About this item
Highlights
- Is your church wrestling with LGBT questions?
- About the Author: Travis Collins has ministered as an international missionary and pastor for three decades.
- 144 Pages
- Religion + Beliefs, Sexuality & Gender Studies
Description
About the Book
Is your church wrestling with LGBT questions? Travis Collins has walked congregations through the complex issues surrounding gay Christians. In this practical resource, readers will hear from gay friends and dig into Scripture with interpreters on both sides, considering the implications of their convictions for life and ministry. Let's examine how we might welcome everyone into the church while calling for all to be transformed.
Book Synopsis
Is your church wrestling with LGBT questions? Travis Collins has walked congregations through the complex issues surrounding gay Christians. In this practical resource, readers will hear from gay friends and dig into Scripture with interpreters on both sides, considering the implications of their convictions for life and ministry. Let's examine how we might welcome everyone into the church while calling for all to be transformed.
Review Quotes
"What Does It Mean to Be Welcoming? (IVP, 2018) can be useful to Christians on the brink of giving in to LGBT demands and to non-Christians trying to understand why Bible-believers are standing firm."
"At a time when many churches find themselves unprepared and ill-equipped to engage the questions of human sexuality that define our culture, this book is a most welcome resource! Written by a pastor for pastors, What Does It Mean to Be Welcoming? is a compelling guide for church leaders who are committed to navigating LGBT conversations in their communities with the sort of honesty and humility that ought to mark all Christian discourse. Unthoughtful, fear-driven polarization will likely continue over these issues, but Collins offers a richer vision of faithful Christian witness that we desperately need in our churches."
"If you are in search of a thoughtful, accessible, pastoral guide to help your congregation or even denomination conduct the fraught conversation regarding same-sex relationships, then allow me to commend to you this valuable volume by my friend and ministerial colleague Dr. Travis Collins. Whether you embrace or are inclined to hold an affirming or a traditionalist view, there is much to learn from and ponder over in What Does It Mean to Be Welcoming?, which can in turn inform personal and ecclesial practice. In a day when more heat than light surrounds this complex, controverted matter, such a resource is both timely and necessary."
"In What Does It Mean to Be Welcoming? Travis Collins offers not a diatribe, but a conversation. Pastoral in tone, careful in scholarship, he guides us through the maze that is the current divide over same-sex sexual relations in the church. We may differ in approach, but I greatly appreciate this clarifying work."
"In the plethora of positions and the maze of materials on this topic, Travis Collins's book is a welcome summary from a thinking pastor's heart. What Does It Mean to Be Welcoming? demonstrates clarity, sensitivity, and the desire to guard the unity of the body as we struggle honestly together to apply the gospel of grace and truth. It has been a breath of fresh air in the midst of what is often a polarizing issue fraught with vitriol and hostility."
"It's not just what Travis Collins wrote or why he wrote it that makes this a valuable book. It's also how he wrote it. In What Does It Mean to Be Welcoming? you'll find the complex topic of sexuality and the church unpacked with a central view of Christ and a purposeful, compassionate view of humanity. As a friend of Travis, I am not surprised by this. He writes what he lives and he lives what he writes-with evident conviction, wisdom, thoughtfulness, patience, and humility."
"Travis Collins has done a masterful job of providing a practical and pastoral application to the most challenging issue facing the church today. What Does It Mean to Be Welcoming? is an essential resource for churches that seek to be proactive, gracious, and redemptive in their approach to the many questions surrounding LGBT topics."
About the Author
Travis Collins has ministered as an international missionary and pastor for three decades. He is senior pastor at First Baptist Church in Huntsville, Alabama, and is the author of several books, including From the Steeple to the Street and Fresh Expressions of Church. Collins holds a PhD in Christian mission and is a member of the Fresh Expressions US team. He and his wife, Keri, have three grown children and a growing number of grandchildren.