Sligo22: Conversations on Gender

Nick Park is Pastor of Solid Rock Church in Drogheda and leads Evangelical Alliance Ireland. His seminar at New Wine Ireland explored the sensitive topic of gender. Notes taken during Week A.

I’m so glad this is a conversation - there is wisdom in the body of Christ!  I am from Drogheda, originally from Belfast. I came to Christ 41 years ago.  Jesus transformed my life.  My wife Janice and I have been married for 26 years.  Today I am a church pastor of Solid Rock. Out of that, we have started 27 other churches across Ireland, which are very much ministering into different ethnic groups. Only seven of them have English as their main language for worship.

I’m also Executive Director of the Evangelical Alliance Ireland. When I was appointed I was asked should we be addressing the hot button issues in society.  Sometimes people see think those are the things that define us.  But if we do not address them well, someone else will address them. Very often we have the right position but we are extremely bad about putting that position across.

Questions about gender are not new. The issue of whether people could change their gender was a problem for the first century church too. It is a vital subject and the way in which a lot of Christians are tackling it today is unhelpful.

If you are here looking for some useful sticks to fight a culture war with, you may be disappointed with me. But if you are want to wrestle with how to reach people for Christ while maintaining biblical standards, then hopefully we can arrive at some helpful conclusions.

Our church is in a denomination that is part of the bible belt.  The transgender question often comes up in terms of sport:  for example people have posted on social media about a weightlifter and a swimmer who were born as men, both competing in women’s sports.  

If I were a sporting commentator, there are lots of things I could say about that.  It is manifestly unfair. If somebody is born biologically a male, their muscle development will be a great factor in their sporting ability. Reducing testosterone doesn’t level the playing field.  We know that because we don’t know of anybody who was born a woman who is successfully competing in men’s sport. If we are talking about sport perhaps we should have an open category based on science.  

We already have people competing on the basis of scientific criteria (the para-Olympics). Here’s the thing… in all of those categories, how somebody identifies does not matter.  There was a famous case in the 2000 when the Spanish basketball team for people with intellectual disability was later revealed to have ten team members who had no disability.  Spain won but was later stripped of the gold medal.  For the next two para-Olympics the authorities worked to nail down criteria. What you identify as, is not the issue – only science matters.

I’m not a sports commentator, I am a Christian Pastor.  It is not about pushing my opinion about sport.  If it was, I would also talk about football teams that buy the best players with mafia money. Or colleges in the States who pay more for their football coach than for their whole faculty.

Talking about the sports issues, a pastor in the US told me, “We’ve got to stand up for the things that God is concerned about in our nation.”  He comes from Phoenix, Arizona where last year, 130 homeless people died from heat.  There are 9,000 homeless people in Phoenix and that place is hot! People are sleeping out in temperatures of 120 degrees.  I told my friend, “You say you are passionate about the things on God’s heart for your nation. What about what is happening with the homeless people right on your doorstep?

“Which do you think God is more concerned about: whether somebody unfairly is competing in a sport or that homeless people are dying of heat stroke in one of the richest countries in the world?”

Avoiding Culture Wars

As Christians, we often fight to see certain practices eradicated from our society. Too often, we take a hot button issue and we turn it into a culture war. The problem is, when we fight a war, people fight back.

Is the issue of gender important?  Absolutely. It will impact on all our lives in the church. The church’s stance on gender does matter but if we are going on about swimmers and athletes, we’re starting at the wrong point. We are seen as being motivated by hate and fear. We are using sport as a convenient stick to beat people with.

I believe with all my heart that God sees gender in a binary way.  He created male and female. The Bible teaches a binary view of gender.  I’m as conservative as they come in sexual ethics.  I wish with all my heart that the church lived that out better.  I’ve been in full time ministry for 38 years and I have to say that I’m tired of the moral failures that we see in church and church leadership where people are not living God’s purpose for sexuality.

I believe that that Jesus died upon the cross for every transgender person and many of these people are desperately unhappy. They are 7.6 times more likely to commit suicide.   We (who are supposed to be the “happiest people on earth”) are talking about people who are some of the “unhappiest.”

We are IN the world but not OF the world. There is always that tension. Sometimes that difference causes us to try to make the world more like us. We would be more comfortable if society reflected our standards.  Instead we are very different from the world.  It is one of our greatest strengths in proclaiming the gospel. 

We can wage a war to make the world more like the church or we can stand on our differences as a beacon of hope to save the lost.

I love church history.  I love learning about where people got it wrong.  Tiberius was the emperor on the throne when Jesus was crucified. He was a moral degenerate.  He was known for making his decisions of state while he was lounging in a swimming pool abusing young children . Caligula hosted orgies, dressed as a woman. Claudius was considered odd because he only assaulted his female slaves.  Any Roman nobleman would expect to assault both male and female slaves including adults and children. 

Why am I sharing so graphically?  I keep hearing people saying the world is worse than it has ever been. The world has always been horrible and wicked.  In fact, we are privileged to live in this tiny sliver of human history where it is no longer considered permissible to keep slaves, to rape children, to torture captives of war or to torture animals. 

The Bible teaches us to pray for our civic leaders.  We are to pray for kings and those in authority.  Paul called us to pray for Nero who was the emperor on the throne when Paul was writing.   Nero was married several times.  On one occasion he married a man. Nero dressed as the bride and then consummated the wedding in front of the wedding guests.  He was married to one woman for 11 years before imprisoning her and then having her beheaded.  Then he married his mistress but eventually he kicked her to death (along with her unborn child).  Regretting this, he then found a young man with a resemblance to his former wife.  Nero had him castrated before marrying him too. 

I consider the world to be desperately wicked. These issues have always been there. This is the world in which we live.  But the church is the hope for the world. The contrast is between light and darkness.

God created male and female

God did not make a mistake.  But we have got to stop fighting culture wars.  If we do, then people will deny us the right to be different because we don’t fight culture wars on every type of sin.  The biggest sin that the Bible condemns is idolatry.  Yet I have never seen Christians agitating for Hindu temples to be banned.  We care passionately about freedom for Christians and we realise the hypocrisy of demanding that Christians can practice their faith while trying to deny that freedom to others.  And yet we do that with sexual ethics.  When we fight a culture war, the church is targeted for being intolerant even if we are not.  When we wage war rather than asking how can we win people for Jesus, the kick back will come and it will harm our witness.  Christians end up being arrested for being homophobic simply because they are Christian.

The early Christian church never said, “Let’s make the Roman Empire great again.” Instead they stood apart as a beacon and people looked at their marriages and how they raised their children, and how they treated the poor and how they loved one another, and that is why the church became the majority religion… When the church stands up to BE the church rather than trying to make the world act like the church, whether they have met with Christ or not, then we can truly make a difference. 

So how can the happiest people on earth share the gospel with the unhappiest? 

We need to challenge culture but we do it in an incredibly subversive way. The early church did a much better job of transforming their society but they did not do that by constantly saying to society, “You mustn’t do this because the Bible says so.”  The church attracted the marginalised which was why there were so many women, slaves, etc.  And yet simply by the way they conducted themselves they influenced society. Suddenly the idea of raping your slaves was unacceptable. It wasn’t by standing in the street and thundering against slavery or rape. 

Some people point to William Wilberforce or Martin Luther King as people who fought against the issues of the day.  But there is a difference between fighting to enforce our moral standards on society and fighting to defend the poor and the most vulnerable.  Wilberforce was successful in fighting to abolish the Slave Trade and introducing things like the RNLI and the RSPPC.  But he also sought to improve morality by trying to penalise people for swearing or drinking too much beer or gin (although not wine).  He  was unsuccessful when he tried to impose Christian standards on society. 

We are supposed to be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves: Too often we are as dangerous as snakes and as daft as pigeons. 

What can we in the church learn from groups and movements that have successfully initiated change?  They have been successful because they act smarter. The same sex marriage lobby fought for years. Their campaign was cleverly conducted.  They gained vital allies and appealed to the heart.   I’ve made a point with trying to sit down and talk to people with a different view point. 

Speak with some humility.

Often we try to tell people that we have all the answers.  “Jesus is the answer now what’s the question?”  I love the way my predecessor at EAI puts it… “What if we became the people who were asking all the right questions?”  That opens up the conversation. We can learn from one another.   

Be Willing to Listen

During the same sex marriage referendum, I met with the editor of Dublin Gay Community news.  He was reluctant to meet. He said, “I have enough people hating on me without you doing it as well.”  But we had coffee together.  He said, “being gay is part of my identity.”  I said, “Being a child of God is my true identity and that automatically means there are certain things I am not going to do.”  I discovered I can talk to people like this.  We were able from that point on to have some really interesting conversations.

Avoid the gotcha answers. 

I can sometimes be sharp and witty… the downside of that, is that I can be extremely cutting.  I’m ready with a sarcastic retort.  It is easy to have a gotcha answer but it doesn’t change somebody’s life.

I’m a great believer that God is at work.  The true story of the book of Esther (not the romanticised version) is that she was sex-trafficked; her life devastated and destroyed by having to serve in the king’s harem.  Then her uncle says. “ Who knows but you’ve come to the kingdom for such a time of this?” This was an evil situation. But God was able to use that to save the Jewish people. 

The more we post pictures of swimmers, the further we get from a pastoral response.  This is an incredible opportunity because the difference between the world and the church becomes more clear if the church will rise up and live by God’s standards.

But what if people treat you like a doormat?  Then be a doormat for Christ. We tend to copy the style of leadership and communication that we see in the world around us.  The church took on the trappings of imperial Rome.  When you look in America, business is king and that’s why successful pastors are like business tycoons.  I visit Eastern Europe and working in societies under communism rule, people copy leadership in their society.  In African society, pastors behaviour like the big man model of leadership.   More recently in the west, leadership has become much more confrontational, rude, insulting and belittling to those who are different. We cannot do that.  Servanthood doesn’t come naturally. We have to do it the Jesus way.  

Some of the loudest voices in this area in the church have never actually had a conversation with somebody who is in the LGBT world.  There is the rhetoric of not even going into that space.  We are not convincing people, particularly when the Bible says one thing and the church is doing something else.  We need to find a better way.

Gospel First

When it comes to pastoral care to show compassion to transgender people, we say first and foremost, people need Jesus. You don’t compromise but you minister to people where they are. The gospel comes first and then comes the discipleship and that is hard.  We don’t expect alcoholics to beat their alcoholism before we come to faith.  I’ve lost count of the number of weddings that I’ve conducted that the couples have been living together for years.  With anyone who is confused about their gender, the discipleship process is going to be hard and painful. You measure success in different terms. 

 If we want the church to be open to transgender people, the congregation needs to be supportive.  You cannot have people sniggering or laughing or making insensitive comments.  The meanness that the Christian church portrays towards transgender people can be more like the plank than the speck in Jesus’ teaching Matthew 7: 1- 3. People are not the enemy. They are victims of a corrupt and sin-sick world and we want to help them. We need to be like Jesus.

When we are dealing with people, if we believe that gender is binary, we need to be aware that there are a small number of people who are born with inter-sex conditions and it is not always clear at birth whether they are actually male or female.

My mother-in-law tells me about midwives in the late 50s  who would smother a child who was intersex!  Very often doctors have had to make a decision, sometimes surgery has been carried out after birth and someone has lived their life thinking they are one gender but actually medical conditions emerging later in life reveal they are the opposite gender. 

There are also people who are one sex but prefer to dress as the opposite sex.  How can we respond to this pastorally?  How can we minister to this person and still be true to scripture?

Some are in a process of changing gender – undergoing hormone therapy or surgery.  If you are in the leadership of the church and you have somebody come to your church who has been through a total transgender process, how are you going to receive that person into your church?  These are the kinds of things that we have to consider. 

People suffer from gender dysphoria. People in this situation in particular tend to be suicidal or suffering from depression. When we are ministering to these people we cannot minimise the pain.  We need to show compassion. We need to provide a welcoming environment, showing the gospel first and then taking people through the walk of discipleship.

When you are trying to reach a group of people who are desperately in need, taking the church with you can be difficult.  We love the idea that people come to Christ and they all live happily ever after. We know it doesn’t work like that. 

People may have to struggle with some issues for the rest of their Christian life. That is going to take a level of pastoral care that the church needs to know they can provide