According to newspaper reports in Australia, an American Baptist pastor has created a website promoting his latest gimmick, Puresextucson.com. Pastor Jeremiah McDuffie created the website to promote a series of sex sermons and issues related to Christians as a consequence of sex.
According to McDuffie, he wants people to know that God wants them to have good sex and that he wanted to begin an open dialogue on the subject. He has also sent postcards to promote the sermon series and website to some 35 000 homes in Tucson, Arizona.
The Element Community Church is hosting the sex series and the flashy website introduction points you to the church website for more information.
The idea of teaching God’s people about the right place of sex in their lives is something that has enormous merit. However, it is the gospel that remains the vehicle for bringing in the elect, and faith and repentance the means of gaining salvation in Christ alone, which are gifts of God’s grace.
By promoting sermons on sex, McDuffie and the Element Community Church may very well get a large number of people along to their church and even gain a number of people that will continue to attend. But will they gain the unsaved for Christ by doing so? Again, it is the gospel that God uses in bringing salvation to the elect and not a series of sermons on sex. Having a whole group of people hanging around the church simply because their interests have been titillated will do nothing for their well being and may in fact cause great harm to the church itself.
Sadly, this exercise of the Element Community Church would appear to be just another gimmick in the American church as is typical of the Church Growth Movement. Browsing the church website would also lead one to think that the Element Community Church has drunk fully at the Church Growth Movement trough and imbibed its tragic spirit.
Indeed, the church website has a link to McDuffie’s Blog site, in which he actually praises Rick Warren, one of the founding fathers of the modern church growth movement.
Random Thoughts 