Alan Chambers Talks to New Man About His Ministry to Homosexuals

 

Alan Chambers is president of Exodus Ministries, a nonprofit ministry “promoting the message of freedom from homosexuality through the power of Jesus Christ.” Chambers spoke with New Man about his own struggle with same-sex attraction, homosexuality in the church and why we need to start reaching out to the gay community.

 

New Man: You struggled with same-sex attraction yourself. Did that experience lead you to the ministry you’re in today?

 

Alan Chambers: Definitely. When I was growing up the only thing you ever heard about from the Bible regarding homosexuals was that they don’t inherit the kingdom of God. That’s the one thing that rings in my head from childhood. So when I found out that there was a local Exodus ministry, that there was help for people like me, I jumped at it.

 

New Man: So years later you have come back to be the president of Exodus?

 

Chambers: Yes, I’m the president of Exodus. Really from the time I was 18 until now—I’m 36—I’ve never left the ministry. I started out as someone who was participating and someone who needed help and then I was a volunteer, than on staff at a local ministry and worked through the ranks and to where I am now.

 

New Man: Your ministry is inherently controversial. You have been interviewed by a number of news outlets and you’re unapologetic about trying to change homosexuals. What is your response to someone who says, “They can’t change”?

 

Chambers: Well my first response is that we don’t change people. I want to be very clear about that. We are people who simply point to the truth and Scripture, to the truth of our testimonies and to the grace of a God who promises He’ll free anyone who submits his will to His Lordship. It will be different for different people. I know a lot of people that didn’t experience a change in their feelings. They didn’t experience the same freedom I did, which is sometimes hard to understand.

 

New Man: How do you respond to the naysayers that say it is not even possible for people to change?

 

Chambers: Well I say you can’t tell me that my life hasn’t experienced radical change. To presume things for me would be as inappropriate as me speaking for you. I can’t tell someone that they haven’t experienced something that they say they have personally experienced. And for me that’s the truth. You can’t deny the fact that I’m different than I was 18 years ago.

 

New Man: You mentioned that some people might not have the same freedom that other people experience. Does same-sex attraction ever go away?

 

Chambers: For some people it does. There are people who have shared with me that they became a Christian and over time attraction diminished. There are a number of women who have shared that with me. For me, I’m a man and men are tempted visually, they are tempted by flesh. I’m a man so I have to be careful. And I’m married today and my attractions have changed dramatically. But the truth is I will never be as though I never was. And I have to be prepared for the fact that I could be tempted as part of human nature.

 

New Man: What advice can you give to the average Christian guy who may feel awkward around homosexuals but who at the same time wants to reach out to people who struggle with this issue?

 

Chambers: I think we’re living in a time where people are really insecure about their masculinity anyway. In general men who I’ve met, who are fearful of homosexuality or those who struggle with homosexuality, really don’t have a firm grasp on their own masculinity. So I think the first step is there. If you are someone who is afraid, and I mean genuinely afraid, of homosexuality or someone who is gay, I think you just have to realize that they are people just like anyone else and you’re not going to catch homosexuality as if they have some type of a sexually transmitted disease. You’re not going to catch that from being next to someone in line or shaking someone’s hand. If you’re afraid of what other people will think because you’re friends with someone who deals with this issue then I think you really have to get a better handle on who Christ is and what He taught us and that is to befriend people who are friendless and who need someone to reach out to them in a way that Christ would have absolutely reached out. We need to look past what they do and see what God says that they can be.

 

New Man: How big of a problem is the fear of people who struggle with homosexuality in the church today?

 

Chambers: In some places it is more apparent than others, maybe even in certain denominations. That’s not to knock parts of the country or certain denominations. You know it’s a matter of ignorance in my opinion and that’s not really as ugly a word as it sounds. Some people just really don’t understand it. They need to take a deeper look and have an understanding of why people do what they do. It is a problem. But I also think it’s changing. My caution to people is that as they move out of ignorance and into a more accepting posture, that they don’t toss truth out the window for grace. At the same time they shouldn’t toss grace out the window for truth. It’s a tightrope.

 

New Man: You wrote an amazing letter that we published in our eMagazine about prodigals and the potential that you see them as having. Can you talk about the potential that you see in many homosexuals for the kingdom?

 

Chambers: I see a gaping hole in the body of Christ in the areas of creativity, leadership and solidarity. And then I look over at the gay community and I see them as one of the most successful communities ever. They’re creative, talented and have amazing gifts for leadership and getting things done. I may not agree with their teachings but they’ve been more successful in their battle for getting rights and other things than we have been as the church over the same period. And that’s saying something. I believe we’re missing these people and we’ve got to reach out to people who are missing. They are people who we want to be part of the body. I believe that’s the way God sees it. Not everybody’s going to choose Him. But I think we could do a whole lot better as a church helping to bring people into the kingdom if we saw them the way Christ sees them—not just as lost—but as missing.

 

New Man: Let’s talk about the attention recently that’s been given to men that “live on the down-low,” men who are married and seem to be heterosexual, but fall occasionally into the sin of homosexuality. Is your approach any different when working with a man like that?

 

Chambers: Well, it depends on where that person is. Is it someone who is struggling to overcome, but just caught up in a sexual addiction and wants help? Well then our approach is going to be to help them. And there are a lot of men in that category, heterosexually and homosexually. There are married men who battle this addiction for years and freedom isn’t coming quickly. You work with those people, you try to give them structure and accountability. You try to deal with whatever issues are underlying their behavior. A full 40 percent of the men that come through Exodus are married. Those men have a real incentive to change because they have kids and they have a wife that they love. Now if the person is part of the whole down-low culture and not willing to own the fact that they have an issue with homosexuality, they might not identify with the gay community, but there is something broken there. Something is causing them to be involved sexually with members of the same sex, so they’ve got to be willing to admit that and own it and want to work on it. There are a lot of people that are not willing to own the reality of their situation. So if people don’t acknowledge that they need help or want help it’s really hard to help them.

 

New Man: What’s the general program there? Is it discipleship? Counseling? Both?

 

Chambers: We have over 200 ministries. At Exodus, we’re the headquarters. We don’t do counseling individually. For our ministries we don’t have any set program but we do prohibit certain practices that are out there.

 

New Man: Like what?

 

Chambers: Like Touch Therapy. I think that’s what they call it. We also don’t approve of aversion or shock therapy, or the warrior therapy, where they get naked and run through the woods. We don’t allow any of those things. So we have very specific guidelines on what you can and can’t do. We do one-on-one counseling, therapy, support groups like you would find in any AA meeting, accountability groups, structured groups that are programmatic like Living Waters, which is one of the oldest programs in our ministry. For my life counseling was important. I benefited from support groups, but it was really the discipleship in the body of Christ that made the biggest difference in my life. At the end of the day we all struggle with something and we’re not going to get past the fact that we struggle, so what do you do about that? You choose to pursue the Lord. Discipleship and obedience is really how we’re all called to live our lives.

 

New Man: Do you ever get people saying I want to be free from homosexuality but I’m not really interested in the Christian thing?

 

Chambers: Yes, we do. I think freedom is available for anyone who wants it. Certainly it’s Jesus Christ who made the biggest difference in my life. But there are people who don’t have that same relationship, but who have found that they can walk away from homosexuality and live free from it. There is a psychological component in these things and people do benefit from that as well.

 

New Man: There is a lot of debate about homosexuality in terms of orientation. Scripture seems to talk about it in terms of behavior while the culture talks about orientation. Do you think the terminology has muddied the waters of this debate?

 

Chambers: Yes, I do. I think that when we talk about orientation it’s really such an ambiguous term. Nobody has really defined it well enough. There is heterosexual orientation, homosexual, bisexual. You could go on and on. In fact the U.N. has a list of about 24 different types of orientations. It’s just mind-boggling, some of the things that are on that list. I think the terminology has confused people. I think the word “orientation” makes it sound like something is fixed when I don’t think we’re able to say that. I think the secular media has done a really good job of fixing the argument so that we are in the predicament we’re in now.

 

New Man: How big of a problem do you think secret homosexuality in the church is?

 

Chambers: I think it’s bigger than any pastor or church person would ever imagine. There are still people who surprise me. Ted Haggard surprised me. I sat in meetings with him several times a year. I knew him and he surprised me. If someone like him surprises me then just think who else is dealing with these very issues and not just homosexuality. I think it is a problem that could rip apart the church, and I think the reason that we see the church caving in on Scripture, and why the gay movement rising, and the culture really turning toward hell is that we as Christians have compromised and failed to look differently. We have failed to live differently privately. Until we choose to address that contradiction, like Sampson did, then we’re going to continue to see all of the things that we in the church hate to see go up and up and up.

 

New Man: That is a startling statement!