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<\/p>\nMichael Sam, Jason Collins, Brittney Grinner and Robbie Rogers – athletes who \u201ccame out\u201d in the most difficult environment, professional sports; football, basketball and soccer respectively.\u00a0 The conversation has begun in one of the last bastions of heterosexual life \u2013 ESPN.\u00a0 But the church can even become a more hostile environment.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
America is becoming more and more polarized in politics and also in religion.\u00a0 We don\u2019t take time to listen to the other side because we\u2019re too busy preaching our point of view.\u00a0 I long for the days when the evangelical umbrella was larger and encompassed many differing viewpoints while adhering to a common dogma.<\/p>\n
Dave Thompson in Over Coffee<\/em> attempts to bring us back to a time in which we could agree to disagree and back to a time of respect and common courtesy \u2013 valuing the opinions of others.<\/p>\n As this book paralleled parts of my thesis work, I felt a quick interview was essential.\u00a0 Here are some excerpts of my skype call with Dave.<\/p>\n Dave\u2019s story is similar to many others who have grown up in a conservative Christian environment, struggled with a God who condemned him to hell, wandered for years, and finally come back to faith but with a different perspective on the Bible.<\/p>\n Relating to my own reality, he helped me understand family relations and the behavior that is exemplified by many gays.\u00a0 His research has shown that as gays \u201ccome out,\u201d they are emerging for the first time, living life as they truly are.\u00a0 Since this wasn\u2019t possible during their childhood, many experience life as if it were new and fresh \u2013 like a kid in Jr. High \u2013 wanting to experience all of the stupid things of life, allowing for little consequences.<\/p>\n Families need to consider them new siblings or children.\u00a0 These aren\u2019t the persons who were raised by a parent, but, it\u2019s rather like adopting a grown son or daughter.<\/p>\n He follows Andrew Marin\u2019s lead in trying to develop a new conversation, one in which each side is open to talk, disagree and come to joint conclusions that God needs to be present in the life of a gay person – and the church can help.\u00a0 I did feel that his arguments in the book were simple, but his reasoning was that conservative pastors won\u2019t read books that argue the point Biblical, but they will read this small \u201cconversation.\u201d<\/p>\n Over Coffee<\/em> is a great first read for a pastor or leader who finds themselves confronted by the questions of \u201cwhat to do\u201d upon discovering gays who want to become involved in the life of the church or in ministry.\u00a0 Perhaps that\u2019s all it takes in the North West or more secular areas of America.\u00a0 But more explanation, discussion and biblical exegesis is needed when these same questions arise in the Bible Belt and more conservative areas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Michael Sam, Jason Collins, Brittney Grinner and Robbie Rogers – athletes who \u201ccame out\u201d in the most difficult environment, professional sports; football, basketball and soccer respectively.\u00a0 The conversation has begun in one of the last bastions of heterosexual life \u2013 ESPN.\u00a0 But the church can even become a more hostile environment. America is becoming more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2,43,44,41],"class_list":["post-81","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dminlgp","tag-homosexuality","tag-jasoncollins","tag-thompson","cohort-lgp3"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1397,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions\/1397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}