Queer Activist Protest Outside Church after they give ‘Anti-LGBTQ Message’: Church Backs Down
A crowd of sodomy supporters gathered outside Crossroads Church two days ago to protest what they describe as “anti trans’ comments made by one of the speakers during last week’s service, resulting in the Church backing down and issuing an apology to satiate the woke mob and their own frustrated and riled up congregants.
A week before, the multi-site megachurch that has 10 campuses across Ohio and Kentucky (yes, the same church we featured last month that had a trainer breaking a wild horse onstage for a live sermon illustration) invited David Mahan to take the stage and speak about gender transitioning and identity.
Mahan is the Director of Policy with the Center for Christian Virtue and gave an excellent sermon from a conservative, Christian viewpoint on the topic, such as why puberty blockers being forced on families and children is a bad idea, and how putting pressure on parents to give in to their kid’s demands in order “save their life” was immense, noting:
“If you have a child struggling with gender dysphoria (such as a girl thinking she’s a boy) and you go to a clinic in this area, eventually you’ll get down to brass tacks on if you want a dead daughter or a live son.”
Likewise, Mahan drew some excellent parallels by asking the congregation how they would respond and what they would do if a teen that was battling anorexia came to them and told them she was suicidal because she was too fat.
“What is your response? Affirmation, or do you try to get her distorted mentality of herself to line up with her biological reality? What do we do? And if we do the latter, why wouldn’t we do it with the same dysphoric condition of transgender?
When he was finished speaking, many members got up and cheered, giving him a standing ovation, while another faction of the congregants, all of them likely lost and going to hell, got up and left.
The Cincinnati Inquirer reports that one attendee was “devastated and shocked” by the message:
“It felt like the rug was being ripped out from underneath me. I came here thinking it truly was an affirming, accepting church. And sitting inside that service last week, I was appalled, disgusted, and then devastated to see how many people stood up in ovation to the message.
Upon hearing this, various queer folk and allies organized a ‘Pop-up Pride Event’ at the church- a developing phenomenon that is becoming more and more popular as society becomes less tolerant- in order to protest them and their alleged homophobia and transphobia.
Organizer Jack Croft explained the purpose of their protest :
“The problem with Crossroads is their stance on LGBTQIA+ issues, and people, is very unclear publicly. If this happened at like the Westboro Baptist Church, we wouldn’t have a demonstration because their views are very well-known. But many people think Crossroads is pro-LGBTQ.
Hit with the backlash, the church purged their website and social media of any mention of David, his organization, their message, and issued a statement of apology (1).
During Sunday’s message, Senior Pastor Brian Tome addressed the controversy during the service, reading a prepared statement that said in part:
“I invited a man to speak on children transitioning to a different sex prior to puberty. Having that as a topic wasn’t a mistake. What was a mistake was that with such a sensitive and complex topic, our community deserved to hear biblically rooted teaching from me first instead of someone outside our community who is connected to a very polarizing institution. My regret and my apology is that I didn’t more formally vet the content and the organization. I should have been the one to deliver a message like that.”
He went on to say that they affirmed the notion of biblical marriage, but that “we have never and we will never mobilize our church around the politics of sexuality.” Tome also explained that their Church was charting a “middle ground” on the topic, offering up a completely incoherent and biblically untenable position:
We’re in the radical middle of an understanding on things such as sexuality that don’t fit into either side of the polarizing political paradigm of America. We aren’t trying to be in the middle, but Biblical teaching doesn’t fit purely in the right or the left. People leave Crossroads because we won’t marry two people of the same sex and then people leave Crossroads because we will baptize or dedicate children of same-sex parents. I’ve had conversations with people who don’t like that gay people can serve in our children’s ministry.
“People have left over that decision and people leave over the decision we have made that there are certain leadership positions that are closed to a sexually active gay person just as (to) a heterosexual who is having sex outside of marriage.
“This radical middle position confuses people because we don’t hear what we want to hear in sound bite form and then come to faulty conclusions like us not hiring gay-owned businesses or vendors. That’s not true, we do. Or that we’re not teaching the Bible. That’s not true, we do, just maybe not in the way some understand it.”
About Author
It appears Crossroads Church is aptly named – non-committal, trying to sit the fence, and can’t decide between the broad way that leads to destruction, or the narrow and difficult way that leads to life.
Pastor Tome, you are not in any so-called “radical middle,” you are lukewarm. Politics has nothing to do with it. Church attendance has nothing to do with it. The only difference between you and the ungodly is that you are backpedaling toward Hell, rather than running frontward – the destination is the same.
God’s Word is abundantly clear. Homosexuality is an abomination. Period. There is no debate. 1 Cor. 5, 2 Tim 3, from such turn away. So-called “transgender,” which is also condemned in the Bible – people making themselves to appear as the sex they were not born -, heaps a vile, wicked, and sick form of bearing false witness on top of that abomination.
Look here, it’s not for the church to question “what do we have to offer the world that they will like,” whatever the excuse or reason. The Church’s job is to say “here’s what God Almighty has offered the world, whether you like it or not.” It’s either His way, or the broad way to Hell. Period.
That is “another one bites the dust” playing in the background at pride headquarters today.
SMH. Sounds like majority of his church approved of the message and he still backed down, and threw the speaker under the bus. Cowards. It would have been a shame back in the day to let a “pride member” back u down. Lol.
“Radical Middle” is a term that a pragmatic, man fearing, coward comes up with. Shame on them. At the same time, this has been a great time of the true church and the false church being separated.
One can stand for the Bible and affirm 🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈LGBTQA++
One can stand with Jesus and Critical Race Theory.
It isn’t hard, dummies. All you need to be an open tolerant church is condem transphobia, racism, Trump, domestic terrorism, etc.
One cannot. It is utterly unloving to affirm sin. Sin is what separates us from God. Encouraging people to sin sends them to hell. You are not loving your neighbor when you affirm and celebrate sin.
Sorry, Johnny, but besides being a godless, atheist troll masquerading as a Christian, you are clearly the dummy.
You cannot oppose God’s Word and claim to be a follower – the only one you are following is Satan and all he wants is your destruction.
insert tiny flags opposing sexual sin/mental illness here
Ok domestic terrorist supporter
Okay, godless atheist deviant.
Johnny T. (for Trolly), we know that you already know that the Bible is pretty clear on what The Lord claims is and isn’t sin sexually. You’re not going to convince anyone who reads this blog to go with your word over what He says both through OT and NT scripture, also since we already know that you’ve yet to experience moving from “death into life” through a real relationship w/Jesus. You will not know, and so we forgive you for thinking that human created (vain) philosophies like CRT (and Democratic Party activism “Works”) will ~NEVER~ replace the brotherhood and sisterhood of being united with fellow Christians (who belong to Jesus’ flock) and so CRT is incessant for this love and unity between peoples of different colors, nationalities and creeds. Blessings that you may know HIM someday!
“radical middle”?!!? Does he not have any self-awareness? Does he not have anyone around him to speak correction into his commitment to compromising biblical principles?
radical middle = radical compromiser = radically lukewarm = radically for truth and for error
If there was no “pop-up” protest then all of this would still be on their website. Therefore, it is clear the only thing that changed was he bent his knee, not to Christ, but to those who oppose the teachings of Christ and His Word. Yet, nowadays, this is called “love” by countless people in the Church.
Just another gutless, church-of-what’s-happening desperately attempting to gain one more member by being all things to all people, the Gospel be damned. The church of Thyatira had nothing on these posers…
Time for the real Christians to get up and leave that church.
Protestia has not gotten close to the corruption of this church. I also am familiar with this church, and once again because of a friend, but this time several years before that, because I was in a hospital, and a friend who used to go to my church visited me in it, (and who was also a nurse), and invited me to crossroads after I got out of the hospital after a month stay. Being a big easy place to get into, and my friend a nurse (I was having trouble walking), I went.
It in some ways has a feeling of being more vile than Hillsong if that’s possible, but that is possibly because it is ‘smaller’ and you get to know the people involved better. It’s less extensive then Hillsong, but recruits among the rich and influential much the same, but instead of celebrities, it recruits local media personalities. It now is often the only “church” reported locally, to the exclusion of all others. The founders who run it run it as a private corporation to keep the finances secret, and many of which were originally from P&G. They run it like a marketing campaign, their original corporate occupation, and much of the people only seem interested in networking (check out their ocean and unpolished groups). I have yet to discover any way a member has any voting rights as a congregation at all, and ran into one person researching them on just that – and couldn’t either. That’s right, it’s run top down as a private business, but donate anyway.
Some things I saw them doing while I was there (in example):
a – they were keeping beer in the volunteer area for volunteers at the main campus, which they call a “temple”.
b – the daughter of the main pastor was recruited to run their new campus location (whose qualification was she was a daughter).
Her initial choose of location was in a nightclub, and after “sermons” (including one where she admitted she used to be a drunk and
slovenly loose), the attendees, many of which were students, would go to the back to get free beer in the nightclub. And there was the smell of pot in the back among some of the volunteers putting things away.
c – a “prophetess” of the church (a staff member) told me that she saw the head pastor of the church once drinking beer behind the pulpit. Same person also told another how to fake prophesize? in my hearing. I also saw an event of false prophets, they would put bethel in competition.
d – they like to get money. One of the main campus preachers by video was telling congregants that they should go into hock, even sell their wedding rings, to give to the church, in their every once in awhile money drive (which they make people commit to God (sic) for).
e – another pastor had the idea that he’d teach on how to be a “wolf pack” = instead of sheep. don’t be a lone wolf! When you thoroughly understand how vile the church, and some of the inner members who hang onto it all, being a “wolf pack” takes on a whole new meaning to the sheep that wanders in among them.
f – another pastor likes to tell dirty jokes on stage. One involved peanut butter. A congregant, a married female bible study leader, asked me what I thought about that, so it definitely stuck in my mind like an unwanted nightmare. Don’t think it was shock (see wolf pack above), it wasn’t too much longer until I found out that her husband had had sex with their best friends wife in their kitchen, and he was trying to show me nude pictures of her in the shower in front of her – in the church’s atrium, and both (and the other couple), were organisational leaders.)
That was the last straw. I left it quickly. But the entire organization, and the influential laity in it is corrupt.
That should read “Crossroads is extremely liberal” in the previous post not Hillsong. They are alike.