Journal: Journal of Discipleship and Family Ministry
Volume: JDFM 05:1 (Fall 2015)
Article: Editorial: Unchanging Responsibility In An Ever -Changing World
Author: Timothy Paul Jones

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Editorial: Unchanging Responsibility In An Ever -Changing World

Timothy Paul Jones

Timothy Paul Jones serves as the C. Edwin Gheens Professor of Christian Family Ministry (2007), Associate Vice President for the Global Campus, and Editor for The Journal of Discipleship and Family Ministry. Before coming to Southern, he led churches in Missouri and Oklahoma as pastor and associate pastor. Dr. Jones has received the Scholastic Recognition Award and has authored or contributed to more than a dozen books, including PROOF; Conspiracies and the Cross; Perspectives on Family Ministry; and, Christian History Made Easy. In 2010, Christian Retailing magazine selected Christian History Made Easy as the book of the year in the field of Christian education. He is married to Rayann and they have three daughters: Hannah, Skylar, and Kylinn. The Jones family serves in SojournKids children’s ministry at Sojourn Community Church.

In a very real sense, everything has now changed,” R. Albert Mohler pointed out in the aftermath of a ruling from the Supreme Court of the United States of America legalizing same-sex marriage.

The highest court of the land has redefined marriage. Those who cannot accept this redefinition of marriage as a matter of morality and ultimate truth, must acknowledge that the laws of this nation concerning marriage will indeed be defined against our will.… In one sense, everything has changed. And yet, nothing has changed. The cultural and legal landscape has changed.… But our Christian responsibility has not changed. We are charged to uphold marriage as the union of

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a man and a woman and to speak the truth in love. We are also commanded to uphold the truth about marriage in our own lives, in our own marriages, in our own families, and in our own churches.1

The purpose of this issue of Journal of Discipleship and Family Ministry is to equip you to pursue this unchanging responsibility in an ever-changing world.

In addition to a broad range of other articles, we are privileged in this issue to feature presentations, articles, and interviews from The Gospel, Homosexuality, and the Future of Marriage, a conference sponsored by the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention in October 2014. It is our hope and prayer that these resources will spur you not to despair at the changes in our culture but to proceed with confident hope in a powerful gospel and in an unchanging Christ.