For years, Roy Blankenship and his late wife Nancy worked at the First Baptist Church of Woodstock. Nancy handled records while her husband served on Johnny Hunt’s senior staff as the Counseling Pastor. After two decades of being on staff at FBC Woodstock, Roy transitioned to becoming the full-time chairman and CEO of the HopeQuest Ministry Group.
HopeQuest started as a ministry of First Baptist Woodstock before being spun off into an individual entity specializing in the treatment of “alcohol abuse, substance abuse, sexual brokenness and their co-occurring disorders.”
In 2011, FBC Woodstock and HopeQuest were featured in an article in the Christian Index. At that time, Blankenship, a Liberty-University-trained psychologist, told the publication, “I am a pastor; and I am not willing to sacrifice my Christian heritage or belief system in order to work in the mental health field…There are things I have learned from school and training in psychological theory that helps me remove the barriers in order to help people find their way to Christ.”
On June 11, 2019 Roy Blankenship”married” a man.
Let that sink in. The man who was tasked with providing Christian sexual counseling to people who came to Georgia’s flagship Southern Baptist church for help, was a “repressed” homosexual the whole time he worked there. He was a pastor.
“Over the years however, I have never promoted the idea of changing one’s sexual orientation. In the early years, I was taught that one could change their orientation. Yet, as I tried to experience such change, it never happened. In my later years, and in my ministry work, I came to believe that such change is not possible.”
Roy Blankenship
Roy Blankenship was employed and endorsed by Southern Baptist luminary Johnny Hunt, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention and Current Vice President of Evangelism for the North American Mission Board. Hunt is a widely respected trainer of pastors through his Timothy Barnabas retreats. Yet, he had a fox in his hen house for twenty years.
Blankenship claims that “God himself” has given him a husband. Now, that he has denied the biblical doctrine of sexuality, Blankenship is easy to spot as a wolf, but just how much damage this man did to the needy people who came to him at FBC Woodstock and HopeQuest for biblical sexual counseling over the years is incalculable.
Sadly, Blankenship is hardly an isolated case. Only a few years ago, just down the road from FBC Woodstock at Roswell Street Baptist Church in Marietta, Georgia, Pastor Ernest Easley’s right-hand-man was revealed to be a homosexual after he left his wife for a man. More recently, Nate Collins, a graduate of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary founded the Revoice Conference with the stated purpose of “supporting, encouraging, and empowering gay, lesbian, same-sex-attracted, and other LGBT Christians so they can flourish while observing the historic, Christian doctrine of marriage and sexuality.” Like Blankenship, Collins purports to be a homosexual and like Blankenship (until his wife’s death), Collins is married to a woman in a “mixed-orientation” marriage.
Don’t be fooled Christians. This isn’t an abstract or academic issue. It’s right outside of your church door and, in some cases, already inside of it. God’s people must stay committed to the biblical belief that not only did Jesus Christ die for sinners but that the Holy Spirit has the power to transform them into new creatures in Christ. Big church programs, conferences, and monetarily successful parachurch counseling ministries simply cannot replace truly Holy-Spirit led biblical teaching and living.
“Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.
1 Corinthians 6:9-11
If you are reading this and wondering about your sexuality, I want you to know that you are more than your sexual urges or social group. You are a human being made in the image of God. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, God can make you a new man or woman. You can be set free from your sin. You can be adopted as a son or daughter of God the Father through a relationship with His son, Jesus Christ, who shed his blood on the cross to atone for sin.
Repent and believe or, like Roy Blankenship, you will likewise perish.
*Please note that the preceding is my personal opinion. It is not necessarily the opinion of any entity by which I am employed, any church at which I am a member, any church which I attend, or the educational institution at which I am enrolled. Any copyrighted material displayed or referenced is done under the doctrine of fair use. As a matter of full disclosure, I am a former member of FBC Woodstock.
