Anthony Venn-Brown is Australia’s first openly gay Pentecostal. He was a leading minister in the Australian Assemblies of God Church before resigning his post after coming out. He currently attends Hillsong in Sydney. He is the author of A Life of Unlearning which won the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Business Association Literary award in 2004. The book was revised and updated in 2007. In 2007 Anthony Venn-Brown was voted as being one of the most 25 influential Gay and Lesbian people in Australia. Venn-Brown is a Co-founder and Convenor of Freedom 2 B[e]. The stated mission of Freedom 2 B[e] is to create a global network of GLBTIQ people from Pentecostal and Charismatic backgrounds that helps them resolve issues of faith and sexuality and creates understanding and acceptance. In 2007 Freedom 2 B(e) gay Pentecostal and Charismatic Christians and their supporters marched in the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras for the first time. In part one of this interview Anthony talks about his early Pentercostal Christian days and how he hoped being in the church would help him to lead a ‘normal’ heterosexual life. He also discusses how he underwent sexual conversion therapy which for many included electric shocks and even lobotomies. Despite being married with children he could not deny his sexuality to himself.
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{ 25 comments… read them below or add one }
you know good and well no one called him to preach not being gay
amen chadsuumer01
ur on point
A HOT DEMONIC MESS
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He became a Chistian to be freed from homosexuality. This is not a valid reason. We seek God to serve Him out of gratitude for the price He paid on the cross for us. From that point God takes care of our sinful patterns and conforms us to His Son, Jesus. (Rom 8:28-29).
Continually practicing a homosexual lifestyle without any conviction is very strong evidence that you are not born again. Jesus said, a good tree does not produce bad fruit. Anyone (gay or straight) who continually lives in and practices sin without conviction must accept that it is highly unlikely that he or she is born again. If you’re born again, it is very, very, very difficult to continually practice a sinful lifestyle. Those who are born again, go to heaven. Those who are not, don’t.
OK, first off it’s not a fucking lifestyle…a choice or anything else that your misguided pastor or parents pumped into your head. It’s a sexual orientation that is IN-BORN. If you honestly think that anyone would CHOOSE to be gay then you’re sadly out of touch with reality. Perhaps if you allowed the Spirit, instead of pastors with agendas, to guide your reading of scripture you could free yourself of your sin…particularly, the sins of pride and arrogance.
glad you know what his point is, because anyone with an IQ past 70 is wondering.
spare me…another short-bus kid…do you even realize saying trash like that is what drives people AWAY from the church. You cause souls to fall away…think about it…think about what you will say to God when he asks you “why did you not preach love to my sheep who wandered…instead you pushed them further away”
Ok, if it’s not a lifestyle, it’s a sin that is practiced continually. 1 John 3:9, “No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.” Also, I don’t have a pastor, and the pastor I had never spoke about homosexuality in detail. He just said it was a sin like any other. My younger brother is gay, yet I still love him, but don’t approve of the sin he practices continually. I speak the same toward any sin that’s practiced.
Rom 1:25-27, “For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due. Here, the word “homosexual” is not used, yet homosexuality is clearly expressed, and the act is called an “error” for which a penalty is given.
Yeah, calling people retarded is a great way to “preach love to my sheep”.
If quoting scriptures (WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT I HAVE DONE ABOVE) were an offense to God then He’d be a confused hypocrite but since God is true and man is the liar we know that when God says WITHOUT HOLINESS NO ONE WILL SEE MY KINGDOM He meant it.
If the goal is to fill church pews then invite an NFL team and cheerleaders to come entertain- if it’s to lead people to heaven we must preach holiness!
Ok people, so like this man said, he was “driven” to find an answer, he asked GOD to show him the correct path and went through therapy, and sought to be right with God… doesn’t this make you wonder, wouldn’t God have changed him into heterosexual if he wanted him to be straight? Wouldn’t he have rid him of his homosexuality?
But infact, after all that this man went through…God let him remain a proud GAY human being……
This man was in a serious struggle trying to find truth and answers for himself, this man would have BECOME straight if that’s what God told him to do…and yet God let him be as he is.
All of you that believe in God know that God can make miracles happen, beyond our imagination… so why did he not change him into the “correct” version of a man if that’s what is says in the bible?
Yes. I, like any other born-again Christian, am positionally free from sin by the blood of Christ (Rom 6:22). In this life that I live, I am not perfectly sinless because I, like anyone else, have a sin nature that influences me to sin. However, I am not controlled by sin nor do I “practice” sin, like a homosexual or a professional thief, or a person who practices fornication, or adultery or any other sin. We are free in Christ, but not to abuse God’s grace and practice sin (Gal 5:13).
it is not logical to be pentecostal and gay
..its an abomination
First off he said he tried to change on the outside. Jesus said, ” Hypocrites!! You make the outside of the cup clean, but the inside is dirty. Sounds like most wannabe Christians today. He said he went to men not Jesus! If he really experienced Jesus, hes would’ve been a NEW man, but he let the world tell he a lie. Come out from among them.
If you are a true child of God there’s a difference between practicing sin & sinning without planning it — although both are sins. It’s possible for a child of God to sin (without planning it) but not possible for a child of God to plan and continually practice sin without feeling convicted. The job of the Holy Spirit is to convict us. When Christians sin because they are not perfect, they are able to go before God and ask for fogiveness; but practicing sin is an abuse of God’s grace.
How can one sin without planning?
“If you are a true child of God there’s a difference between practicing sin & sinning ” what is the differance?
Why would God create sin in the first place if he had to test us?
“When Christians sin because they are not perfect, they are able to go before God and ask for fogiveness”
Why are christians the only ones?
he looks like pervert…sick ….hate gay propaganda…God have Mercy…
To all you who claim to know God so well, watch the movie based on a true story “prayers for bobby”. The only abomination to God is ignorance, arrogance, prejudice, and judgement!
@lafilleMalvina “why did he not change him into the “correct” version of a man if that’s what is says in the bible?”
It’s called freewill
@questionsamson One example of sinning without planning: you are in your car waiting for the light to turn green. A beautiful girl in a thong bikini runs across the street and passes right in front of you and you looked at butt but immediately turned your head and asked God for forgiveness. There. Now, planning sin: if I go to a strip joint and PLANNED to go inside and observe the women. Simple?
eviticus 20:13 – “If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.” Not only is it written in the old testament but also in the new testament in romans 1:26-27 that homosexuality is not tolerable by God.Alot of churches and people because this is america and we have freedom to believe and do what we will think because the man has said its okay then its fine with God.But homosuxuality
@LivinginHoliness
ALSO:
1 Corinthians 11:4-16
“Any woman who prays or prophesies with her head unveiled brings shame upon her head, for it is one and the same thing as if she had had her head shaved.”
Mark 12:18-27 states:
If a man dies childless, his widow is ordered by biblical law to have intercourse with each of his brothers in turn until she bears her deceased husband a male heir.
@questionsamson first of all christians arent the only ones, God gives everyone the freewill to choose. and anyone could choose God over the world and the things thereof. Second of all Again God gives us free will to choose him or not to choose him. Again God wants ppl to choose him, not to make ppl choose him