This sermon series is brought to you by Oakleaf Church in Cartersville, GA; and they even have an attention grabbing URL: www.YourGreatSexLife.com. You can read the pastor’s blog post about it here.
Storybook Sex Trailer from Oak Leaf Church Video Tech on Vimeo.
What are your thoughts about this? I know I have a good blend of church going and non-church going readers, so I would love to hear your two cents.
I have given this some thought. One of my favorite pastors, Mark Driscoll, did a series on the Song of Solomon that got quite a bit of press. I think that pastors preaching on sex is fine as long as it is done in context. I think that the marriage relationship must be addressed first. If the pastor is encouraging people to seek to satisfy their own physical desires without asking them to sacrifice for their spouse, it is bound to fail.
I think this precisely proves my theory in my last post, about how the Evangelical church has become a mirror of the culture around it, rather than something unique within it. This looks exactly like the sensational marketing of corporate ad agencies, pushing a product through the commoditizing of sex. If congregations were acting like actual congregations–gathering together over Word and sacrament and allowing Christ to speak into the life of the community on his terms–then there would be no need to "get attention" like this and use sexual temptation (I'm talking about the explicit sexual connotation of the print ads and video) to "market" a sex-hungry demographic.
I'm guessing that it seems different to the people within these congregations. Many Evangelicals have grown up thinking that sex was a taboo topic, certainly not to be addressed openly from the pulpit unless talked about condemningly. This new approach probably seems freeing to them, as in, "we're so enlightened we can think about sex in the context of churchiness." And that may be a good thing, but these advertisements, in their exact replication of commercial culture, send a clear message to the non-Christian world: the Church is no different than any other entity within market capitalism.
Thought I'd chime in quickly…
This series is a chapter-by-chapter walk through the Song of Solomon. The Mark Driscoll material, as well as the material from Tommy Nelson was used in preparation.
Michael @ Oak Leaf Church
I "read somewhere on the internet" there was a clothing-optional church in Tyler, Texas – Calvary Nudist Baptist Church – I thought it was a joke, but after reading this post, I'm not so sure.