Months after a handful of ministers visited their libraries with Pastor Story Hour events meant to oppose the Drag Queen Story Hour trend, similar initiatives are appearing across the country.
The promotion of the LGBTQ movement among young children through vulgar drag performances and events in government schools has recently garnered national headlines. Dale Partridge, the pastor of Reformation Fellowship in Arizona, and Michael Foster, the pastor of East River Church in Ohio, invited members of their communities to discover biblical teachings about gender last year, while Christian actor and conservative activist Kirk Cameron launched a tour of libraries across the country.
During interviews with The Daily Wire, Partridge and Foster emphasized the necessity for Christians to accompany mere complaints — about LGBTQ activism meant to influence children — with moves to advance the gospel and a biblical view of sexuality. The Daily Wire has learned of several Pastor Story Hour events scheduled across the nation over the next several weeks.
Owen Strachan, provost of Grace Bible Theological Seminary in Conway, Arkansas, will read a picture book and deliver a biblical message at the Conway Public Library on January 14. The event has already garnered attention from social justice activists, who plan to host a rival story hour at the same time as Strachan’s event.
“Our culture now privileges drag queens over biblical kings. Tragically, children have been placed in the middle of this confusion,” Strachan said in remarks provided to The Daily Wire. “As Christians, we love children. Following Christ’s own example, we love boys and girls by welcoming them, protecting them, preaching the gospel to them, and teaching them all God’s truth. This includes biblical truth about men, women, and God’s design for sexuality.”
Kendall Lankford, teaching pastor of The Shepherd’s Church in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, will host a Pastor Story Hour event on January 13 at Chelmsford Public Library. He expects between 50 and 75 children to attend the program; among other reasons for hosting the event, Lankford cited commandments to “equip, train, and raise up the next generation of children in the fear and admonition of the Lord,” as well as “take that commitment for home discipleship and expand it to the nations.”
“Christ has a vision for the entire world and not just for our homes, which means that the scope of the gospel, the goal for which the Church is laboring, will not be accomplished until all the children of the world come under God’s blessing and have been taught a biblical worldview,” Lankford told The Daily Wire. “With that, the drag queens in particular, and the LGBTQ movement in general, are the ones who are truly on the wrong side of history. And I will admit, the church has much work to accomplish until that work is finished, but sloth, apathy, and hiding our heads in the proverbial sand will certainly not get us there.”
Lankford commented that American Christians have a deficient view of family discipleship despite the fact that there exists “a Bible to decorate every dusty shelf.”
“Over the last several generations the church has been asleep, uncritically and complicitly participating at every level of the whims and fancies of this decaying culture, and in some ways, we need to face the fact that much of the moral slide we see around us is on us,” he said.”We may not have perpetrated it, but by sending our children into increasingly secular schools, allowing them unfettered access to internet and social media where they are being discipled by pedophiles, perverts, and activists, and by remaining quiet and not sharing God’s truth, we have abandoned the world and countless children to their own destruction.”
Tedd Sutton, pastor of Christ Covenant Reformed Church in Billings, Montana, is hosting a Pastor Story Hour event on January 21. He remarked that proponents of the LGBTQ movement target children and the nuclear family because they are “the very bedrock of civilization” and pointed to the need for men to serve as protectors.
“I believe this project is necessary because as a pastor, it is part of my call to bring the gospel to the community. It is a simple way to teach the beauty of biblical sexual ethics and the hope of the good news of Christ to a sinful world in which we live,” he told The Daily Wire. “Pastors must lead the way in this fight. They must ‘take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.’ May Christ give pastors courage and strength to stand firm in this fight, and may he grant true reformation and revival in our land.”