Hello friends! Welcome back to another episode of “Walking with Same-Sex Attracted Friends”. Today, we will be listening to Pastor Dev Menon’s journey of being a leader and mentor to our same sex attracted friends and the need for a cultural change in our churches.

The first time it hit me was around 10 years ago. I awoke one morning to a series of very startling messages that my fellow church leader from years past had married another man and had announced it on social media. I was shocked, then angry. My anger was not because of the broadcast but because despite the years of close fellowship and intense Bible study we had together, he hadn’t shared a thing about it with any of us. We were blindsided. But then again, should I really have been surprised? After all, I hadn’t mentioned my serious pornography and masturbation addiction to any of them either. Was I any different from him? How could it be that both of us, and I’m sure many others, in one of the greatest evangelical churches in the UK, at the presumed peak of our spiritual zeal, methodically studying the Scriptures, could not share the struggles and sinful behaviour that took place behind closed doors? This left a deep wound.

Fast forward a few years to when I had become a pastor. What would this mean for my church congregation? I was determined not to allow such things to fester. In my new role, one of the first things I started was a sexual addiction “anonymous” group called a 3XA group. This involved a few guys meeting weekly over the course of one or two years, using the material called Pure Eyes. We shared our sins openly and I ran a couple of these groups over the course of three years. However, after the first two rounds, I decided to stop. Why? Firstly, the groups were immensely draining on me personally – I felt that I had to shoulder their burdens on my own as there was no one willing to co-lead.

Furthermore, talking weekly about sexual things made me think of sexual things. It was already not healthy for me, was it healthy for them? More importantly, I wondered if the group was helping at all. Weekly failures, the same failures, for one to two years straight – was there any point? The guys told me it was doing them good, but I wasn’t too sure, it felt pretty hopeless. I considered it a failure and to their dismay, I shelved the project.

So, what next? I didn’t know, I just left it to God. I carried on with normal ministry – preaching, teaching, and lots of Bible study. As I continued to study the Scriptures, I became convicted of 2 key ingredients necessary for illumination and transformation. The first was “gospel safety”. A sharing of one’s failures or the confession of sins, requires a deep level of assurance that one will not be met with condemnation, but rather grace. If the gospel was not strongly and powerfully taught, people would not come forward to confess in response. I realised that the 3XA groups had only allowed for a temporary emotional release, but it didn’t seem to go further than that. The confession had to be triggered by the “bravery” that came from deeply experiencing the work of the cross.

The second was that the person doing the teaching needed to be a person who embodied the Word. When we ran the 3XA groups, one of the required steps was to find a person that they could be accountable to. Interestingly, all the guys in the groups independently chose the same 2 to 3 Christians, despite being in a church of 1000 people! They were all leaders whom the group members felt could teach the gospel as they were mature and able, understood sin as they had vulnerability and humility, and lastly, embodied grace as they shared warmth and safety. None of these people were experts in sexuality nor had they a known history of ministering to people with sexual addictions. Yet, they just seemed to be the right people to go to! Later, I also realised that the only reason guys came to share about their same sex attraction struggles with me was not because I had ever preached a single word about it but because I too seemingly embodied similar characteristics. May be the type of sin didn’t matter – it could be sexual issues, gambling problems, alcohol abuse or any other, but they all went to the same people for help. Sexual sins are deep sins, but they are still sins. Sexual sinners are not segregated from us, they are part of us and all of us need the same kind of gospel help.

Convinced of this, I then decided what we needed was not to run a same sex attraction ministry or more “professional” 3XA groups. The church needed a cultural change. We, the existing leaders, needed to become the kinds of people that those struggling with some form of debilitating darkness could go to in confidence.

First, do we as leaders even confess our sins to one another? Do we have such gospel confidence? Well, I wasn’t going to ask the entire Board of Elders to start openly confessing their sins – that’s not really a good way to make friends. But we could start by meeting up with one another outside of ministry events and business meetings. We started the “Quad” system where one pastor and three elders would meet up monthly to read God’s Word and to share how we were doing. This was later given better language when Reverend Tan Soo Inn shared with us his 3-2-1 method, where 3 Christians would meet up, for 2 hours, once a month to share openly and pray deeply about all aspects of life, such as work, ministry, and family. We did this with the Elders, then the Staff, then opened it up to the whole church to be done in all the small groups – voluntarily of course. After a couple of years, you could tangibly feel the difference in how the leaders talked to one another. That was refreshing.

Secondly, do we as leaders confess our sins to the congregation, where appropriate? This was going to be a lot harder! I was already privileged to have a senior pastor who didn’t hide his mistakes. When something went wrong administratively, he was brave enough to apologise publicly. I decided that I would find avenues to talk about sins, even my past and present sins in appropriate and helpful ways to various segments of the congregation. There was the occasional sermon where I would share about my past pornography addiction and my present struggles with pride and feeling of inadequacy. There were other sermons where I thought it was more helpful to use humour and creative means to get hidden sins out in the open. For example, during a Galatians 6 sermon, I acted out a skit of a young man trying to open up about his sexual addictions. The comedy cut through the obvious tension, making it easier to talk about the sin. Again, this was something I learned from my senior pastor who had written a book called Make them Laugh, Help them Learn. Using the pulpit, small groups, special classes and social media, I got others to share their testimony of weakness from the angles of mental health, fears of singleness, parenting woes, and marital struggles. The issues had to be hit at multiple levels using all means available. Some of it was purposeful, most times simply opportunistic, as God brought the people of programmes onto my radar.

But again, I stress, the best decision was to leave these things to God. He brought in something I had perhaps given up looking for – which is a tool to come alongside someone stuck in relational or sexual brokenness. This was “Journey Singapore” which is a community-based, Christ-centred discipleship ministry that exists to help people find hope and live life thorough experiencing Jesus in their relationships and sexuality. I then found a random course in the Biblical Graduate School of Theology called “Spiritual Healing”. The thing that intrigued me was that the teacher was a flamenco dancer! I then realised that the course was actually a part of a larger worldwide programme to aid those in deep darkness, using prayer and discipleship. I had never experienced something so personally liberating and sustaining. I was sold and wanted to do everything to be part of this – first for my own sake, and later to bring this back to the church. God opened all the doors – it was quite stunning. Although, I’m still a newbie at “Journey Singapore”, I know that this was His answer to my decade-old question, and it made me so much more hopeful in terms of my spiritual growth. Yes, there is hope and it was embodied so vividly by the “Journey International” leaders who were walking pictures of brokenness being healed. “Journey Singapore” is not the only tool out there but it was the tool God brought to me and addressed my circumstance.

If you are someone struggling with same sex attraction or other sexual issues, I pray you may meet some people transformed by the gospel, and hopefully be equipped with healing tools like “Journey Singapore”. Then may be, just may be, they will be able to walk with you, just like someone is walking with them. Ask God to show them to you, and trust me, He is always listening and will answer your prayers. As it is written in Matthew 7: 7-8, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”

In our last episode coming out next Thursday, we will be listening to Pastor Rick Toh’s journey of coming out from the darkness of his sins and going into communities to bring them into light. Until next time, this has been Global Reachout and it has been a blessing to journey with you. Stay tuned, stay kind and have a great week!