This article was written by Carl Nelson and originally appeared in the Minnesota Christian Examainer, Jan. 2012.

Recently I was stunned to hear about the divorce of someone in ministry whom I’ve known for nearly 15 years; a couple whom I admire and who appeared to have had a beautiful, healthy relationship.

In the last year alone there have been three couples in my life whose marriages have ended – each of them leaders in the church – each of them a complete surprise to me. For each one I have grieved for all that has been lost.

I don’t judge them; rather I grieve for them because they sincerely wish this wasn’t happening to them. Their children are wracked with pain and confusion. Their finances are decimated. Their families and futures have been forever disrupted.

But neither do I give up on the hope and promise of marriage. Rather I am compelled to advocate more vigorously for the joyful promise of marriage that God holds out for us in the Bible.

I acknowledge that within the Western Church, we Christians have often fallen well short of God’s ideals for marriage. That doesn’t mean that we should abandon the idea. Instead we need to pursue these ideals more vigorously and help marriages succeed because we believe in the profound benefits of marriage.

GOD’S GOOD GIFTS OF MARRIAGE AND SEX

Transform Minnesota recognizes that we need to work together to strengthen marriages. In December our board of directors committed ourselves to inspire and equip evangelical leaders to communicate God’s vision for marriage as seen in the Bible.

One of the ways to do that is to affirm that God created us as men and women and introduced marriage between a man and a woman as a divinely-ordained covenant relationship to be the context for enjoying sexual intimacy, conceiving children and raising them.

We believe that marriage and sexual intimacy in marriage are good gifts from God that are beneficial for individuals, children and society.

BENEFITS OF MARRIAGE

There are profound benefits when marriages are stable and lasting.

• CHILDREN: Research consistently shows that children raised in safe and stable families with their mother and father have much better outcomes throughout life (e.g. better education and income, less crime, depression and drug use). When churches work to strengthen marriages it benefits children and thereby the wellbeing of society.
• PARENTING: The demands of raising and caring for children are significantly easier when shared between two parents in a stable relationship. Being a single parent is extremely hard (and I hold up single parents with admiration). Not only is it hard for the parent, but children miss out on having two parents investing in their lives.
• INTIMACY: I can attest to the personal benefits of marriage. I’ve been married to my wife Kari for nearly 15 years. We enjoy the trust we have in each other. We have shared years of life experience and creating memories together. A widowed friend recently stated what a loss it has been to no longer have his wife’s loving but trusted voice there to speak truthfully and frankly to him.
• FINANCES: Economic data demonstrates that married couples are better off financially than co-habiting or divorced couples. Sharing living, household and transportation expenses by married couples increases their economic position, but expenses nearly double and household assets or other savings are cut in half when divided by divorce.

PREPARING FOR MARRIAGE

Some in our society complain that the church has been overly fixated on sex and marriage. We may be guilty of this in that sense that we have been judgmental and ungracious towards people whose marriages have not survived.

What I think the Western Church is legitimately guilty of is failing to prepare young people for marriage, failing to honor God’s unique image in both male and female, and failing to treat sexual intimacy as a joyful gift from God to be enjoyed and honored within marriage.

So rather than talking about sex and marriage less, we need to talk about it more. For our part Transform Minnesota has committed ourselves to helping evangelicals talk more about God’s good gifts of sex and marriage to the culture we live in today.

Friday, May 11
Minneapolis – St. Paul

Mark DeYmaz, Pastor of multi site Mosaix Church in Arkansas and North Carolina, author and leader of the Mosaix Global Network, will be the keynote speaker at Coming Together 2012: a leadership conference for multicultural ministry.

This is the 4th Coming Together conference presented by Transform Minnesota. This will be a full-day conference dedicated to leadership training and equipping for pastors and ministry leaders serving diverse communities.

Registration and additional conference will be announced February 13.

Save the date on your calendar and watch your email for invitations and registration instructions.

This is one of the reasons why Transform Minnesota encourages churches to support marriage and to promote the Biblical teachings of marriage as between a man and a woman.

Marriage Lowers the Rates of Poverty: Marriage Drops the Probability of Child Poverty by 89 Percent [link to PDF]

In Minnesota, 74% of poor families with children are not married. In contrast, only 25% of families with married parents live in poverty.

Single-parent families with children are nearly nine times more likely to be poor than families in which the parents are married.

The higher poverty rate among single-mother families is due both to the lower education levels of the mothers and the lower income due to the absence of the father.

Married households are safer for women and children. [link to PDF]

“Analysis of ten years worth of findings from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has conducted since 1973, demonstrates that mothers who are or ever have been married are far less likely to suffer from violent crime than are mothers who never marry.”

A 2004 Heritage Foundation Report documents these results and shows that :

• The incidence of spousal, boyfriend, or domestic partner abuse is twice as high among mothers who have never been married as it is among mothers who have ever married (including those separated or divorced).
• Children of divorce or never married mothers are six to 30 times more likely to suffer from serious child abuse than are children raised by both biological parents in marriage.

Social research shows that healthy marriages impact social indicators in many ways. [link to PDF]

In a study by family scholars from the Universities of Texas, Virginia and Chicago, these researchers identified “21 conclusions from the Social Sciences” including:

• Marriage increases the likelihood that fathers have good relationships with their children.
• Divorce and unmarried childbearing increase poverty for both children and mothers.
• Children who live with their own two married parents enjoy better physical health, on average, than do children in other family forms.
• Boys raised in single-parent families are more likely to engage in delinquent and criminal behavior.
• Marriage appears to reduce the risk that adults will be either perpetrators or victims of crime.
• A child who is not living with his or her own two married parents is at greater risk of child abuse.

Transform Minnesota wants to encourage support for marriage. It is clear that within our churches we need to do more to prepare people for marriage, help marriages survive and help both single and married people understand God’s ideals for their sexuality and human relationships.

We acknowledge that within the Western Church, we Christians have often fallen well short of God’s ideals for marriage and expression of our sexuality. However we continue to pursue these ideals because we believe that marriage is a good gift from God that is beneficial for individuals, children and society.

At its December 2011 board meeting, Transform Minnesota adopted the following resolution regarding our support for marriage:

• Transform Minnesota seeks to encourage a Biblical understanding of marriage within our churches and society.
• Transform Minnesota will help to inspire and equip evangelical leaders to communicate God’s ideas for sex and marriage so that marriages are healthier and sexuality is treated honorably.
• Transform Minnesota supports a Biblical understanding of marriage as between one man and one woman.

RESOURCES

One of the ways Transform Minnesota will work to support marriage is to provide resources and ideas pastors and leaders.

• “Theology of Sex” [Link to PDF] A booklet compiled by evangelical scholars and theologians that “traces the biblical account of humans as sexual beings and identifies the tensions between sex as God intended it and sex as people often experience it. For those who wish to live happily and responsibly as single or married persons, these words may serve as a guide toward celebrating the fullness of sex.”
• Marriage – Minnesota’s #1 Weapon Against Childhood Poverty [Link to PDF] Reports & graphs showing link between single-parent households and poverty. “Single parent households have poverty rate 9 times higher than 2-parent households.”
• Why Marriage Matters: 21 conclusions from the social sciences [Link to PDF] Review of social research by scholars from Universities of Texas, Virginia and Chicago identifying 21 social outcomes impacted by marriage.
• Marriage – Still the Safest Place for Women & Children [Link to PDF] Report from the Heritage Foundation analyzing 10 years of data showing the link between mothers who marry or don’t marry and incidences of crime and child abuse.
• Do Mothers & Fathers Matter? [Link to PDF] A review of social science research questioning whether child well-being is the same in married mother-father households as in alternative family structures. 

Fundamental Goods That Stand or Fall Together

An Open Letter from Religious Leaders in the United States to All Americans

[Download PDF here]

Released January 12, 2012

Dear Friends:

The promotion and protection of marriage — the union of one man and one woman as husband and wife — is a matter of the common good and serves the wellbeing of the couple, of children, of civil society and all people. The meaning and value of marriage precedes and transcends any particular society, government, or religious community. It is a universal good and the foundational institution of all societies. It is bound up with the nature of the human person as male and female, and with the essential task of bearing and nurturing children.

As religious leaders across a wide variety of faith communities, we join together to affirm that marriage in its true definition must be protected for its own sake and for the good of society. We also recognize the grave consequences of altering this definition. One of these consequences — the interference with the religious freedom of those who continue to affirm the true definition of “marriage” — warrants special attention within our faith communities and throughout society as a whole. For this reason, we come together with one voice in this letter.

Some posit that the principal threat to religious freedom posed by same-sex “marriage” is the possibility of government’s forcing religious ministers to preside over such “weddings,” on pain of civil or criminal liability.  While we cannot rule out this possibility entirely, we believe that the First Amendment creates a very high bar to such attempts.

Instead, we believe the most urgent peril is this: forcing or pressuring both individuals and religious organizations — throughout their operations, well beyond religious ceremonies — to treat same-sex sexual conduct as the moral equivalent of marital sexual conduct.  There is no doubt that the many people and groups whose moral and religious convictions forbid same-sex sexual conduct will resist the compulsion of the law, and church-state conflicts will result.

These conflicts bear serious consequences. They will arise in a broad range of legal contexts, because altering the civil definition of “marriage” does not change one law, but hundreds, even thousands, at once. By a single stroke, every law where rights depend on marital status — such as employment discrimination, employment benefits, adoption, education, healthcare, elder care, housing, property, and taxation — will change so that same-sex sexual relationships must be treated as if they were marriage. That requirement, in turn, will apply to religious people and groups in the ordinary course of their many private or public occupations and ministries — including running schools, hospitals, nursing homes and other housing facilities, providing adoption and counseling services, and many others.

So, for example, religious adoption services that place children exclusively with married couples would be required by law to place children with persons of the same sex who are civilly “married.”  Religious marriage counselors would be denied their professional accreditation for refusing to provide counseling in support of same-sex “married” relationships. Religious employers who provide special health benefits to married employees would be required by law to extend those benefits to same-sex “spouses.” Religious employers would also face lawsuits for taking any adverse employment action — no matter how modest — against an employee for the public act of obtaining a civil “marriage” with a member of the same sex.  This is not idle speculation, as these sorts of situations have already come to pass.

Even where religious people and groups succeed in avoiding civil liability in cases like these, they would face other government sanctions—the targeted withdrawal of government co-operation, grants, or other benefits.

For example, in New Jersey, the state cancelled the tax-exempt status of a Methodist-run boardwalk pavilion used for religious services because the religious organization would not host a same-sex “wedding” there. San Francisco dropped its $3.5 million in social service contracts with the Salvation Army because it refused to recognize same-sex “domestic partnerships” in its employee benefits policies. Similarly, Portland, Maine, required Catholic Charities to extend spousal employee benefits to same-sex “domestic partners” as a condition of receiving city housing and community development funds.

In short, the refusal of these religious organizations to treat a same-sex sexual relationship as if it were a marriage marked them and their members as bigots, subjecting them to the full arsenal of government punishments and pressures reserved for racists. These punishments will only grow more frequent and more severe if civil “marriage” is redefined in additional jurisdictions. For then, government will compel special recognition of relationships that we the undersigned religious leaders and the communities of faith that we represent cannot, in conscience, affirm. Because law and government not only coerce and incentivize but also teach, these sanctions would lend greater moral legitimacy to private efforts to punish those who defend marriage.

Therefore, we encourage all people of good will to protect marriage as the union between one man and one woman, and to consider carefully the far-reaching consequences for the religious freedom of all Americans if marriage is redefined.  We especially urge those entrusted with the public good to support laws that uphold the time-honored definition of marriage, and so avoid threatening the religious freedom of countless institutions and citizens in this country.  Marriage and religious freedom are both deeply woven into the fabric of this nation.

May we all work together to strengthen and preserve the unique meaning of marriage and the precious gift of religious freedom.

Sincerely Yours:

Rev. Leith Anderson
President
National Association of Evangelicals

Johann Christoph Arnold
Senior Pastor
Bruderhof Communities

Randall A. Bach
President
Open Bible Churches

Dr. Gary M. Benedict
President
The Christian and Missionary Alliance

The Rev. John F. Bradosky
Bishop
North American Lutheran Church

Glenn Burris, Jr.
President
The Foursquare Church

Bishop H. David Burton
Presiding Bishop
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Dr. Ronald W. Carpenter, Sr.
Presiding Bishop
International Pentecostal Holiness Church

Rabbi Abba Cohen
Vice President for Federal Affairs
Washington Director
Agudath Israel of America

Most Rev. Salvatore J. Cordileone
Bishop of Oakland
Chairman
USCCB Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage

Nathan J. Diament
Executive Director for Public Policy
Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations
of America

Cardinal-designate Timothy M. Dolan
Archbishop of New York
President
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

Dr. Barrett Duke
Vice President for Public Policy and Research
Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty
Commission

The Most Rev. Robert Duncan
Archbishop, Anglican Church in North America
Bishop, Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh

Rev. Jim Eschenbrenner
Executive Pastor
General Council of Christian Union Churches

Dr. William J. Hamel
President
Evangelical Free Church of America

Rev. Dr. Ron Hamilton
Conference Minister
Conservative Congregational Christian Conference

Rev. Dr. Matthew Harrison
President
Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod

John Hopler
Director
Great Commission Churches

Dr. Bill Hossler
President
Missionary Church, Inc.

Clyde M. Hughes
General Overseer
International Pentecostal Church of Christ

Rev. Kenneth D. Hunn
Executive Director
The Brethren Church

David W. Kendall
Bishop
Free Methodist Church USA

Dr. Richard Land
President
Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty
Commission

Most Rev. William E. Lori
Bishop of Bridgeport
Chairman
USCCB Ad Hoc Committee for
Religious Liberty

Dr. Jo Anne Lyon
Chair Board of General Superintendents
The Wesleyan Church

James W. Murray
Executive Director
General Association of General Baptists

Most Rev. Kevin C. Rhoades
Bishop of Ft. Wayne – South Bend
Chairman
USCCB Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth

Commissioner William A. Roberts
National Commander
The Salvation Army

Rocky Rocholl
President
Fellowship of Evangelical Churches

Rev. Samuel Rodriguez
President
National Hispanic Christian
Leadership Conference

David T. Roller
Bishop
Free Methodist Church USA

Matthew A. Thomas
Bishop
Free Methodist Church USA

Dr. Joseph Tkach
President & Pastor General
Grace Communion International

Berten A. Waggoner
National Director
Vineyard USA

W. Phillip Whipple
Bishop
United Brethren in Christ Church, USA

Dr. John P. Williams, Jr.
Regional Director
Evangelical Friends Church, North America

David P. Wilson
General Secretary
Church of the Nazarene

Dr. George
General Superintendent
Assemblies of God

Cross cultural mission leaders – join us next Thursday for a leadership discussion on “Trends you need to know” in global & cross cultural missions, noon-1:30. The TCAMP network meets Jan. 12, Mar. 8 and May 10 in the first half of 2012. Read more below about each leadership topic.

Other Missions Resources

• Perspectives on the World Christian Movement – classes in Brooklyn Park (Grace Fellowship, Sunday evenings)) and Roseville (Grace Church Roseville, Tuesday evenings) begin next week. Read announcement here and contact Wayne Corrigan, Larry Peterson or Shari Koch to learn more. 
• Midwest Conference on Missionary Care -  consider sending people from your missions committee to the 2012 MC2 conference on February 24 & 25 hosted at New Hope Church in the Twin Cities. This year’s theme is “A Caregiver’s Guide to the Missionary Heart” and includes workshops by many experienced missions pastors, agency leaders and mission field workers. Learn more at www.mctwo.org.

TCAMP 2012

Beginning in January, TCAMP will meet at a new time every other month. The network will meet from noon-1:30 on the second Thursday of every other month (except in the summer).

These sessions are open to anyone engaged or interested in global and cross-cultural missions; church leaders, missionaries, lay leaders and other volunteers.

2012 TCAMP Meeting Dates
Noon – 1:30 (Track updates online at www.transformmn.org)

• January 12: Trends you need to know: changes and developments in cross-cultural missions. Hosted at Wooddale Church.
• March 8: Justice and Compassion in Evangelical Missions. (Hosted at North Heights Lutheran Church – Arden Hills).
• May 10
• September 13
• November 8

Thursday, January 12 Topic: 

“Trends You Need to Know: changes and developments in cross cultural missions”.

This will be a great session to learn more about several new and developing trends in cross cultural missions. We will have different speakers give quick, 15-minute descriptions of 5 different trends in missions, including the The 4-14 Window (children), Business As Mission, Missions to Diaspora Peoples, Reaching Global Cities, and Technology for Missions.

On January 12 we will meet at Wooddale Church Eden Prairie from noon-1:30.

Put these five dates on your calendar for 2012. The Twin Cities is privileged to have a strong, collaborative missions community and we hope this new schedule and format will enhance the movement. Few other US cities have this benefit, so come take advantage of this valuable resource.

Do you have questions?

Contact Carl Nelson at Transform Minnesota ( carl@transformmn.org) or write to TCAMP@transformmn.org.

You may also talk to one of the steering team members who are helping to create the 2012 schedule:

Mark Bendell, Pastor of Missions and Outreach at Westwood Community Church 

Carol Buchannan, Wooddale Worldwide 

Tim Hatt, Pastor of Kingdom Expansion at Hosanna! Lutheran Church 

Herb Janes, Director of Global Ministries New Hope Church

Kim Sollie, Missions Director at North Heights Lutheran Church 

Dan Woodbury, missions lay leader at the Mills Church, and staff at David C Cook Communications

ABOUT TCAMP

TCAMP has 2 goals:

1. Connect mission leaders to add momentum to the global missions movement.
2. Support the professional development of mission movements by sharing best practices and opportunities for learning.

TCAMP serves as a professional peer network for mission leaders from church staffs, mission committees, field workers and other ministry entities.

New Time: TCAMP meeting times will change slightly, beginning at noon and ending at 1:30. They will still be “brown bag” lunches (so bring your own meal) and the host sites (TBA) will provide beverages and desserts.

Evangelism is changing. The methods we use to tell people that Jesus can open the door to a relationship with God are different than what was effective before.

Carl Nelson, President of Transform Minnesota

Americans today know less and less about God and the Bible. A generation ago, a majority of people were aware of their own sin that separated them from God. Today, most non-religious people have no concept of sin, nor recognize that they are separated from God.

So we need to learn new ways to tell the Good News and help people meet Jesus.

One effective way is to integrate the spoken words of truth and explanation of Good News with the active and living results of Good News. Many call this a Holistic Gospel—combining the words and deeds of Jesus’ Gospel into an integrated living and spoken witness.

Some Christians have resisted this movement because it appears to some that it places less emphasis on evangelism. However, we should be just as concerned when proclamation-only-evangelism produces less and less fruit, as it is doing in American culture today. It is also true that deeds of mercy and justice cannot replace words and proclamation that explain and announce the Good News to help people accept Jesus.

Rather than viewing this as an either-or approach, Christians should consider a both-and approach. We should learn better how to combine and integrate the living results of Good News with the spoken explanation of Good News.

The book of Ephesians has helped give me a framework to understand how we can stay focused on proclaiming the Good News about salvation in Jesus, and at the same time be working to fight injustice and show love and mercy to others in the name of Jesus.

Here’s my summary of the book of Ephesians in a nutshell. We were separated from God by sin, but Jesus sacrificed himself to make peace between us and God, then gathered us into a new community called the Church, and through the Church, God intends to overcome suffering and destruction and reestablish His created order, with the end result being that God’s glory is revealed to the ends of the universe.

A mistake I have made is to minimize the entirety of God’s redemptive purposes achieved through Jesus Christ.

Yes, Christ is the one who achieves our salvation, but our salvation is not just for us; it also serves a greater purpose. Too many times we end the story right there. We only think about our salvation, and we forget why God has saved us.

God is on a mission to rescue a broken and hurting world and to bring people back to himself. Ephesians 3:18 tells us that after we become followers of Jesus, we should seek to understand and be filled with the “the breadth and length and height and depth” of the love of Christ. By doing so, we become like Jesus as we take on the defining characteristic of Jesus—His all-consuming love for others.

When we are filled and moved with the compassion and justice of Christ, we become part of God’s mission to bring the world back under His control.

And this I believe gets to the heart of the matter of how we collectively as the Church bring glory to God.

As a historical movement, evangelicalism has been at the forefront of both spiritual revivals and combating injustice. But in the past century, we’ve become caught up in a debate about which is more important, evangelism or compassion, telling people about Jesus or loving them.

But if we properly understand the eternal purposes of God, I think the answer is easy. It’s not either-or; it’s both. God didn’t come here to just save us in the eternal realm and then leave us to exist in a broken world abounding with suffering and injustice. No, instead He created the Church to be filled with the overwhelming compassion of Christ to be at work in the earthly realm. To do what? To honor God by doing His will—to bring people back to God and to combat human suffering.

One year ago, I was at the Third Lausanne Congress in Cape Town, South Africa, and the Rev. John Piper offered this explanation of the full complexity of the Gospel with our simultaneous responsibilities to tell people about Jesus and love people like Jesus commands. He offered this statement, explaining how Christians respond when we have met Jesus and been filled with his love: “As Christians, we care about all human suffering; injustice and human suffering on earth and especially eternal suffering of people who never know God.”

In other words, when the Church does evangelism and at the same time works to end human suffering, we’re doing it for the same reason. We do it because we are filled with the person of Jesus and motivated by His love for others.

That love manifests itself through two simultaneous actions: telling people about Jesus and loving people as Jesus wants us to, recognizing that our ultimate problem with eternal consequences is our separation from God, to whom we can only be reconciled to through Jesus Christ.

This article originally appeared in the Minnesota Christian Examiner in December 2011, and is used here with permission.

Leith Anderson, NAE President and pastor of Wooddale Church in Minnesota led the delegation and thanked President Obama for meeting with the NAE, and thanked him for White House and State Department efforts in the case of Iranian Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani who was sentenced to death for apostasy. The discussion covered a range of issues including religious freedom, protection of religious hiring rights, marriage, immigration reform and concern for the poor.

President Obama in the Roosevelt Room

George Wood, General Superintendent of the Assemblies of God spoke specifically about their concern for religious minorities in countries like Iran and Egypt, and shared the fact that three of the four most recent Christian martyrs in Iran were Assemblies of God pastors and that he has since visited with the sons of two of those men. The President explained that it is an issue he frequently applies pressure on when he meets with foreign leaders.

The leaders also raised the issue of strengthening marriage. John Jenkins, pastor of First Baptist Church in Glennarden, MD expressed the NAE’s concern that the Justice Department has not sought to uphold the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

The NAE’s position is that marriage, between one woman and one man, is the fundamental guarantee of societal survival and thriving.  It provides for the loving procreation and the nurture of the next generation.  Each child is offered both a father and a mother, in the security of a legally protected marriage.  Children raised by their married biological parents have far lower rates of poverty, abuse, and delinquency.

The other significant issue discussed was the NAE’s support for comprehensive immigration reform. The President acknowledged that a majority of Americans want to enact comprehensive immigration reform, and thanked the NAE for their support on this issue and for providing a Biblical and moral foundation for immigration reform. Jo Anne Lyon, General Superintendent of the Wesleyan Church reaffirmed the NAE’s support for comprehensive immigration reform and encouraged the President to continue to make it a top priority.

Salvation Army National Commander William Roberts thanked the President for making the poor a priority in the recent debt reduction deal, and explained as followers of Christ, care and protection for the poor is a high priority for the NAE.

The meeting concluded with NAE President Leith Anderson praying for President Obama and he in return thanked the NAE for the engaging discussion and for graciously dialoguing about issues where there is disagreement.

Carl Nelson, President of Transform Minnesota afterwards commented that “it was encouraging to observe the President’s warm friendship with  his spiritual advisors like Joel Hunter, who is an NAE board member, and Joshua DuBois,” the director of his White House Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Initiatives.