Integrity Ministries is continuing to serve Harding students struggling with unwanted same-sex attraction by providing a safe place for them to meet together and study the Bible, with its number growing over the past four years since it was started.
Robert Channing, a licensed professional counselor in Searcy and Harding graduate, founded Integrity Ministries with Cindee Stockstill, Harding’s producer of theatre, to help students dealing with unwanted same-sex attraction.
“The group began because of a passion and an awareness of a group of students who come to Harding year after year with questions and concerns about their sexuality,” Channing said. “When I was a student, I had a lot of guilt and shame associated with struggling with unwanted same-sex attraction and the thought of sharing was inconceivable. So our group began out of the passion to create a safe place for people with similar struggles, a safe place to come to do something about isolation and to connect strugglers with a living, breathing relationship with Jesus.”
Having worked on Harding’s campus for more than 20 years, Stockstill said she had been approached on several occasions by students who expressed confusion over unwanted feelings of same-sex attraction and who felt isolation from their peers. Stockstill said she wanted to help develop a group for such students to have a place to belong. So with the blessing of the Harding administration, Channing and Stockstill started a Bible study in Fall 2007. The purpose of the group was to give students who struggle with unwanted same-sex attraction the information, resources and accountability to resist unwanted behaviors.
Stockstill said the group started out with three to five students attending, but now has grown to 15 to 16 students.
“The students benefit from being in an environment where they are loved and accepted in spite of their struggles,” Channing said. “The students also walk away from the group with less anxiety as they grow to understand that their struggle does not define them.”
Channing said that while the group does view homosexuality as a sin, the purpose of the group is not to “fix” students or make them “straight.”
“I would like to dispel the myth that our group is about ‘getting fixed,’ meaning we would switch someone’s sexual orientation from same-sex to opposite-sex attracted,” Channing said. “I do not have the power to do that. What we do present as a better option is to help people strive for holiness and wholeness versus trade one sexual fixation for another.”
One student, who has attended the group since it began said the group is so much more than men and women who have unwanted same-sex attractions.
“We are friends, we are family, and most importantly we are children of God,” the student said. “We have found this place where we can take off our masks. Each week our mask is a little more chipped and ourselves are a little more whole.”
As the group leaders, both Channing and Stockstill said they greatly appreciated the administration’s support of the group and added that the administration has no knowledge of who attends the group.
For students interested in learning more about Integrity Ministries, contact Channing or Stockstill at integrityministries@gmail.com.
