February 2025 Newsletter

The Alliance exists to encourage human flourishing by promoting a more complete truth, informed by Judeo-Christian values and natural law, about the science of sexual orientation and biological sex through education, advocacy, clinical training, and therapy.

How do we best serve our neighbors who are caught up in the varying scenarios of bondage to individualized sexual beliefs and actions? Hiding from strugglers on this path, yelling at ‘evil’ from the safety of our church pews, or conceding our convictions to the politicized falsehood of unchangeable sexual identity… All these choices are not compassionate nor helpful

Author Gregory Koukl* suggests that the spiritually sensitive community must task itself to initially engage in skillful gardening before the fruits are ripe for the harvest. How does one grow a healthy crop? Let’s take a look!

GARDENING is the START

Plowing the soil, sowing seeds of truth, cultivating out weeds, fertilizing and watering nurtures the seedlings of bonding, friendship, and inclusion.  Those who claim Christ’s name must invest careful gardening efforts first! 

• Effective gardening tools appear via the Old Testament prophet Isaiah, Chapter 58:6-9a (read more)) 
• Cultivating the garden requires enduring nurture, consistent hospitality and careful questions over time begin to challenge dominant cultural myths
• The careful gardener must study carefully all that is growing. Is it a deeply rooted weed… rooted in a painful past? 
• Is a freshly sprouted seedling - a weed?  Or, could it be a hint of future nourishment?
• Author Koukl suggests that careful listening in response to thoughtful questions, often yields seedlings to be nurtured in future conversations.
• Faithful gardeners also recognize that a young plant may be cultivated overtime by multiple gardeners before the first fruits appear.  
• Love, inclusion, attention, bonding and hospitality over time open opportunities to identify the weeds of dominant cultural myths.
• Common weeds which grow into same sex attraction or disliked birth gender are…
• Sprouting from seeds sown in early childhood.
• The symptoms of bigger issues.  
• Rooted in early trauma.                          
• Rooted in child abuse.
• Nurtured by sexual molestation – yet another monstrous weed.                
• Watered  by storms of neglect, perceived isolation, abandonment, detachment...

HARVESTING is the RESULT Faithful, enduring hospitality cultivated in a respectful, gentle environment leads to the harvest described in Isaiah 58:9b -10 (read more))

• The compulsion to excite individualistic patterns of neural eroticism (or gender change), the “yoke of oppression” fades, and the fruits of healthy friendship and bonding to ripen.
• Gentle, persistent gardening “satisfies the needs of the oppressed.”  
• The Spirit of the Living God unfolds a harvest. “…your light will rise in the darkness” 
• Obsessive sexual acting out melts under the warmth, loyalty, care & hospitality of Christ’s body empowered by the Holy Spirit.  
• Final fruits of the harvest, the initiation of family, in the bonds of marriage, reveal the true delights experienced by ‘male’ and ‘female’ as He created them. 

*Gregory Koukl.  Street Smarts; Using Questions to Answer Christianity’s Toughest Challenges. Zondervan 2023

Network organization means empowering grassroots support.  How can we best organize volunteer led groups across North America? These could be chapters, book clubs, discussion groups, church related or sponsored groups in a variety of communities. Groups could be led by educators, family members, spiritual mentors, pastors, counselors, writers, healthcare staff, speakers, students… Members of Jesus family – the Christian community.  The Alliance Mission states our specialty is  A more complete TRUTH… 

We must answer the question: How do we integrate this gift with existing supportive groups? How can we best provide support for our community partners? A brief history...

• 5 years ago the ALLIANCE created the Ethics, Family, and Faith Division, (EFF) one of five active ALLIANCE divisions. 
• Since that time the Alliance has experienced changes in official location, decreased staff time, etc. 
• Changes in revenue has resulted in more volunteer effort guided by ALLIANCE board members in each division.
• A huge blessing is our part-time Operations Manager, Pastor Daren Mehl! He also provides the ALLIANCE with an operations location in his hometown, Warroad MN.

The EFF division moved forward in this time by sponsoring 4 one-day workshops for community partners:

• Orlando, Florida, November 2022
• Rock Valley, Iowa  May 2024
• Twin Cities Minnesota, September 2024
•  Caldwell, Idaho November 2024

The division is organizing more workshops for 2025  (one is already scheduled - June 14th. in Twin Falls, Idaho.)  To move forward in the effort to develop a network, the ALLIANCE asks for your thoughts!

Andy Visser

Chair, Ethics Faith and Family Division

andy.visser@therapeuticchoice.com or contactus@therapeuticchoice.com

GARDENING (Isaiah 58:6-10)

“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:

to loose the chains of injustice

  and untie the cords of the yoke,

to set the oppressed free

  and break every yoke?

7 Is it not to share your food with the hungry

  and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—

when you see the naked, to clothe them,

  and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

8 Then your light will break forth like the dawn,

  and your healing will quickly appear;

then your righteousness[a] will go before you,

  and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.

9 Then you will call, and the Lord will answer;

  you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.

HARVESTING (Isaiah, Chapter 58:6-9a)

“If you do away with the yoke of oppression,

  with the pointing finger and malicious talk,

10 and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry

  and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,

then your light will rise in the darkness,

  and your night will become like the noonday.

Have you been helped by the Alliance? Let us know! We’d like to share your story in our next newsletter.

David Pickup

President, The Alliance

David.Pickup@TherapeuticChoice.com

Daren Mehl

Operations Manager, The Alliance

contactus@TherapeuticChoice.com