Parents regularly stumble over it. Locker rooms echo with it. Media obsesses over it. Marketers leverage product sales with it. TV personalities lose jobs because of it. And pulpits often stand silent despite the Bible’s unhesitating information about it.

It’s time for pastors to speak up about sex. Remaining silent fosters a church culture that makes sexuality shameful rather than acknowledging its biblical beauty. In this sexually charged society, we owe parents and children an unembarrassed biblical foundation for stewarding sexuality.

I was 11 years old when my dad had “the talk” with me. Dad, usually affable, acted uptight the entire two hours we rode our horses. Finally, he asked “Son, do you have any questions?”

I didn’t even know what topic he had in mind! One memorably awkward chat encapsulated the depth of conversation my parents provided about righteous sexual expression.

The sermons I remember hearing about sexual activity focused on what to avoid or spoke in disparaging fashion of people involved in all forms of sexual sin — especially homosexuals. My wife and I vowed to rear our two sons and daughter in an atmosphere punctuated by normalized conversations about healthy, holy sexual expression.

Such conversations also deserve regular attention in local church discourse. Obviously, every generation since Adam and Eve has shown interest in, and participated in, sexual expression.

We should take the lead in this narrative or condemn succeeding generations to craft their own worldviews about sexual expression from misinformed peers, biblically illiterate entertainers, secular educators, and exploitive marketers of perversion.

Two translations of Genesis 4:1 — “Adam knew his wife” (KJV) and “Adam made love to his wife” (NIV) — reflect the distance between shrouded and comfortable conversation on human sexuality, a topic of universal interest. Both renderings reflect truth. Both carry inference, cultural understanding, mores and attitudes.

New Testament writers used vocabulary free of embarrassment or hesitance as they instructed readers about stewarding sexuality. (See 1 Corinthians 7:1-8 and Hebrews 13:4.) Clearly, the Holy Spirit acknowledges the propriety of a rarely interrupted sexual relationship in marriage.

In this sexually charged society, we owe parents and children an unembarrassed biblical foundation for stewarding sexuality.

Therefore, instead of decrying the perversion of sexuality in a culture bent on the redefinition of sexual freedom, we serve better as we articulate the beauty and value of sexual expression within the freeing restrictions of biblical marriage.

The pervasive mindset today defines sexual freedom as living without constraints. Author Tim Keller highlights the error in such thinking by talking about a fish dying on land as a result of not remaining within the right boundaries. God’s commands are life-giving, not stifling.

Our upbringing and comfort level with intimate information contribute to how we handle sex-related conversations with our children or grandchildren, and they affect the way we discuss sexuality with people who see us as teachers of the Word.

Theologian Russell Moore recently said, “If we are right about the biblical design for sexuality, then reinventions of that design are not ultimately sustainable.”

Therefore, the Church must provide loving and clear conversations about biblical sexuality. Eventually, some people dealing with self-inflected sexual wounds will come back to the unblushing Church to find a reliable approach that works in a broken world.

Dealing with moral failures involving sexual sin is one of the most difficult, heartbreaking responsibilities of a district/network superintendent. Ignorance of healthy sexual expression rarely explains such failures.

However, proper discussion of sexuality at the local church, while not guaranteeing a future without moral failures, should at least do the following:

• Help parents rear sexually healthy children
• Establish that sexual intimacy comes as God’s wedding gift to the bride and groom on their honeymoon
• Model a counterbalance to the surrounding culture

Our national ethos often portrays married couples as prudish, uptight, unsatisfied and needing sexual fulfillment outside the confines of heterosexual marriage. The Bible offers a different view. Therefore, married believers can display healthy attitudes and sanctified openness about enjoying one another sexually, as God intended.

Pastors and teachers can leverage the abundance of sound ministry resources that are just a Google search away. We may not convince a majority with our biblically sound instruction and conversation. Our calling orbits around winsomely and respectfully declaring the good news, not arguing with those who do not agree with us.

We may receive criticism from inside and outside the Church. Nevertheless, godly influencers should take the lead and help shape the social storyline by providing a consistent apologetic for the healthy stewardship of our sexuality.