Let's Talk About Sex

The song "Let's Talk About Sex" was playing as I walked into my Models of Young Adult Ministry class this morning! If you weren't awake by now, you were now! This specific topic was not explicitly named on the syllabus, but all of the readings for today were somehow related to the topic of sex in one way or another. The professors were definitely hinting at it... as were the authors of the assigned book and articles for this mornings class. "Churches are scared to talk about sex..." the readings say, so let's do it... let's talk about sex.

Sex is such a touchy thing. Indeed it is, and it seems like everywhere one turns, no one else wants to talk about it as a serious discussion. As a group of 50 seminarians, we changed that today. We started off with a classroom poll (anonymous) about sex, marriage, and ordination. What we found is that not everyone agrees. On most of the specific questions, the class was split 60-40. Knowing this going into the discussion was quite interesting, yet expected in seminary. We then talked about what the Bible says about sex and marriage. Each of us had to work through our own definitions of 'touchy' words like: chastity, fornication, adultery, fidelity, sex, hooking up, and marriage. It seemed like one of the harder definitions to develop was "marriage" in light of the ongoing controversy about same-sex marriage and homosexuality in the church. 

Studies, studies, studies. Much of the assigned reading for today's class contained research material about what emerging adults (ages 18-29) thought about sex and the church. The key point that many of these research studies made was that sex is something we need to talk about in the church with our young people. We can't keep avoiding it and pretend that everybody "just knows" how things are "supposed" to be. Church leaders especially need to initiate conversations about this topic. 

Purity vs. Liberation. We then had a guest speaker who talked about common views of sex in the church. He spoke about the two prevailing, yet opposing points of view. (1) Purity--people must remain pure until marriage; (2) Liberation--no one has any right to tell me what is morally right or wrong. Our speaker then suggested a third route: sexuality from a perspective of witness of and to the gospel. He didn't make any very solid claims, but he did cite a whole lot of Corinthians and Ephesians. Overall the lecture left us with more questions than answers.

This was quite the class to have bright and early on a Monday morning, but I'm glad it happened. If we can't talk about sex at seminary, how are we ever going to be able to talk about it in our churches to our congregations? The conversation was so compelling that it even overflowed into the lunch hour and dominated table conversation. Nobody pretends that we are all going to agree of the topic from a theological perspective, but I think it was clear today that this is something we cannot ignore--we need to talk about it. Anyway, this is how my week has started! I hope to write another post about other things going on sometime soon. Now, it is time to read about tomorrow's topic! The Lord be with you now and always! =)