Brian Tome’s Pro-Homosexuality Compromise

Brian Tome is the pastor of America’s tied 4th largest church, Crossroads Church, Ohio. A couple weeks ago, Crossroads Church invited David Mahan, the policy director for the Center for Christian Virtue to speak at all three services at Crossroads Church. The Center for Christian Virtue is an Ohio base Christian public policy advocacy group. David Mahan was specifically invited to address the issue of transgendering children. Predictably, there was backlash, and unsurprisingly, Brian Tome of Crossroads Church backpedaled from the controversy. The CCV put out a statement on the controversy stating:

However, as with all conversations around sensitive topics such as the effects of puberty blockers being forced on families and children, there were some in attendance and online that were offended by David, and condemned Crossroads for giving his message a platform.

In the wake of the backlash, Crossroads released this statement, apologizing for causing harm to people. They also removed any mention of David, CCV, or his message from their website and social media.

In a prepared statement, Brian Tome comments on the his backpedaling. He begins by calling the transgendering of children a “complicated issue.” He then apologizes for having someone else deliver a message that he says that he should have given. Obviously, this denotes that his church does not address pressing issues.

Brian Tome articulates how Crossroads Church has a “radical middle” position on homosexuality. He states that while his church does not perform homosexual wedding ceremonies they perform baby dedications and baptisms for children with homosexual parents. Baby dedications are more about parents dedicating their child to the Lord which unregenerate homosexuals are incapable of doing. Moreover, if the baptism he is referring to is infant baptism, as his church faith statement does not specify, this is not how pedobaptism works. Most grifters will not come out of the closet and do homosexual weddings. Brian Houston of Hillsong is a testimony to that. But they will undermine ministry standards almost everywhere else.

Additionally, his church allows homosexuals to serve in children’s ministry, citing that their is no link between homosexuality and pedophilia. While the Boy Scouts of America and the Roman Catholic Church would disagree, Crossroads Church is evidently fine with having unregenerate people in children’s ministry with little regard to sexual sin. Lastly, giving credence to the Revoice Movement, Brian Tome states that non-sexually active homosexuals are eligible for ministry roles at Crossroads Church. This legitimizing the oxymoronic label “gay Christian.” But it’s clear that those who have not overcome the sin of homosexuality are not above reproach as required in 1 Timothy 3:1-7, a fact made especially clear with how the Bible addresses homosexuality (Leviticus 18:22).

Though Brian Tome states that sex within the confines of marriage is what the standard is, he never condemned homosexuality or transgenderism as sin. Instead he refers to it as a community. He invokes, partially, the line from Tim Keller that both JD Greear and Ed Litton use in their respective sermons on Romans that sexual sin doesn’t send people to hell. Tome does not state the logically infantile part about heterosexuality not sending people to Heaven. However, his statement about sin not sending people to hell is heretical. Coincidentally, his Crossroad Church’s faith statement reads:

Those who have not believed in Him will be separated from God in Hell due to their sin.

So in contradicting his own faith statement, Brian Tome makes it abundantly clear that his church will take an emasculated middles position on homosexuality. Towards the end, it becomes clear that Crossroads Church exits to entertain goats and will ignore the duty of a church to disciple believers and preach the full counsel of God.