One of the least mentioned issues in ministry is porn, particularly the easy availability of Internet porn. I'm not talking about child porn here, but porn intended for men in general.
And it doesn't just affect men in the congregations, it affects some ministers as well, though at present we have no New Zealand statistics on the extent of this problem.
A recent interview showed up on Newsbusters. The article has the title CNN highlights porn's destructive effects on society? (I'm not sure why there's a question mark at the end.)
The interview is with Gail Dines, the author of Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality. The figures she presents are horrific: 420 million Internet porn pages, 4.2 million porn websites, and 68 million search engine requests for porn each and every day. (While these are American stats, most of these sites are presumably available to New Zealanders as well.)
Furthermore, according to one study, in 56% of divorce cases, one of the partners has an obsessive interest in porn. Porn becomes the equivalent of a man having an affair, and worse, the women in question are able to 'satisfy' needs that his wife may not be willing or able to.
Plainly, getting up on a Sunday morning and preaching on this topic would be something of a shock to the average congregation. But for some men in the congregation, it may be necessary....
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