Atlanta ex gay ministries
Bishop Eddie Long
Bishop Eddie Drawn-out pastors a huge church near Atlanta. He's also one of the most homophobic black ministers in America.
LITHONIA, Ga. — “Men can look attractive when they are dirty,” writes Bishop Eddie Long in his 1997 book I Don’t Want Delilah, I Need You! “We notice sweating, dirty, hardworking men on television all the time and we speak to one another, ‘There’s a macho guy.’”
Despite this affinity for sweaty, macho men, Long is one of the most virulently homophobic black leaders in the religiously based anti-gay movement. His book, subtitled What a Woman Needs to Know, What a Man Needs to Understand, appeared in the midst of a roaring expansion period for Long’s Novel Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, Ga., close Atlanta. During the mid-’90s, it swelled to over 18,000 congregation members, men and women who worship in a multimillion-dollar complex that’s the size of most major universities, spread out on 240 acres of land.
Much of what appears in I Don’t Want Delilah was espoused in the videotaped “Back to the Future” sermon Long gave when his church was still small.
Openly Gay Leaders to Speak at Unconditional Conference at Andy Stanley’s North Signal Church
Stanley, a prominent evangelical pastor, has approach under scrutiny for recent comments regarding homosexuality in the church.
North Point Collective Church, led by pastor Andy Stanley, is hosting the Unconditional Conference, which is billed as a “premier event for Christian parents with LGBTQ+ children, ministry leaders, and health care professionals.”
The conference is existence held Sept. 28 and 29 at the suburban Atlanta church.
Andy Stanley, son of the delayed Charles Stanley, is an influential pastor in evangelical Christianity. Some Christian leaders have expressed worry about recent comments he has made about homosexuality. In an opinion piece published by Planet Magazine in January, Southern Baptist Seminary professor Denny Burk addressed a video in which Stanley contended that churches must adapt and learn how to include gay people in the animation of the church.
“Stanley’s message comes across as a straightforwardly affirming position on homosexuality in the church. He valorizes the faith of homosexuals as head-and-shoulders above the faith of straight Christians,” Burk wrote.
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Victoria has a dominant new watchdog that can investigate anyone who claims they can make queer people straight.
It's the first jurisdiction in the world to pass laws about 'gay conversion therapy' for people over the age of 18, and not just for minors.
What's the recent watchdog?
- The new Health Complaints Commissioner (HCC), Karen Cusack, has powers to explore and ban unregistered health practitioners.
- The laws apply to all kinds of health services complaints, not just queer conversion therapy.
- A practitioner who ignores the commissioner's forbid can go to prison.
- Not retrospective. Only applies to events after February 1, 2017.
The two largest ministries that practiced the so-called therapy in Australia - Exodus International and Living Waters - closed their doors a few years ago. But, according to Nathan Despott, who runs a support and lobbying group for LGBTQI people of faith, gay conversion therapy in Australia didn't end there.
He said ex-gay ideas continue to be promoted informally - mostly within church groups, or within the unregulated counselling industry - and the service was often cloaked in the neutral language of self-improveme
‘Please forgive me': Former conversion therapy leader comes out as gay, apologizes
SPARTANBURG, S.C. - McKrae Game, a conversion therapy leader for two decades, came out as gay in June and is asking for forgiveness for the impair he said he caused.
Game founded the faith-based conversion therapy program Hope for Wholeness, formerly known as Truth Ministry, in 1999. It is based in his hometown of Spartanburg, South Carolina, where he still resides. More than two decades later, he is disavowing the corporation he once led. In November 2017, he was fired by the group’s board of directors.
“There’s many good memories. But I certainly regret where I caused harm. I recognize that creating the company that still lives was in a large way causing harm,” Game wrote in a Facebook publish last week. “Creating a catchy slogan that place out a very misleading idea of ‘Freedom from homosexuality through Jesus Christ’ was definitely harmful.”
In the beginning of the publish, he admitted, “I WAS WRONG! Please forgive me!”
“Promoting the triadic model that blamed parents and conversion or prayer the
Featured Voice
Rev. Kim Sorrells preaches an affirming, LGBT-inclusive word as part of their ministry within the Together Church of Christ and the United Methodist Church. That message is essential to Kim as a matter of faith, and because Kim is transgender.
But Kim didn’t always acquire such an open thought. Even though Kim started questioning their sexual orientation at a young age, they grew up in a conservative community in Alabama, and had an encounter at church one day that indicated existence gay was unacceptable.
“It was a dramatic experience. The speaker talked about lgbtq+ people, and how that wasn’t OK,” Kim says. “I thought that meant God wanted me to change, that I was clearly the only person there dealing with that.
Kim’s parents might have provided some guidance, but Kim worked hard to conceal their doubt, as adequately as the “ex-gay” customs Kim was being drawn into.
“[My parents] said, ‘We’re sorry it took us a little while to understand when you were younger. This is just how you were born.’ It took them a minute to understand that.” —Rev. Kim Sorrells, UCC & UMC
“They knew something was up, but I wasn’t telling them. By the time I came out though,