June 24, 2026 • 17 mins
What happens when the church stays silent about pornography, sexual brokenness, shame, and identity struggles?
In this powerful Covenant Eyes Podcast episode recorded live at NRB 2026 in Nashville, Rob Stoddard sits down with Garry Ingraham, pastor and founder of Love and Truth Network, to discuss pornography addiction, same-sex attraction, healing from trauma, spiritual warfare, and how churches can become safe places for restoration.
Garry shares his deeply personal testimony of early exposure to pornography, years of struggle, leaving the faith, entering the LGBT lifestyle, and ultimately finding freedom and healing through Jesus Christ and authentic Christian community.
This conversation also tackles:
• Porn addiction in the church
• Why pastors feel unequipped
• Sexual brokenness among men and women
• Healing childhood wounds
• Shame, secrecy, and accountability
• Creating safe churches for recovery
• Protecting teens from pornography
• Covenant Eyes and accountability tools
• Biblical truth AND compassion
If you or someone you know is struggling with pornography, shame, unwanted sexual behavior, or identity confusion, this episode offers hope, healing, and practical encouragement.
🔔 Subscribe to Covenant Eyes for more conversations on freedom, faith, and digital integrity.
Learn more about Love and Truth Network:
https://loveandtruthnetwork.com
Learn more about Covenant Eyes:
https://cvnteyes.co/4gb6xme
#PornAddiction #ChristianTestimony #CovenantEyes #FreedomFromPorn #GarryIngraham #SexualHealing #ChristianPodcast #FaithAndFreedom #ChurchLeadership #accountability
Time-Stamped Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
00:33 Garry Ingraham’s Story Begins
01:24 Early Exposure to Pornography
01:43 Leaving the Church & Entering LGBT Lifestyle
02:43 Returning to Christ
04:02 Healing Through Christian Community
05:34 Why Love and Truth Network Was Started
07:17 Why Churches Avoid Sexuality Conversations
09:13 The Church’s Silence on Pornography
10:42 Creating Safe Churches for Healing
12:10 Inner Healing & Spiritual Warfare
15:05 Protecting Teens from Pornography
16:21 Where to Connect with Love and Truth Network
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Many churches are affirmingall kinds of things
that the Bible says are sin.
But there's this whole wideswath of churches
that do believe the truth.
They just don't knowwhat to do with it.
They don't know how tohandle sexuality,
they don't know how to.
And it's not just LGBT.
They don't know how tohandle men's or women's
struggleswith general sexuality.
And yet,because it's such a common
core issue amongstadults and teens...we have to
(00:22):
the one place on the planetthat is not saying
much about sexualityis the one place that actually
has the answers.
Great.
My guest today is Garry Ingram.
And Garry,you've got quite a ministry
going and loveto hear your background,
your story, how God led you tothis ministry.
(00:44):
You mind sharing thatwith our with our listeners.
It's kind ofa train wreck of a story
but redeemed by God.
So Christian homeand still dealt
with some early sexualizationat the age of 5 or 6.
Pornography.
Some older neighborhood boysintroduced me to their dads
hardcore porn.
That was very devastating.
There were a lot of otherrelational things
kind of going on as well,and I bounced around
(01:05):
from public schoolto Christian school
to public schoolto homeschooling,
and then later onto a local Bible college,
all the while wrestling throughas far back as I can remember,
because I was introducedso early to really
a pornography addictionand and just wrestled
tremendously with that, dealtwith some identity
issues as well.
And, and when I went toBible college, I eventually
(01:27):
I was there for a yearand a half and left
and just felt like, God,I am so fed up with all this.
There's no answersfor me in the church.
I don't feel likeyou're doing anything
for me to deal witheither the the porn issues
or of course I'm still engagingin them, but.
Or as well as all thiskind of same-sex attraction
that was developing too.
And I was justcompletely frustrated by it.
(01:49):
Walked awayfrom the faith entirely.
And I just found the LGBT world.
Found my first gay barat the age of 19.
It felt likethis is what I've been
looking for my whole life,and my life finally made sense.
I was always pushedout of the world of boys
and men as a as a kidand as a teenager,
and just hung out throughall of my developmental
years of childhood,hung out with the with my mom,
(02:10):
my sister, really,not with my older brothers
much, and solelynot with boys or men much,
either at school or at church.
And so I was kind of primefor some of the things
the enemy had in mind for me.
And but eventually, at probablyabout after four years or so,
that I just began to dwindleand just feel like my inside
(02:31):
was kind of decaying. My.
I remember Paulwriting in 1 Corinthians
6, verse 18,“Flee sexual immorality.
Every other sin that a mancommences outside the body,
but the one who sendssexually sins
against their own body.”And as I reflect on that,
I realized that this decayI was feeling
this kind of rot within.
I mean,I was in the prime of my life
20, 21, 22and I would stare at myself
(02:52):
in the mirror and just think,I just feel like
some an old used, used person.
And so anyway, the that ledto a crisis of faith
at the age of 23,coming to a genuine
faith and surrenderfor the first time
in my life to Christ.
And and so that really led intocoming into the kingdom in a way
that was beyond just aacknowledgment
(03:13):
of Christian things,but now new life within.
And that changed everything.
Then, througha series of events,
I wound up some major,major disappointments.
I wound up turningkind of embittered
toward God againin my later 20s,
and wound up back in the LGBTworld by my own choice,
but kind of stumbled backinto that again, immediately.
(03:34):
Addicted.
And and that went onfor a number of years,
back and forth.
One foot in the church,one foot in, in that space.
And again, pornography was abig part of all of that.
That was kind of glued meto a lot of the brokenness
I was dealing withand eventually came to the Lord,
brought me to a churchin upstate New York
that was really dealingwith very broken people
(03:55):
in a very open way,and wanting to walk with them,
kind of touching peoplethat most churches wouldn't
want to have anywhere near them.
And it was through that support,and those men in that church
that God really rescuedmy life in many ways.
Me in my 30s.
And I wound up on staffat that church for 12 years
after all of that,and then 12 years after that,
(04:17):
being on staff with them,we start
my wife and I started Love andTruth Network, the ministry
that we now lead.
Wow, that's kind of a long way.
It is condensed,but a long way of kind of
getting to the point ofhow did Love
and Truth Network come about?
Yeah, yeah. No, that's.
Thank you for sharingthat story.
It's I'm sure there'sso much more
to that around that. But.
And nowyou're ordained minister.
Is that correct?
(04:38):
I am I gained, yes, a pastor.
And I was on pastoral stafffor nearly 12 years
at the churchand in a pastoral role,
and then later licensedand then later
ordained as a pastor.
And I don't pastor a church now,but a lot of the work
I'm doing in terms ofpastoring churches
all around the countryand pastors and leaders
around issues of restoringrelational and sexual wholeness.
(04:58):
Of course,I don't need to tell you guys
as covenant eyes.
There's lots of pastorsthat are using pornography
on a regular basis,and so helping them get free,
helping them learnhow to walk with others
in a way that is openand vulnerable,
appropriately so, you know,appropriate spaces as a pastor.
But really anyone men,women, you you also know that
this is not just a men's issue.
It's a women's issue too.
(05:18):
Absolutely. Yeah.
I think 44% of womenstill are struggling
with pornography. Yes.
So tell usa little bit about Love
and Truth Network first,how did God to lead you or when
did you really figure outI'm going to do ministry
around this area?
What's kind of a funny story?
I was coming up on my 12th yearof being at the church,
and I felt like I couldn'tbelieve that I got to do
(05:41):
what I, what I did.
My final roleis as the Pastor of Soul Care
Ministries, overseeingthe very support groups,
the counseling programthat helped me.
Yeah, exactly.
And so what a gift that was.
I thought,I just want to do this.
I'll die doing this.
That's great.
But at one point, about 12 yearsin, I began to really feel
this discomfort.
Our church went throughsome really kind of
(06:01):
challenging transitions.
I was the last of sevensenior staff members
left at the church.
And so it wasit was a really hard time.
We brought somebody elsein as the lead pastor.
And I realized certainlyafter that,
for the first time ever,the thought came to me,
I wonder if God's kicking me outof my comfortable nest,
you know,which I wasn't very happy
about at the time.
But Melissa and I realized,yeah, we do believe
(06:23):
she's a licensedChristian counselor.
And we we see howwe love the church, and we know
that the church is God's planA, I mean,
there is no substitutefor the church at all.
And we want to bea part of strengthening
the church,not like running parallel
to the church.
And and so we really feltlike God called us to speak into
the lives of pastorsand leaders.
If we can equip more pastorsand leaders to do the work
(06:44):
that we're doing,we're going to help many,
many more individualsthan we can directly.
Yeah, yeah.
So we do that a lot.
I do a lot of weekendministry events
all around the countryin churches,
and we'll do live trainingon online as well
for leadership teamsand things of that nature.
I have a weekly podcastI've been doing for about two
and a half years, and interviewstyle podcasts as well.
(07:05):
That runs about 60 minutesor so, interviewing
all kinds of people and pastorswith past pornography issues
and things like that,all kinds of things.
And we have some books outand putting more content out
all the time.
Excellent, excellent. Yeah.
If I can talk about the churcha little bit more,
because certainlya Covenant Eyes, one of the
big emphasis we have right nowis trying to come alongside
(07:28):
the church, specifically to thisarea of pornography.
We've seen so many churchesjust are afraid
of dealing with this issue,let alone all of the the,
the issues.
People strugglewith, the trauma, the heart.
But we're all broken.
Everyone coming into churchhas all of these habits
and hangups in past traumaand abuse in their life.
(07:51):
Maybe.
And if our churchesaren't dealing with them, then,
as you found, where do I go?
Where do I where do I healfrom these things?
And so so I'm really encouragedthat you're building back
into the church, into pastors,really dealing
with so many of these issues.
Are you finding much reluctancefrom churches around this or.
(08:14):
It depends.
I mean, I find thatthere's the churches kind of
in three large bucketsfrom what I and of course
there's variation. Sure.
What I findis that many churches
are similarto ones that I grew up in,
which were full of peoplethat did love Jesus
but didn't know how to showmuch love or compassion.
They were heavy on truthand very light
on any kind of love,and they would use the phrase
love the sinner, hate the sin.
(08:35):
But the truth is,you kind of hate. Them.
Connected to right?
Because you wouldn'twant to spend one
second with them.
So stop sayingthat you love them.
The truth is,we should be repenting
of our lack of love in our own.
Our own hidden is so.
We believe that most Christiansare posturing and putting
just their best foot forward.
And that's a nice way of sayingwe're deceiving one another.
(08:55):
And so there's churchesthat are in
that kind of original bucketof a lot of truth thumping,
and I'm grateful for the truth.
But we need some loveand compassion now.
The pendulum swung so farin the other direction.
Many churches are affirmingall kinds of things
that Bible says are sin.
But there's this whole wideswath of churches
that do believe the truth.
They just don't knowwhat to do with it.
They don't know howto handle sexuality.
(09:15):
They don't know how to.
It's not just LGBT,they don't know how to get men's
or women's struggleswith general sexuality.
And yet,because it's such a common
core issue amongstadults and teens, we have to
the one place on the planetthat is not saying
much about sexualityis the one place
that actually isn't right.
So it's it'sfrustrating in that sense.
But I believe onceI see churches,
(09:37):
what I preach and teachon Sundays, I mean, the lights
just go on, you know,I see people that in tears,
I mean, people that are hearingfor the first time
something that they connectwith,
that they've been strugglingwith for decades, coming
to the same churchand loving the church
and loving the people,but not knowing
how to get the helpand support that they need,
you know? Yeah, absolutely.
And again, we're certainly notdown on the church.
(09:58):
I know you are either.
You said it earlier,the church is God's plan A, and.
When you said earlieralso you mentioned
about not being really equipped.
And I think it's a Barna studyand you guys have been
better than I, but a Barna studythat says that 93% of pastors
say that pornographyis a much bigger issue
than it's everbeen historically,
and only 7% of those 93have anything in their church
(10:21):
to support anybodygoing through those issues.
That's a massive disparity.
It is. It is. Yeah.
And so it really does come downto just helping or equipping
the churches and helping pastorsbecause like I said,
many just reallythey have a heart for it.
They just don't know what to do.
And they really haven'tbuilt any
ministry or help aroundthat issue.
(10:42):
So many people feel likethis is kind of an icky,
awkward issue to deal with.
The truth is when whenpeople are helped in this area
and they and it becomesa normalized conversation,
we're not normalizing.
Sin means sin is.
It's a part of us.
But we don't want tonormalize behavior
as if it's not a big deal.
But we do want tonormalize the conversation.
And when I see churchesget ahold of this, like the
(11:03):
the entire DNAof the church shifts
in a really positive way,and they become a place
where they areknown in the community
as a go to place.
Like that church.
I moved from Chicagoback to upstate New York
because I heard about thischurch.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely.
We've run intowe know a lot of them,
and that's so true.
I mean, you when you startraising the awareness
(11:24):
of these issuesand talking about them, it frees
everyone to come forward,step out of that shame
and out of that darknessto begin to to get help.
And they know it's safe.
That's the big thing.
You know, it's safe tocome forward,
not going to be condemned.
Terrified of being rejected,and they're terrified
of being gossiped about.
And the church has donea lousy job historically
(11:45):
on both of those fronts.
And there's so much morewe can do to
improve in those areasand create a sense of safety.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Well, good.
Well, I know Melissa, your wifestarted this, and she is a
trained counselor.
Yeah,she's a licensed counselor.
Counselor? Yeah.
So whatother pieces of your ministry
have you not talked about yet?
(12:06):
Or maybe some thingsthat you're planning to do next?
What's what's happening in.
Melissa and I were part...Wefirst met at a Living Waters
training and LivingWaters is a program
that's put out by DesertStreet Ministries, and we were
regional coordinators for them,probably for close to 20 years.
Love that ministry.
But we'verewritten a our own inner
healing programthat we just came up with
about 8 or 9 months ago.
(12:27):
I just completed ourour first pilot, and we ran it
as a men's group,and we want to have it
as a women's and men's group.
But we ran that first pilotthat way.
It's a 13 week innerhealing program.
And so I would say thatthat's another piece
is we're oftentimes looking forgreat theology and discipleship,
and we should look for that.
That's foundational for sure.
But one of the thingsthat helped me tremendously was,
(12:48):
honestly, when I came tothat church in upstate New York
and I metwith some of their counselors
I needed.
They weren'tlicensed counselors,
but they had a really goodbiblical basis
for what they were doing,and I had some
critters to deal with.
I had some demonic strongholdsin my life through my behavior
that I had allowed in.
And so the spiritual warfarewas a big piece.
And it was later, afterI got on staff, that I realized
(13:09):
when I went to this conference,this Living Waters conference,
is that the thirdleg of the stool
we were really missing?
Good to ship theology,spiritual warfare.
But the other leg washealing of wounds.
And I had no idea, as a pastorgoing to this conference,
not sure what it wasI needed there, but knowing
I needed something,I had no idea the infection
and the woundednessthat was still just
(13:30):
sitting within methat the Lord wanted
to bring freedom to.
So that would beanother huge area
that I think the churchdoesn't address
effectively enough.
But it it has huge winwhen we can sit together
with some some other brotherswalking through
their own things,some sisters for women
walking through their own issuesand being prayed for
and and dealing withsome of these issues
(13:50):
that are long standing,going all the way back again
when I was five, six years old.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's that's fascinating.
That's amazing.
Do you find twothat many people don't
even realize that those,those old wounds are doing
causing the nativesthat they are?
I was clueless.
I just thoughtmost of us believe, you know,
like Paul says, forgetting whatlies behind and pressing on to
what lies before.
(14:11):
But Paul was not talkingabout woundedness or brokenness.
He was talking aboutall of his accomplishments.
Right?
And so he so quicklymisapplied that.
And we don't.
And none of us want to go backand deal with the pain.
We've beenwe've been pushing it down
for years. Right.
So, yeah, I think it's mostChristians do not even know
that that's an avenuethat the Lord could
bring greater healing.
And my parents didn't realizethat my mom and dad passed away,
(14:33):
my dad at 88, my mom at 92,and our relationship
was deeply restored.
They lived with me for 10or 12 years
before they passed away,and my wife and I got married
while they were still aliveand living with me.
She moved in with usand and it was
it was an incredible time,though, of a lot of healing
that happened.
But even in their older years,they began to realize, my mom
especially, that there wassome deeper healing
she could do in prayingthrough some of these things
(14:56):
that had happened,or even as a little girl, and I
saw the effects of that.
It was really powerful.
Yeah. That's excellent.
Well, I'mglad you guys are really
pouring into that area for sure.
By the way,I want to say something.
I have two teenage boys,so my boys are 14 and 16,
and I'm just every day.
I'm so gratefulwe've had covenant eyes.
This is good.
You haven't paid me to say this,but we use Covenant
(15:16):
Eyes on all their devicesbecause every every evening
I get a report, you know,and I'm able
there's a couple of timesthat it'll it's always green.
Once in a blue moon,there will be like a yellow.
And I'll look upwhat they're looking at
and I'll sit and talkwith them about it a little bit.
It's never it reallybecause of that.
And they know my story.
They know howpornography wrecked my life
and they're aware of that.
And, and and they knowto stay away from that.
(15:38):
But they are also curious boysand they have testosterone
pumping through them.
And and one of the thingsthat Covenant Eyes has helped me
do is allowed my 14 to 16 yearold to have not even
seen pornography at this point,which in our day and age,
that's pretty shockingto get to that, to that age
without having seenall that garbage.
Oh, good.
Well, we're gladthat we can come alongside.
(15:59):
It's so important.
I've got grandkids that age nowand we've got it on
their devicesand yeah, it's it's it's a tough
struggle nowadays.
It is. It is.
But it's possibleto get through it
without a completetrain wreck. Yep. Absolutely.
Well good.
Well, Garry, tellif you would, our listeners,
where do they connect withyou in, in your,
(16:19):
your ministry and resources?
Yeah.
Anybody can get on our websiteat LoveAndTruthNetwork.com .
We do a weekly podcast.
So that's LoveAndTruthNetwork.com/podcaston all the major platforms
like Spotify and YouTube,both in audio and video.
And but the best wayof getting a hold of
us is through the website.
We'd be happyto have conversations
with pastors, leaders, othersthat are looking for help
or support as well.
(16:40):
Excellent.
Well, we will put all of thatin the show notes.
So you have that.
But Garry, thank youso much for your ministry
and thank you forjoining us today.
It was a great conversation.
I wish we had. Time for more.
Yeah, definitely.
Thank you I appreciate you.
Well, great.
And to our listeners again,thanks for watching.
I hope.
I hope this was encouragingand helpful.
Do check out the resources.
(17:01):
Like and share this.
But again we'll see you inthe next episode.
Thanks again.
God bless my life.
Many churches are affirmingall kinds of things
that the Bible says are sin.
But there's this whole wideswath of churches
that do believe the truth.
They just don't knowwhat to do with it.
They don't know how tohandle sexuality,
they don't know how to.
And it's not just LGBT.
They don't know how tohandle men's or women's
struggleswith general sexuality.
And yet,because it's such a common
core issue amongstadults and teens...we have to
(00:22):
the one place on the planetthat is not saying
much about sexualityis the one place that actually
has the answers.
Great.
My guest today is Garry Ingram.
And Garry,you've got quite a ministry
going and loveto hear your background,
your story, how God led you tothis ministry.
(00:44):
You mind sharing thatwith our with our listeners.
It's kind ofa train wreck of a story
but redeemed by God.
So Christian homeand still dealt
with some early sexualizationat the age of 5 or 6.
Pornography.
Some older neighborhood boysintroduced me to their dads
hardcore porn.
That was very devastating.
There were a lot of otherrelational things
kind of going on as well,and I bounced around
(01:05):
from public schoolto Christian school
to public schoolto homeschooling,
and then later onto a local Bible college,
all the while wrestling throughas far back as I can remember,
because I was introducedso early to really
a pornography addictionand and just wrestled
tremendously with that, dealtwith some identity
issues as well.
And, and when I went toBible college, I eventually
(01:27):
I was there for a yearand a half and left
and just felt like, God,I am so fed up with all this.
There's no answersfor me in the church.
I don't feel likeyou're doing anything
for me to deal witheither the the porn issues
or of course I'm still engagingin them, but.
Or as well as all thiskind of same-sex attraction
that was developing too.
And I was justcompletely frustrated by it.
(01:49):
Walked awayfrom the faith entirely.
And I just found the LGBT world.
Found my first gay barat the age of 19.
It felt likethis is what I've been
looking for my whole life,and my life finally made sense.
I was always pushedout of the world of boys
and men as a as a kidand as a teenager,
and just hung out throughall of my developmental
years of childhood,hung out with the with my mom,
(02:10):
my sister, really,not with my older brothers
much, and solelynot with boys or men much,
either at school or at church.
And so I was kind of primefor some of the things
the enemy had in mind for me.
And but eventually, at probablyabout after four years or so,
that I just began to dwindleand just feel like my inside
(02:31):
was kind of decaying. My.
I remember Paulwriting in 1 Corinthians
6, verse 18,“Flee sexual immorality.
Every other sin that a mancommences outside the body,
but the one who sendssexually sins
against their own body.”And as I reflect on that,
I realized that this decayI was feeling
this kind of rot within.
I mean,I was in the prime of my life
20, 21, 22and I would stare at myself
(02:52):
in the mirror and just think,I just feel like
some an old used, used person.
And so anyway, the that ledto a crisis of faith
at the age of 23,coming to a genuine
faith and surrenderfor the first time
in my life to Christ.
And and so that really led intocoming into the kingdom in a way
that was beyond just aacknowledgment
(03:13):
of Christian things,but now new life within.
And that changed everything.
Then, througha series of events,
I wound up some major,major disappointments.
I wound up turningkind of embittered
toward God againin my later 20s,
and wound up back in the LGBTworld by my own choice,
but kind of stumbled backinto that again, immediately.
(03:34):
Addicted.
And and that went onfor a number of years,
back and forth.
One foot in the church,one foot in, in that space.
And again, pornography was abig part of all of that.
That was kind of glued meto a lot of the brokenness
I was dealing withand eventually came to the Lord,
brought me to a churchin upstate New York
that was really dealingwith very broken people
(03:55):
in a very open way,and wanting to walk with them,
kind of touching peoplethat most churches wouldn't
want to have anywhere near them.
And it was through that support,and those men in that church
that God really rescuedmy life in many ways.
Me in my 30s.
And I wound up on staffat that church for 12 years
after all of that,and then 12 years after that,
(04:17):
being on staff with them,we start
my wife and I started Love andTruth Network, the ministry
that we now lead.
Wow, that's kind of a long way.
It is condensed,but a long way of kind of
getting to the point ofhow did Love
and Truth Network come about?
Yeah, yeah. No, that's.
Thank you for sharingthat story.
It's I'm sure there'sso much more
to that around that. But.
And nowyou're ordained minister.
Is that correct?
(04:38):
I am I gained, yes, a pastor.
And I was on pastoral stafffor nearly 12 years
at the churchand in a pastoral role,
and then later licensedand then later
ordained as a pastor.
And I don't pastor a church now,but a lot of the work
I'm doing in terms ofpastoring churches
all around the countryand pastors and leaders
around issues of restoringrelational and sexual wholeness.
(04:58):
Of course,I don't need to tell you guys
as covenant eyes.
There's lots of pastorsthat are using pornography
on a regular basis,and so helping them get free,
helping them learnhow to walk with others
in a way that is openand vulnerable,
appropriately so, you know,appropriate spaces as a pastor.
But really anyone men,women, you you also know that
this is not just a men's issue.
It's a women's issue too.
(05:18):
Absolutely. Yeah.
I think 44% of womenstill are struggling
with pornography. Yes.
So tell usa little bit about Love
and Truth Network first,how did God to lead you or when
did you really figure outI'm going to do ministry
around this area?
What's kind of a funny story?
I was coming up on my 12th yearof being at the church,
and I felt like I couldn'tbelieve that I got to do
(05:41):
what I, what I did.
My final roleis as the Pastor of Soul Care
Ministries, overseeingthe very support groups,
the counseling programthat helped me.
Yeah, exactly.
And so what a gift that was.
I thought,I just want to do this.
I'll die doing this.
That's great.
But at one point, about 12 yearsin, I began to really feel
this discomfort.
Our church went throughsome really kind of
(06:01):
challenging transitions.
I was the last of sevensenior staff members
left at the church.
And so it wasit was a really hard time.
We brought somebody elsein as the lead pastor.
And I realized certainlyafter that,
for the first time ever,the thought came to me,
I wonder if God's kicking me outof my comfortable nest,
you know,which I wasn't very happy
about at the time.
But Melissa and I realized,yeah, we do believe
(06:23):
she's a licensedChristian counselor.
And we we see howwe love the church, and we know
that the church is God's planA, I mean,
there is no substitutefor the church at all.
And we want to bea part of strengthening
the church,not like running parallel
to the church.
And and so we really feltlike God called us to speak into
the lives of pastorsand leaders.
If we can equip more pastorsand leaders to do the work
(06:44):
that we're doing,we're going to help many,
many more individualsthan we can directly.
Yeah, yeah.
So we do that a lot.
I do a lot of weekendministry events
all around the countryin churches,
and we'll do live trainingon online as well
for leadership teamsand things of that nature.
I have a weekly podcastI've been doing for about two
and a half years, and interviewstyle podcasts as well.
(07:05):
That runs about 60 minutesor so, interviewing
all kinds of people and pastorswith past pornography issues
and things like that,all kinds of things.
And we have some books outand putting more content out
all the time.
Excellent, excellent. Yeah.
If I can talk about the churcha little bit more,
because certainlya Covenant Eyes, one of the
big emphasis we have right nowis trying to come alongside
(07:28):
the church, specifically to thisarea of pornography.
We've seen so many churchesjust are afraid
of dealing with this issue,let alone all of the the,
the issues.
People strugglewith, the trauma, the heart.
But we're all broken.
Everyone coming into churchhas all of these habits
and hangups in past traumaand abuse in their life.
(07:51):
Maybe.
And if our churchesaren't dealing with them, then,
as you found, where do I go?
Where do I where do I healfrom these things?
And so so I'm really encouragedthat you're building back
into the church, into pastors,really dealing
with so many of these issues.
Are you finding much reluctancefrom churches around this or.
(08:14):
It depends.
I mean, I find thatthere's the churches kind of
in three large bucketsfrom what I and of course
there's variation. Sure.
What I findis that many churches
are similarto ones that I grew up in,
which were full of peoplethat did love Jesus
but didn't know how to showmuch love or compassion.
They were heavy on truthand very light
on any kind of love,and they would use the phrase
love the sinner, hate the sin.
(08:35):
But the truth is,you kind of hate. Them.
Connected to right?
Because you wouldn'twant to spend one
second with them.
So stop sayingthat you love them.
The truth is,we should be repenting
of our lack of love in our own.
Our own hidden is so.
We believe that most Christiansare posturing and putting
just their best foot forward.
And that's a nice way of sayingwe're deceiving one another.
(08:55):
And so there's churchesthat are in
that kind of original bucketof a lot of truth thumping,
and I'm grateful for the truth.
But we need some loveand compassion now.
The pendulum swung so farin the other direction.
Many churches are affirmingall kinds of things
that Bible says are sin.
But there's this whole wideswath of churches
that do believe the truth.
They just don't knowwhat to do with it.
They don't know howto handle sexuality.
(09:15):
They don't know how to.
It's not just LGBT,they don't know how to get men's
or women's struggleswith general sexuality.
And yet,because it's such a common
core issue amongstadults and teens, we have to
the one place on the planetthat is not saying
much about sexualityis the one place
that actually isn't right.
So it's it'sfrustrating in that sense.
But I believe onceI see churches,
(09:37):
what I preach and teachon Sundays, I mean, the lights
just go on, you know,I see people that in tears,
I mean, people that are hearingfor the first time
something that they connectwith,
that they've been strugglingwith for decades, coming
to the same churchand loving the church
and loving the people,but not knowing
how to get the helpand support that they need,
you know? Yeah, absolutely.
And again, we're certainly notdown on the church.
(09:58):
I know you are either.
You said it earlier,the church is God's plan A, and.
When you said earlieralso you mentioned
about not being really equipped.
And I think it's a Barna studyand you guys have been
better than I, but a Barna studythat says that 93% of pastors
say that pornographyis a much bigger issue
than it's everbeen historically,
and only 7% of those 93have anything in their church
(10:21):
to support anybodygoing through those issues.
That's a massive disparity.
It is. It is. Yeah.
And so it really does come downto just helping or equipping
the churches and helping pastorsbecause like I said,
many just reallythey have a heart for it.
They just don't know what to do.
And they really haven'tbuilt any
ministry or help aroundthat issue.
(10:42):
So many people feel likethis is kind of an icky,
awkward issue to deal with.
The truth is when whenpeople are helped in this area
and they and it becomesa normalized conversation,
we're not normalizing.
Sin means sin is.
It's a part of us.
But we don't want tonormalize behavior
as if it's not a big deal.
But we do want tonormalize the conversation.
And when I see churchesget ahold of this, like the
(11:03):
the entire DNAof the church shifts
in a really positive way,and they become a place
where they areknown in the community
as a go to place.
Like that church.
I moved from Chicagoback to upstate New York
because I heard about thischurch.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely.
We've run intowe know a lot of them,
and that's so true.
I mean, you when you startraising the awareness
(11:24):
of these issuesand talking about them, it frees
everyone to come forward,step out of that shame
and out of that darknessto begin to to get help.
And they know it's safe.
That's the big thing.
You know, it's safe tocome forward,
not going to be condemned.
Terrified of being rejected,and they're terrified
of being gossiped about.
And the church has donea lousy job historically
(11:45):
on both of those fronts.
And there's so much morewe can do to
improve in those areasand create a sense of safety.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Well, good.
Well, I know Melissa, your wifestarted this, and she is a
trained counselor.
Yeah,she's a licensed counselor.
Counselor? Yeah.
So whatother pieces of your ministry
have you not talked about yet?
(12:06):
Or maybe some thingsthat you're planning to do next?
What's what's happening in.
Melissa and I were part...Wefirst met at a Living Waters
training and LivingWaters is a program
that's put out by DesertStreet Ministries, and we were
regional coordinators for them,probably for close to 20 years.
Love that ministry.
But we'verewritten a our own inner
healing programthat we just came up with
about 8 or 9 months ago.
(12:27):
I just completed ourour first pilot, and we ran it
as a men's group,and we want to have it
as a women's and men's group.
But we ran that first pilotthat way.
It's a 13 week innerhealing program.
And so I would say thatthat's another piece
is we're oftentimes looking forgreat theology and discipleship,
and we should look for that.
That's foundational for sure.
But one of the thingsthat helped me tremendously was,
(12:48):
honestly, when I came tothat church in upstate New York
and I metwith some of their counselors
I needed.
They weren'tlicensed counselors,
but they had a really goodbiblical basis
for what they were doing,and I had some
critters to deal with.
I had some demonic strongholdsin my life through my behavior
that I had allowed in.
And so the spiritual warfarewas a big piece.
And it was later, afterI got on staff, that I realized
(13:09):
when I went to this conference,this Living Waters conference,
is that the thirdleg of the stool
we were really missing?
Good to ship theology,spiritual warfare.
But the other leg washealing of wounds.
And I had no idea, as a pastorgoing to this conference,
not sure what it wasI needed there, but knowing
I needed something,I had no idea the infection
and the woundednessthat was still just
(13:30):
sitting within methat the Lord wanted
to bring freedom to.
So that would beanother huge area
that I think the churchdoesn't address
effectively enough.
But it it has huge winwhen we can sit together
with some some other brotherswalking through
their own things,some sisters for women
walking through their own issuesand being prayed for
and and dealing withsome of these issues
(13:50):
that are long standing,going all the way back again
when I was five, six years old.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's that's fascinating.
That's amazing.
Do you find twothat many people don't
even realize that those,those old wounds are doing
causing the nativesthat they are?
I was clueless.
I just thoughtmost of us believe, you know,
like Paul says, forgetting whatlies behind and pressing on to
what lies before.
(14:11):
But Paul was not talkingabout woundedness or brokenness.
He was talking aboutall of his accomplishments.
Right?
And so he so quicklymisapplied that.
And we don't.
And none of us want to go backand deal with the pain.
We've beenwe've been pushing it down
for years. Right.
So, yeah, I think it's mostChristians do not even know
that that's an avenuethat the Lord could
bring greater healing.
And my parents didn't realizethat my mom and dad passed away,
(14:33):
my dad at 88, my mom at 92,and our relationship
was deeply restored.
They lived with me for 10or 12 years
before they passed away,and my wife and I got married
while they were still aliveand living with me.
She moved in with usand and it was
it was an incredible time,though, of a lot of healing
that happened.
But even in their older years,they began to realize, my mom
especially, that there wassome deeper healing
she could do in prayingthrough some of these things
(14:56):
that had happened,or even as a little girl, and I
saw the effects of that.
It was really powerful.
Yeah. That's excellent.
Well, I'mglad you guys are really
pouring into that area for sure.
By the way,I want to say something.
I have two teenage boys,so my boys are 14 and 16,
and I'm just every day.
I'm so gratefulwe've had covenant eyes.
This is good.
You haven't paid me to say this,but we use Covenant
(15:16):
Eyes on all their devicesbecause every every evening
I get a report, you know,and I'm able
there's a couple of timesthat it'll it's always green.
Once in a blue moon,there will be like a yellow.
And I'll look upwhat they're looking at
and I'll sit and talkwith them about it a little bit.
It's never it reallybecause of that.
And they know my story.
They know howpornography wrecked my life
and they're aware of that.
And, and and they knowto stay away from that.
(15:38):
But they are also curious boysand they have testosterone
pumping through them.
And and one of the thingsthat Covenant Eyes has helped me
do is allowed my 14 to 16 yearold to have not even
seen pornography at this point,which in our day and age,
that's pretty shockingto get to that, to that age
without having seenall that garbage.
Oh, good.
Well, we're gladthat we can come alongside.
(15:59):
It's so important.
I've got grandkids that age nowand we've got it on
their devicesand yeah, it's it's it's a tough
struggle nowadays.
It is. It is.
But it's possibleto get through it
without a completetrain wreck. Yep. Absolutely.
Well good.
Well, Garry, tellif you would, our listeners,
where do they connect withyou in, in your,
(16:19):
your ministry and resources?
Yeah.
Anybody can get on our websiteat LoveAndTruthNetwork.com .
We do a weekly podcast.
So that's LoveAndTruthNetwork.com/podcaston all the major platforms
like Spotify and YouTube,both in audio and video.
And but the best wayof getting a hold of
us is through the website.
We'd be happyto have conversations
with pastors, leaders, othersthat are looking for help
or support as well.
(16:40):
Excellent.
Well, we will put all of thatin the show notes.
So you have that.
But Garry, thank youso much for your ministry
and thank you forjoining us today.
It was a great conversation.
I wish we had. Time for more.
Yeah, definitely.
Thank you I appreciate you.
Well, great.
And to our listeners again,thanks for watching.
I hope.
I hope this was encouragingand helpful.
Do check out the resources.
(17:01):
Like and share this.
But again we'll see you inthe next episode.
Thanks again.
God bless my life.
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