August 15, 2019

Where Harvest USA Is Going

Written by
  • print

The date: Friday, October 24, 1997. It was a sunny, mild day in Philadelphia. I remember staring at my telephone, holding the church bulletin in my hand. My pulse raced. My breathing was quick and shallow. I knew what I had to do—but so many times before, I got to this point and rationalized why I shouldn’t go through with it. I needed to call Harvest USA. I needed to tell someone, for the first time in my life, that I struggled with same-sex attraction. I didn’t want to live life as a gay man.

The call was answered personally (as they are today) and an appointment with a staff member was set for the next business day (though today, the wait for an appointment might be a bit longer). When I saw him, he challenged me with this observation: “Your biggest problem isn’t homosexuality. It’s idolatry.” So began a journey of faith, growth, and repentance that continues to this day.

Only one staff member from 1997 is still around today. So much has changed in the last twenty-two years! Our location (two moves since then), our staff (more than doubled), our budget (quadrupled), and our logo (changed and colorized). About 90% of the people we ministered to in 1997 were men; today, it’s closer to 70%. Back then, nearly all our time went toward helping people in our office (what we call Direct Ministry). Over the intervening years, we’ve also discerned the call to equip the Church to minister to people affected by sexual brokenness. We’ve become a national organization.

In 2018, we reached more people than ever before: we helped 894 individuals and families in our offices through our Direct Ministry programs (a 3% increase over the prior year). And, we engaged over 63,000 people last year through our educational and equipping ministry. We estimate that to be a 15% increase over 2017.

Though much has changed at Harvest USA, a lot has stayed the same. We remain committed to discipleship as our sole ministry objective. When someone comes to us for help with a sexual or gender-related struggle, we don’t focus on behavior change. Just as I was challenged two decades ago that idolatry (the Bible’s term to explain out of control desires of the heart) was my most significant issue, so we challenge men and women today. Walking in faith and repentance (those two realities can’t be separated) depends on growing in love with the Lord Jesus Christ. As our hearts warm toward him and his covenant love, his Spirit is the One who gives us grace to live differently.

The culture has certainly changed since 1997. Many today view the Bible as outdated, irrelevant, and unsophisticated regarding sex, sexuality, and gender. So much of the current philosophies that underlie how our culture views human sexuality are borne of selfishness and out of a materialistic worldview. Many see sex as nothing more than a biological urge for pleasure. The new understanding of gender says that gender is malleable, that we are all on a gender spectrum, and it is up to the individual to decide their own gender, based on their feelings.

I needed to tell someone, for the first time in my life, that I struggled with same-sex attraction. I didn’t want to live life as a gay man.

Sadly, more and more people in the Church are adopting these worldly philosophies about issues that Scripture addresses clearly. Many Christians who favor these worldviews are under the age of forty. Statistically, Millennials as a group see nothing unbiblical about LGBTQ+ identity and behavior. And our youngest generation, Generation Z (young people up through college age) has the highest levels of acceptance of these secular values.

We see this in the requests for help we constantly receive. Youth leaders asking for help because a member of their youth group has declared themselves to be transgender or someone has self-identified as gay. The challenge for these youth leaders is how to respond in ways that speak the truth in love to their younger brothers and sisters in the faith.

That’s one of the key questions Harvest USA is answering now, and it’s one of the critical areas where our ministry will grow in the months and years to come.

Where do we believe the Lord is leading Harvest USA? What do we anticipate ministry in 2020 and beyond will look like?

  1. We’ll remain firmly grounded in Scripture. While the broader Christian culture may tinker with Scripture to make it fit its agenda, Harvest USA will remain firmly committed to the unchanging, inerrant authority of Scripture and what it says about God’s design for sex, sexuality, and gender.
  2. We’ll be ministering to more people. The number of people we minister to in our offices will stay about the same as last year. But through using technology to do direct ministry (adding online biblical support groups as an adjunct to our live, in-person groups), and growing the number of our Partner Ministries in churches, we anticipate a 15% increase in the number of people helped each year for the next five years. By 2024, we want to be helping 2,000 people annually both through Direct Ministry in our offices and our Partner Ministries in local churches.
  3. We’ll be teaching more people to understand and live out biblical concepts of sex, sexuality, and gender. We don’t plan to do more teaching events in the coming years, but we do expect to equip more people. You can read about Harvest USA’s Sexually Faithful Church Initiative that explains this more here. We want to see 50 churches become sexually faithful churches by the end of 2020, and then add another 50 per year in 2021 and beyond. Sexually faithful churches will talk with their members at all age levels about biblical concepts of sex, sexuality, and gender. Through discipleship, proactive accountability, and transparency in community—equipping tools we’ll help churches develop and grow—these churches will help their members better resist sexual temptation and sin, grow in their delight to follow Christ in this area of life, and steer clear of the type of temptations that turn into life-dominating sin patterns.

Partner Ministries help gender and sexual strugglers to walk in increasing faith and repentance. But they also help family members learn how to maintain an ongoing relationship with their loved ones who struggle without compromising truth.

  1. We’ll be equipping more churches to help those affected by sexual and gender-related struggle and sin. We want sexually faithful churches to provide ministry to their members who are affected by different types of sexual and gender-related sin. This includes those who struggle, as well as family members (parents and spouses) impacted by those struggles. Part of our commitment to equip churches to do that is producing a new line of curricula to help in those discipleship relationships. We’ll be self-publishing curricula for men, women, wives, and parents. These resources are ideal for a one-on-one discipleship relationship or a small group setting.
  2. We’ll help more churches start Partner Ministries. Partner Ministries are ministries run by local churches, which Harvest USA helps them start, and we support them as they do their work. Partner Ministries help gender and sexual strugglers to walk in increasing faith and repentance. But they also help family members learn how to maintain an ongoing relationship with their loved ones who struggle without compromising truth. Since 2010, we’ve been slowly growing a network of Partner Ministries around the country. We want to add three new Partner Ministries each year, and this year we’ll be implementing new ways to support the leaders of those ministries.
  3. We’ll produce more resources for the Church and individuals. We plan to publish more print, video, and electronic resources that God’s people can access to learn more about specific issues and how to help people struggling with them. That means more articles, blog posts, and short videos like you’re used to seeing in our harvestusa magazine and on harvestusa.org. And, we’ll create many more resources to be accessed through our website.
  4. We’re committed to expanding our use of technology-based learning. Almost since its inception, Harvest USA’s equipping ministry has consisted mostly of live, in-person equipping events in churches and other venues. While we’re not ending this part of our equipping ministry, we’ve found that sometimes the travel, cost, and staff time for live teaching events isn’t the wisest or most effective way to equip people and churches. In 2018, we began to transfer some of our presentations to either recorded video or webinar-based formats. We believe that using technology will allow us to equip more people around the world and do so at a lower cost.
  5. We’ll become an international ministry. Through the use of technology to conduct our equipping ministry and disseminate our resources, we anticipate that more people not only in the United States but around the world will benefit from the ministry work we do.

I’m excited about the ministry of Harvest USA in the years to come. Please pray that the Lord would keep us faithful to Scripture and that he would use the ongoing and growing ministry of Harvest USA to equip his Church to disciple his people biblically, powerfully, and compassionately. We want to help make the Church the increasingly holy, faithful witness she is meant to be in a world that needs to hear—and see—the Gospel at work.

This article first appeared in the Spring 2019 issue of harvestusa magazine. You can read the entire issue in digital form here.

More resources you might like: