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What the Modest is Hottest Message Gets Wrong
Most of the time, when we talk about modesty and lust in the summertime, we’re telling the women what to wear. We want them to dress modestly so that men won’t lust. We forget that women can struggle with lust too. So I struggled to come up with some metric. Some balance when writing a post on swimsuits. What should you wear? What shouldn’t you wear? Then I realized, modesty isn’t really about what you wear. I grew up in a conservative Christian environment that had a dress code for swimming. Women had to wear one piece swimsuits, even when swimming with just the girls (because the lifeguards might be…
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To the Girl Who Wonders if God Can Be a Good Father
Father’s Day is here again, and while many are buying their dads bad ties, funny socks, or new fishing poles, there are many of us who spend father’s day nursing the wounds of what could have been. My dad left our family when I was little. The day is still seared in my mind. It was Christmastime. When my piano lessons were over, he wasn’t there to pick me up. The piano teacher called my mom at work. Back in the day before cell phones, there was no way to reach him if he were on the road. So, I waited for one of them to come and get me.…
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Setting Up Recovery Groups For Women Who Struggle with Porn
This post is part of our Porn in Church series- a series designed especially for pastors. If you are not a pastor, please share this post with your pastor. (This post is also part of my book, Quenched.) Women in your church struggle with pornography. That’s just a fact. Men in your church struggle with pornography. That’s also a fact. Still, churches today are relatively ill-equipped to help either gender effectively. When it comes to addressing pornography use and helping people find freedom and healing, too often the message is short and limited to “stop it.” “Stop it” isn’t helpful. People who are looking for help breaking free from pornography…
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The One Word Christian Women Struggling with Porn Need to Hear
What if I told you there was one word that Christian women struggling with porn needed to hear? Just one word that could help eradicate shame and set them on the journey to freedom? What if one word could completely change the atmosphere of your church? Could it really be that simple? Five years ago, I had the privilege of speaking at the Set Free Summit, hosted by Covenant Eyes and Josh McDowell Ministries. It was a gathering of hundreds of pastors and ministry leaders addressing the issue of pornography use within the church. During my session, I shared about the shame experienced by a Christian woman struggling with pornography.…
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Creating a Safe Space for Grace
In this series, where we’re tackling how to address porn in church, I would be remiss if I didn’t address this fundamental reality: our churches need to be safe spaces for grace. In the coming weeks, we’ll talk about how to change the conversation and help women find healing, but the fact is that if the culture of your church chokes out grace, you can talk until you’re blue in the face and it isn’t going to matter. There’s a parable in the Bible (Matthew 13:1–23, Mark 4:1–20, Luke 8:4–15) that is commonly referred to as the parable of the sower. The short version is this: a sower went out…
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Porn in Church: The Five Most Unhelpful Things Pastors Said About Pornography
As a Christian teenage girl struggling with pornography, I heard a lot of messages about getting help and breaking free from sin. Many of them were unhelpful. In the years since, I have heard several more, either in church or at Christian conferences, or even from magazine editors and other authors. For the next post in the Porn in Church series, I want to address some of them, explain why they aren’t helpful and how we can change them. Let me preface this by saying, this is not an attack on pastors. If you or someone you know has said one of these things, I’m not coming for you with…
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What Every Pastor Needs to Know About Women and Porn
We’re kicking off our Porn in Church series with a guest post from my friend, Sam Black. He’s sharing a bit of his heart on what pastors need to know about women and pornography. In the weeks to come, posts will address more practical nuts and bolts of how to address this issue in churches and help women find healing. Please, share this series with your pastors! Editor’s note: Sam Black, a vice president at Covenant Eyes, is writing a book to pastors on how some churches are successfully addressing pornography among Christians. The following is a condensed chapter excerpt. Want to be the first to hear about the book’s…
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On Culture, Sex, Influence, and Why Personal Responsibility Matters
Before we start the Porn in Church series, I wanted to take a minute and talk about the importance of personal responsibility. We talk a lot about “accountability” in Christian circles. It’s the idea that we answer to other people and if you’re on a journey of recovery from porn use, then you’ve for sure heard it. In fact I’ve written several posts about it. But personal responsibility is probably equally, if not more, important than the idea of accountability. Accountability, the way we use it, says “others can check in on me and I answer to them.” It’s the motive behind things like accountability software, like Covenant Eyes, or…
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Resource Review: The Great Sex Rescue by Sheila Wray Gregoire
I’ve been looking forward to reading The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You’ve Been Taught and How to Uncover What God Intended since the moment I knew it was going to exist. As a writer tackling issues of sex and sexuality in the church, I’m a fan of Sheila’s work. The conversation on sex in the church needs to change. That’s just a fact. So, when Sheila and her daughter, Rebecca, started down this path of addressing lies women believe/are taught about sex, I jumped in support. I gladly donated a stack of old Brio magazines for their research. A couple months ago, I reviewed Talking Back to Purity Culture…