Hey family 👋🏾

Thanks for taking the time to watch this webinar. No matter who you are and where you stand on homosexuality, I hope you can see the importance of engaging in this conversation from an informed position. Many Christians have chosen to stay in the dark and ignore this topic, but I hope that after watching you see that we can't afford to continue in ignorance or be uninformed.

Since I launched ARMA I have wanted to teach this course. I believed then, as I do now, that the Church needs a firm Biblical and theological foundation to engage in this conversation. I refused to record this course until I felt like I understood each perspective and had exhausted all the resources I could find. 15 books and 1 year later, I'm back to teach on Homosexuality.

Maybe you are same-sex attracted or would say you have a same-sex orientation and I want to make a promise to you: I will not add to the shame or ostracisation you may have received from Christians or churches. I hope that by the end of this course, even if you don't agree with my perspective or theology surrounding this, that you feel affirmed as a human. While I may not affirm homosexual lifestyle choices, I believe in you as a person that is made in God's image and loved by Him.

Maybe you have been hurt by a church before. And while I may not be the one that hurt you, as a pastor, let me just say I am sorry for the hurt and shame you may have received. But let me encourage you with this: oftentimes the only way to find healing from "church hurt" is returning to a healthy church.

Maybe you are a pastor, a parent, or just have a gay friend or loved one and you are looking for clarity and answers. I hope this course can provide clarity and comfort, but I hope this course challenges us to love people in a more radical way. When it comes to Biblical and theological perspectives I am pretty conservative, but when it comes to relationships I believe we should be relationally liberal. I believe Jesus did that.

What Jesus taught was very conservative, however, he surrounded himself with people that made others question those conservative teachings. I think truth is for doctrinal statements, teaching, and preaching in our churches. But I think grace is for relationships with people that may have different views or lifestyles than we do ourselves. I challenge you to be theologically conservative and not to compromise on those views. BUT I also challenge you to be as liberal as possible relationally and radically love people even if you don't agree with their lifestyle.

The world around us wants us to believe that heterosexual people and homosexual people are very different, but that's not true. We all have sexual desires. Some desires we can and should fulfill, but I hope that by the end of this course you can see that there are some desires we have to put on the altar. That is what it means to take up our cross and follow Jesus.

Wherever you find yourself in this and whomever you may be, I'm glad you're here. I believe in you and love you.

I'll see you in the course,

Manny