Ministry educates missionaries in training — and believers around the world — about the good and bad of sex.
By Bobby Ross Jr. | The Christian Chronicle
LUBBOCK, Texas — As autumn approaches, aspiring missionaries in their late teens and early 20s arrive at Sunset International Bible Institute’s West Texas campus.
Forty-five students — 27 women and 18 men — from 19 U.S. states and Mexico will train for eight months before scattering to mission points around the world.
As the two-year Adventures in Missions program — known as AIM — begins, participants get instruction on stewardship, security procedures, personal hygiene and respectful treatment of the Sunset Church of Christ members who house them.
For nearly a decade, another topic — one often avoided by Christians — has gained prominent attention at AIM’s annual orientation.
Sexual trauma.
“They’re going to be real,” Pat Sheaffer, AIM’s advancement coordinator, tells students as he introduces the guest speakers, Steve and Holly Holladay. “They’re not going to put on any masks.”
The Holladays, founders of a ministry called Ultimate Escape, recount their own journey — Steve’s escape from sexual addiction, Holly’s healing from teenage sexual assault — before delving into healthy relationships, sexual identity and how God wired the brain for marital sex and bonding.
“Our students really come to trust and believe Steve and Holly … because they share their personal back stories,” said Sheaffer, who first came to AIM as a student in 1988 and then served three years in Lisbon, Portugal. “Just this element of vulnerability really lays the groundwork for wanting to trust and learn from them.
“It’s just a blessing,” the AIM leader told The Christian Chronicle. “Their vulnerability allows other people to learn of God’s healing, of God’s grace and also of God’s intention for their lives.”
This story appears in the October print edition of The Christian Chronicle.
Photo by Bobby Ross Jr.
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