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Yesterday someone in my church circulated an email about the movie "Brokeback Mountain." Without going into too much detail, the movie is about a secret love affair between two cowboys. Through the course of these emails, someone was offended. A gay man. I wanted to share my letter to the church, in light of this event:

I didn't know if you have read about this "gay cowboys" email that was circulating, but I received several messages about it yesterday. The one that worried me the most was the one from a man who wanted to be removed from an email list, because he basically felt the emails were gay bashing. I don't necessarily think they were, but I did feel that the message really came across as unloving. Obviously, you have to approach a topic like homosexuality with great caution and I am not saying we are to "gloss over" the truth. However, we all need to speak the truth with love, not suspiciously and with easily misunderstood tones. This man is unknown to me, but he was greatly offended and will probably have a tainted view of church, Christians and what we're trying to do - at least as far as Crossroads goes.

Email is such a wonderful tool, but I think this is a good reminder of how we need to be loving in all that we do - speech, type and actions. I don't mean to sound all goody-two-shoes, but emails like these concern me. Maybe we could all use a reminder that emails can be hurtful and that you never know who is going to read it and misunderstand your meaning. We cannot assume that everyone is on the same page with us and understands the core of what you're trying to say. This was really bad for our church culture. I just wanted to lovingly point it out as an area to exercise caution.

Just a little shocked, and sad that someone was turned-off (which could have an eternal effect on him),