These Are Our Bodies: Young Adult Leader Guide: Talking Faith & Sexuality at Church & Home

By Heidi J. A. Carter and Marcus G. Halley

Faith formation resource for young adults on human sexuality.

Our inherent value and worth comes from God’s love for us, but our modern world is filled with sexual expression that too often leads us away from the life of Christ. As Christians seeking to live a life worthy of our calling and desiring to pass along these values to our children and youth, these books (Leader Guide and Participant Book) offer session plans with activities for Young Adults (ages 18–30) to explore issues of sexuality in the context of our faith, building on the foundational book of the same name and as part of the These Are Our Bodies program resource.

Session topics include: • Holiness • Intimacy • Covenant • Love • Biology • Communication • What is Sacred? • Power and Parity • Mind, Body, and Soul • Brokenness and Shame • Our Bodies: Currency and Creators

• Language: English
• Publisher: Church Publishing
• Release date: Oct 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9780898690279

Heidi J. A. Carter

HEIDI J. A. CARTER currently serves as the Lay Minister Associate at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Kansas City, Missouri. Ms. Carter has served numerous task forces in the Episcopal Church regarding human sexuality. With more than 25 years of experience in Christian formation focused on youth and adults, she is a past president of Forma and once diocesan formation leader. She also serves as the Director of Consultant Services for LeaderResources.

Book preview

The only way I know how to teach anyone to love God, and how

I myself can love God, is to love what God loves, which is

everything and everyone, including you and including me!¹

—Richard Rohr

We love because [God] first loved us.

—1 John 4:19

If we love each other, God remains in us and

[God’s] love is made perfect in us.

—1 John 4:12 CEB

Welcome to These Are Our Bodies for Young Adults Leader Guide.

As parents, leaders, or clergy, you recognize the imperative to teach and lead young people in connecting their faith life and their sexuality. The Christian church has something to say to our children and young people, with a message of empowerment and acceptance. The Church is called to assist people to grow in their faith and lead the life to which they are called. Considering anew what God is calling us toward, fostering respect, wholeness, and love will lift up the body of Christ. Just as there are seasons to our faith (such as birth, baptism, and reaffirmation), there are seasons to our sexuality (birth, awareness, growth, change, and transformation). Sexuality: A Divine Gift explores the interplay of the physical experience of sex, love, and gift of sexuality:

The Episcopal Church is a sacramental church. Anglicans claim a union of physical experience and inward grace both in the sacraments of the church and in our daily lives.

The church increasingly understands that our sexuality is an important (though not the only) means by which we learn to be lovers. Our awareness of each other, our acceptance of our affection for each other as God’s creations, and our delight in the special gifts that each of us brings to a relationship because of our sexuality—all these are evidence of the blessings that God intends for us in our dealings with each other.²

With all this in mind, These Are Our Bodies offers practical information, developmentally appropriate material, and suggestions on how to ask and answer questions, all in the context of our faith as Christians, particularly as Episcopalians. These Are Our Bodies was created in response to the need of the Episcopal Church for program resources to help people of multiple ages explore sexuality in the context of a faith community.

The full program consists of a Foundation Book and a series of books for different ages. This Leader Guide and Participant Book for young adults (ages 18-30) joins already published materials including:

•Middle School module: Leader Guide, Participant Book, Parent Book

•High School module: Leader Guide, Participant Book, Parent Book

•Preschool & Elementary module: Leader Guide, Preschool Parent Book, Primary Parent Book, Primary Participant Book, Intermediate Parent Book, Intermediate Participant Book

•An adult module will be released in 2018.

These Are Our Bodies materials (age-based modules) are designed to teach concepts around our faith in ways that connect with children and parents. For this Young Adult module, our focus is on the individual young adult who is likely experiencing greater levels of independence from their family of origin and the empowerment and responsibility that this stage of life brings with it. The program hopes to provide opportunities to strengthen participants’ faith, making strong connections to sexuality. Within this Leader Guide you will find session plans to provide a means to have conversation with young adults in a setting that is conducive to their learning, questions, and conversation.

The These Are Our Bodies: Talking Faith & Sexuality at Church & Home Foundation Book is the companion text to the These Are Our Bodies program, including this Young Adult module. Some young adults may find the Foundation Book interesting for further reading as well. Grounded in the Episcopal faith tradition, the Foundation Book provides theological background and practical guidance about the complexities of sexuality in today’s world. It includes essays about the role of sexuality and practical guides to inform church educators, parents, leaders, or anyone who seeks to broaden their knowledge on this subject.

The Foundation Book is organized into four parts: The Theological, The Ethical, The Biological, and The Practical. Each of these sections explores the complexity of sexuality and is written both to be read on its own and as part of the unified book. An extensive annotated resource section and glossary round out the book to give readers the information they need for further exploration on topics of sexuality.

Part I: The Theological, includes chapters that explore the dynamics of sexuality and its connection to our faith. Richard Rohr reminds us, The Christian religion was the only one that believed God became a human body, and yet we have had such deficient and frankly negative attitudes toward embodiment.³ Humans are embodied people seeking to live lives that are worthy of our deep calling. How, then, do we understand the mystery of sexuality in the context of a biblical framework? Through the lens of the Baptismal Covenant, we will look at the creative nature of sexuality, the goodness of desire, and the concept of honoring the body. This section concludes with a discussion of the role of the church in the area of sexuality.

Part II: The Ethical, gives us a new vocabulary necessary to expand our view of sexuality. The binary concepts of sexuality as male or female, married or single, heterosexual or homosexual are expanding. Readers will come to understand sexuality in a new way, learning new language that seeks to honor and respect the dignity of all people. Our hope is to provide the catalyst for conversations that will challenge and expand thinking about the ethical demands that call us to love our neighbor as ourselves. In light of the evolving view of sexuality, we reflect on the role of responsible behavior and models of decision-making, including consent and shaming. We finish the section with chapters that focus on the changing culture of sexuality, seeking justice and understanding for all persons, and our call to examine stereotypes and bullying, and the inherent pain they cause.

The Biological, Part III, expands on the impact of early childhood, including the role of parenting in healthy development, and provides a review of developmental theories, moral development psychology, and faith development across the lifespan. The research and theories of leading psychologists underpin our understanding of the needs of children, including the healthy growth of their bodies and their moral development. We conclude this section with a discussion of faith development and its implications in understanding the complexity of human sexuality.

Part IV: The Practical, gives adults the tools needed to understand the stages of child development that inform our life and ministry with children and teens. This section also gives parents the background knowledge and information they need to be the primary sexuality educators for their children. The review of normative developmental aspects of sexuality (physical, emotional and social, spiritual and moral) will benefit anyone seeking understanding about their own or other’s journeys, and also fortify those working with, or raising, children and teens.

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1 Richard Rohr. Franciscan Mysticism: I AM That Which I Am Seeking (Albuquerque, NM: Center for Action and Contemplation: 2012), disc 2; https://cac.org/love-god-in-what-is-right-in-front-of-you-2016-01-17/, accessed January 23, 2016.

2 Education for Mission & Ministry Unit. Sexuality: A Divine Gift (New York: Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society, 1987), 4.

3 Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation How to Stay Open Friday, August 8, 2014 http://myemail.constantcontact.com/Richard-Rohr-s-Meditation--How-to-Stay-Open.html?soid=1103098668616&aid=jc5Q93T6Yu8

These Are Our Bodies is a Church Publishing initiative designed to encourage conversations among people of faith about human sexuality. Differently aged modules move through seasons of development and connection. Children will explore how sexuality informs their own identities. Younger teens will look at the larger conversation of sexuality in relationships. Older teens will focus on how their biology, and the spectrum of both expression and preference, move them through various groups and communities. For young adults, the lens of exploring human sexuality is about as broad as it can be. Adults become world citizens in ways that have higher levels of accountability. There are opportunities and consequences for deeply personal—and broadly global—engagement and activism.

Our primary goals are twofold. The first is to celebrate and understand the broad spectrum of human sexuality as God-given, and deeply blessed. Second, to build our understanding of the mosaic of humanity into conversations about how we are called to be healers in the world. As we begin to see one another and ourselves as God’s beloved, we are able to make better choices about blessings and power.

Celebrating, building, proclaiming, and sharing; such is the work we are called to do. To do so as whole persons means to not be compartmentalized, speak in half-truths, or shy away from socially, ethically, or morally muddy waters. We are called to walk boldly, with clarity and the courage to show forth the Gospel of unconditional love for all persons.

When we have a healthy understanding of our bodies, our relationships, and our place in the world, we have a stronger foundation from which to scatter the seeds of God’s love. We must first love God, love ourselves, and love one another.

Sexual Theology, Ethics, and Biology for Young Adults

Conversations with young adults regarding sexuality are quite distinct from those with children and teens. There is an assumption, and by some even an expectation, that by the time a person is college-aged or older, they will have had opportunities for sexual contact with others. They typically will be more aware of the prevalence of pornography, dating, hook-ups, online chats and dating services, parties, and other situations that bring their identity on the sexuality spectrum to the fore.

They will also be more aware of expanded conversations and experiences regarding sexual behavior and human sexuality, generally. Coed dorms, trans friendly bathrooms, sex trafficking, birth control, abstinence, date rape, even fashion and gender expression will have become more present in their daily lives than it was in high school.

The taboos for what might be considered too young are generally lifted by age 18, so some young adults who participate in this program could be married, divorced, or even widowed. Their experience will not only be significantly different from that of younger persons, but sometimes even from others in the circle.

The Foundation Book of this series lays a very thorough and broad base for these conversations, and this Leader Guide will commend many chapters and other resources