**NEWSFLASH**

It is with overwhelming gratitude and joy that we anticipate the upcoming Ministries of Pastoral Care School, to be held June 25-30, 2012, at Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois.

We are so excited to announce that Andrew Comiskey and Kim Jones have joined our Ministries of Pastoral Care team this year.

Andrew Comiskey is the founder of Desert Stream Ministries, www.desertstream.org, and an accomplished author. Desert Stream Ministries began in 1980 as a result of Andrew's journey out of homosexuality and into his true identity in Jesus Christ. He and his wife, Annette, responded to their pastor's call to start a biblically based healing/support group in West Hollywood for men and women seeking Jesus in light of their homosexuality.  

Over time Andrew developed what is now the Living Waters program. These church-based programs have grown and are now in more than 40 nations. Andrew was also a member of the Pastoral Care Ministries teams and is a long-time friend of Leanne Payne.

Kim Jones is the founder of Know Him Better Ministries, www.khbministries.com. A unique Christian ministry that offers experience and education, Know Him Better Ministries helps women develop authentic, consistent and life-changing relationships with God.

We are thankful and excited to have Andrew and Kim join us and look forward to seeing you all this summer.

Gino Vaccaro

Dear friends,

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Though this world continues to grow darker, we have this one joy, this one
truth, this one light that is brighter than all created things.  We have Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, whose name is above all names, to whom every knee shall bow and every tongue confess.  Praise be to God!

Religious freedoms are slipping away in the nations as governments are becoming increasingly hostile toward Jesus Christ, dealing violently with His church. Yet what have we to fear?  We have Another who lives within us!  We are more than conquerors.  Let us rejoice that as the dark gets darker, the light of Christ shines all the brighter.  Let us rejoice always, and again I say rejoice, for our God lives.  We rest assured that He knows the plans He has for us.  As we seek His face, listen to His voice, obey His Word and work together, we will see healings and miracles of an order only God could know.

This present age has found its god. It is Baal, the god of sexual orgy.  Governments and cultures may succumb to this present darkness, but we serve the one true God who has triumphed over evil and will ultimately establish His righteous rule over all the nations of the earth.  While much of the church is broken and weakened from lack of unity due to fear, pride, immorality, and an ungodly fascination with materialism, God still reigns.

As Leanne Payne states in The Healing Presence, "where there is demonic deception, mouths are closed."  We the church are called by God to speak the truth and to pray for leaders to be raised up to speak the truth in love and boldness throughout the world.  We are called to love a fallen world.  We, having been saved by grace, have much to be grateful for and much love to share.  Let us do so with excitement and joy, for there is nothing more fulfilling than to hear and obey our loving God.

Let us walk by faith and not by sight.  Let us keep our eyes focused on our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ with joyful and expectant hearts.  This life in Christ is never boring.  It is the most exciting existence one could ever hope for.  It is eternal and blessed.  Praise God from whom all things come. 

Praise God from whom all good things flow,

Gino Vaccaro
 

Sarah Groen-Colyn

Dear men and women of God,

That is who you are.  Men and women.  Gender is essential to and inseparable from our personhood, and this truth is fundamental to what it means to be human, to a true Christian anthropology. The process of becoming whole as human creatures calls us to affirm and grow into our true identity as men and women and to flourish in the true masculine and feminine.

Our world, and even our church, has been corrupted by the pernicious heresy that gender is a social construct, conceived in the mind of man.  This view profoundly confuses our self-understanding and is also theologically dangerous, for these dimensions of our being are deeply meaningful symbols of the Unseen Real.  Our existence as male and female originates in our Creator, and as men and women we reveal God's image.  Masculinity and femininity demonstrate beautiful dimensions of God's character.  Our capacity to make love and allow God to birth new life through us sacramentally manifests His creativity.  In Crisis in Masculinity Leanne Payne writes, "To think on the transcendent nature of gender is awe-inspiring, for sexuality and gender are grounded in the Being of God and His creation.  Masculinity and femininity, rooted in God, have utterly transcendent dimensions" (p. 80).  Being and becoming men and women of God is a holy act.

There have also been several recent cases in which mental health professionals have been penalized for standing separate from the now-dominant view on homosexuality.  An article in a major publication for marriage and family therapists discussed several of these cases, including the dismissal of a graduate student from her training program when she held to her Christian belief about same-sex attraction and human wholeness.  Again I found myself deeply troubled by the tone of the article as the author implied that maturity and compassion required abandonment of Christian beliefs about human sexual identity.  One psychology professor advocated the abandonment of Christian truth in prescribing that "many attitudes and beliefs change during the developmental process of becoming a therapist." The supervisor of a mental health clinic claimed, "When a clinician allows personal beliefs to drive therapeutic decision-making, we question overall competence" ("The Dilemma: Can a Religious Therapist Refuse to Treat Gay and Lesbian Clients," Family Therapy Magazine, Sept-Oct 2011, pp. 50-52).  The terms of the conversation in our culture are designed to disguise a fatally distorted understanding of what it is be human.

We are subjected to a nearly constant but often subtle assault that dismisses truth about gender and sexuality under the cover of pseudo-virtue.  It seems the writer of Proverbs foresaw this moment when he wrote:  

"Righteousness cuts straight and blameless paths, 

There is a snare for citizens in the mouth of the ungodly,

But the perception of the righteous is prosperous."

(Proverbs 11:4, 8 St. Athanasius Academy Septuagint)

Praise God that He has raised up Christian leaders and ministries to defend His people from these lies.  We in the Ministries of Pastoral Care are privileged and humbled to serve in this vital work.  We affirm that God, in fact, is the originator of gender, sexuality, masculinity and femininity and that we can only know ourselves as His creatures in His image as men and women.  We heartily and sincerely thank God that He continues to make truth known.  We acknowledge the Objective Real. The Word dwells with us and within us, and we reject the lie that the understanding of what it is to be human is a subjective perception to be defined by each individual. We affirm and reaffirm that God made people male and female, and we listen to His declaration: "It is good."

Abiding in truth is not simply a matter for the intellect, like learning our multiplication tables.  Knowing truth about what it is to be male and female is an experiential process of being-in-becoming.  We share together the incredible joy of becoming men and women of God. As we grow in our practice of God's presence, He draws us into greater wholeness in Him, and we come to know our own true womanliness and manliness.  We learn what it means to be male and female and how to move in the true masculine and feminine as we receive from the Holy One:  healing from misogyny, repentance and deliverance from sexual idolatry, a sense of being, affirming words from our Father, growth in healthy femininity and masculinity through listening obedience. 

Those of us who were able to gather last summer at the MPCS were changed forever by God's self-revelation of the true masculine and feminine in us.  As Christ was formed in our midst, we experienced moments of revelation and blessing that were especially nourishing to our identities as men and women.  God deeply desires us to know ourselves in Him as men and women, and He was present among us to call out, bless, and affirm every son and daughter.  Many of you receive this newsletter because you've been forever changed by coming to a fully Christ-centered understanding of gender and sexuality.  We praise God for His faithfulness and generosity in giving us our daily bread of encouragement, clarity and hope.  We affirm that every man and woman, boy and girl is a magnificent creation of the one true God.  And we continually thank Him that nothing can separate us from the love of God the Father, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.  Honor and glory be to the Holy One--Father, Son and Holy Spirit, now and forever!

Yours in Christ,

Sarah Groen-Colyn

REGISTER HERE 

FOR THE

2012 MINISTRIES OF PASTORAL CARE SCHOOL!

NEW:  Pre-selling tickets for bus transportation  

to Chicago airports on Saturday, June 30:

This year we are pre-selling tickets for bus transportation to both O'Hare and Midway Airports on Saturday, June 30, leaving Fischer Hall at 2:00 pm and arriving at each airport at approximately 3:00 pm.  If you would like to purchase a ticket, please visit the Registration website.

You must purchase your ticket with a credit card. These tickets are available on a first-come, first-served basis and are $20 each.  At this time, there are 78 seats available for O'Hare and 39 for Midway.  No refunds will be given for the bus tickets.  Please note: if MPC is unable to fill these buses near capacity, we reserve the right to cancel the bus and will issue you a full refund.