

For a proposal, contact us.

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Scripture Dysphoric

2015-03-15T10:57:00.000-04:00

Those seeking spiritual care from LTH are 50% SSA strugglers and 50% LGBTQ identified persons, both Christian and non-Christian. Of LGBTQ persons, roughly 30% are transgender who experience moderate to high gender dysphoria.

Dysphoria is an internal discomfort, anxiety or pain associated with one's gender or certain aspects of one's gender.

For such persons, there can be a "trigger" around personal pronouns. The world refers to them as one gender even though they internally feel like or aligned toward the opposite gender. Years of being called a personal pronoun that does not match your internal gender identity can be exhausting. It can wear down a person's sense of value and acceptance.

No wonder opening the Bible can be such a struggle! There are, in particular, countless He's in scripture (referring to God). Lead Them Home has noted that for many "T" individuals, they shut down and pull away from scripture as personal pronouns trigger dysphoria.

Many pastoral counselors try to "talk at" this problem by attempting to negotiate the "T" client out of their discomfort. While the intentions are kind, it gets translated as "you do not understand me." Importantly, transgender persons encounter this within both religious and secular circles.

Lead Them Home began seeking a way to help make the scriptures more accessible to our many "T" friends. With a thoughtful and compassionate approach, we find the creativity needed to bridge the gap between the "scripture dysphoric" trigger and God's promises.

Here is one approach that fully honors God's Word while making the scriptures more accessible.

First: we must all realize that "all" people can get triggered by God's Word. In one recent situation, a young "T" friend was reading Psalm 23 and suddenly stopped: "These male pronouns are making me very uncomfortable."

Suddenly, a single word in the prior psalm jumped out: dominion. (Psalm 22:8) For someone who has been sexually abused or raped, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, this word can "trigger" them to feel pain or fear. They too could close the Bible and detach from scripture.

The majority of us could experience this on much less tragic terms. The point is that "T" people are NOT the only people triggered by language in scripture. This is important to convey.

Second: while the first point is a fact, you can never rest on that point alone to relieve discomfort. It may be helpful, but their "experience" remains very REAL. The difficulty they face must be honored - rather than questioned or minimized.

Third: to address this discomfort, you can ask your friend to close their eyes as "you" read scripture for them. It works like this: ask the person which name of God they feel most secure with. You might assume it will be Father and discover this is "not" the best name. For some, it is not just the masculine that triggers discomfort but also the paternal elements. Rather than suggest options, ask them what they prefer.

Let's say your friend says "God" is the best option they can come up with. Now, return to Psalm 23: "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. My God makes me lie down in green pastures, leads me beside still waters, restores my soul and guides me in paths of righteousness." Continue in this manner and God's Word becomes digestible - even comforting - minus the trigger.

Some might protest: "How far could this adjusting of God's Word go?" To that is it worth honoring the sincere concern and responding: "Only to words that continue to glorify God!" It is no harm to the scriptures to turn "He" into "My God." To the contrary, it can enhance glory to God - and personalize God's love for people!

In the past, many well-meaning pastoral counselors have attempted to talk "T" individuals out of their discomfort. We might have moralized their resistance to reading God's Word. We might have minimized or questioned whether their experience is "real." One pastor recently told a young person: "You are not transgender. You just need to take every thought captive."

I agree - "all of us" must take every thought captive. But we must enter the "reality" of others' lives rather than pretend they are faking it. To experience "T" feelings is a very real human experience. Community will produce "comfort" when we creatively and compassionately dwell with people where they are and make God's Word accessible to them. That is what Jesus does for us...

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03/11: Seattle - Posture Shift

2015-03-11T20:30:00.000-04:00

Lead Them Home was honored to present Posture Shift to nearly 160 Pacific NW ministry leaders in Seattle today.
We trained national, regional and local leaders on our model for effective outreach and pastoral care of LGBTQ/SSA persons. Thanks everyone for a wonderful day!

To learn more our nationally leading seminar Posture Shift, contact us.

Add your thoughts. Share this post with others. Reach us at leadthemhomeinfo@gmail.com.

03/09: Boston - Consulting

2015-03-09T13:55:00.000-04:00

Lead Them Home is pleased to offer our nationally leading consulting services to a Boston-based ministry today.
Our consulting is designed exclusively for key decision makers who must navigate how to enhance inclusion and access to Jesus for all people while maintaining clear biblical beliefs in an atmosphere where the belief gap across all matters of human sexuality is widening. The goal is to help evangelical ministries radically love without threatening sound orthodoxy. This is a rapidly growing segment of our ministry services to the evangelical community.

Add your thoughts. Share this post with others. Reach us at leadthemhomeinfo@gmail.com.