Embrace Webinar #2 – Greg Coles

Single Gay Christian: A Personal Journey of Faith and Sexual Identity

April 25, 2018

Single, Gay, Christian: A Personal Journey of Faith and Sexual Identity
by Gregory Coles

In an age where neither society nor the church knows what to do with gay Christians, Greg Coles tells his own story. Let’s make a deal, you and me. Let’s make promises to each other. I promise to tell you my story. The whole story. I’ll tell you about a boy in love with Jesus who, at the fateful onset of puberty, realized his sexual attractions were persistently and exclusively for other guys. I’ll tell you how I lay on my bed in the middle of the night and whispered to myself the words I’ve whispered a thousand times since: “I’m gay.” I’ll show you the world through my eyes. I’ll tell you what it’s like to belong nowhere. To know that much of my Christian family will forever consider me unnatural, dangerous, because of something that feels as involuntary as my eye color. And to know that much of the LGBTQ community that shares my experience as a sexual minority will disagree with the way I’ve chosen to interpret the call of Jesus, believing I’ve bought into a tragic, archaic ritual of self-hatred. But I promise my story won’t all be sadness and loneliness and struggle. I’ll tell you good things too, hopeful things, funny things, like the time I accidentally came out to my best friend during his bachelor party. I’ll tell you what it felt like the first time someone looked me in the eyes and said, “You are not a mistake.” I’ll tell you that joy and sorrow are not opposites, that my life has never been more beautiful than when it was most brokenhearted. If you’ll listen, I promise I’ll tell you everything, and you can decide for yourself what you want to believe about me.

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Is Same-Sex Attraction (or Being Gay) a Sin?
By Dr. Nate Collins and Greg Coles

Is being gay a sin? We argue that the answer to this question is “no.” Simply being gay in sexual orientation is no more or less sinful than being straight. Our attractions and orientations don’t make us sinful or holy—it’s what we do with our attractions and orientations, the way we steward our sexuality, that counts in the eyes of God.

Free PDF available from The Center for Faith, Sexuality & Gender

Embrace Webinar Slides – Greg Coles

This presentation given in the webinar details the 10 “Provocations” for Evangelicals. 

Download the Presentation >

GREGORY COLES (Presenter)

Greg was born in New York, raised on the Indonesian island of Java, and is now a PhD candidate studying English in Pennsylvania. Greg’s fiction and expository writing have been published by Penguin Random House and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. His academic research on rhetorics of marginality (how language works in society for disadvantaged groups) has appeared in College English. His book Single, Gay, Christian: A Personal Journey of Faith and Sexual Identitywas published by InterVarsity Press in August 2017. When he isn’t writing or teaching, Greg can usually be found playing piano at a local church, dabbling in songwriting, jogging, or whipping up 11-pound batches of buttercream icing at his favorite bakery.

Learn more about Greg on his website: Greg Coles. 

Lina Sánchez-Herrera

Chicago West Suburbs, Illinois

ECC Conference: Central
Gender: Female

AVAILABILITY

Receiving New Directees: Yes
Directing Clergy: Yes
Client Genders: Both men and women
Skype or Facetime: Yes
Languages: English, Spanish
Retreat/Workshop Leader: Yes

CERTIFICATION FROM

C. John Weborg Center for Spiritual Direction, North Park Theological Seminary

AREAS OF INTEREST

Pastors/Church Leadership, Missionaries, University Students, Discernment Process, Transitions, Multi-Ethnic Issues, Second Half of Life, Prayer, Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius

Prior to moving to the USA, I was a professor at the National University of Colombia and served with the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students in Colombia for 16 years. Starting in 2001, I served as InterVarsity National Staff in the USA. I have a master’s degree in Christian Ministries, and I serve in Spiritual Direction to those who want to be fully present and available to God and receive His grace over them. My joy is to see professors and college students coming to know Jesus and being transformed into people that bring the good news of righteousness and justice to others.

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