Last Sabbath (February 1), Dwight Nelson preached a sermon at Pioneer Memorial, as part of his Love On The Move series.
In this sermon, Nelson shared a story about a Christian family who took a convicted but paroled sex offender into their home to minister to him. The point of the story was to illustrate one aspect of the biblical question “Who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29).
The sermon triggered an open letter of rebuke from Sarah McDugal, apparently a sexual abuse survivor advocate. According to her ‘Open Letter’ the anecdotal story that Nelson used could have a harmful impact on individuals who have experienced sexual abuse. The tagline of McDugal’s women leadership development website is “Unleash Your WILD Confident Spirit.”
Responding to the public complaint, Dwight Nelson issued a brief video apology. It appears that the sermon was pulled from the Pioneer Memorial website, edited to remove the sermon illustration, and then re-posted. It also appears that Nelson shared the story with the best of intentions.
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“The horse leech has two daughters. ‘Give! Give!' they cry. There are three things that are never satisfied, four that never say, ‘Enough!': the grave, the barren womb, land, which is never satisfied with water, and fire, which never says, ‘Enough!” (Proverbs 30:15-16).