This is your call to take the baton and lead in church, at school, and across digital spaces.

Hartland Fall Convocation 2025: Engage Clarity Mode

<p>This is your call to take the baton and lead in church, at school, and across digital spaces.</p>

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Hartland Institute of Health and Education

David Buruchara

Michael Carducci

Lilena Walker

Gen Z & Alpha — You’re On Part 2 Q&A

Father in heaven, thank you, Lord, for this day.

Thank you for the Sabbath day, Lord, to draw close to you.

And we believe that your spirit has been here with all of the presentations and with all the speakers.

And we just ask, Lord, as we go into this Q&A, that all of the goodness and glory, Lord, would be given to you and that everything that we say Lord would be from our hearts and that Lord that it would lift you up and help somebody that may be struggling or in need.

How do you think that we can separate our ideas of masculinity from over sexualization?

Example, men being expected to be lustful to respond to this pornography crisis.

I guess I really do relate to this question because I think that there's certain expectations, especially in Christianity, that kind of pigeonhole what the definition of masculinity and femininity is.

And I think that, well, I kind of say that I come in through Adventism through the back door.

And, you know, I came in because I was in sexual sin for 20 years.

And so my perspective coming into the church is I see this rigid definition of certain things that are the expectation but not necessarily the rule.

And I think that God has given to men and to women beautiful traits that don't always fit into this category of, you know, that's a male trait or that's a female trait, there's some women that can change the oil on a car, and there's some guys that can really bake really amazing dishes in the kitchen.

And so I think that we get caught up in that's a man thing or that's a female thing, when God has given us amazing traits.

And it wasn't until I was putting together this program for children, which I can't wait to share with you.

But anyway, talking about what those roles are, you know, does it make a boy less of a boy if he likes to cook in the kitchen?

Does it make a boy less of a boy if he likes to cook in the kitchen?

Does it make a boy less of a boy if he doesn't like to play sports?

Does it make a girl less of a girl if she likes to wear short hair and climb trees?

Because you're still a girl because God made you a girl, and you're still a boy because God made you a boy.

And so I think some people get really upset or nervous when they see a child that doesn't have the stereotypical masculine traits, when really it may be artistic, and that's a gift.

And somebody said to me, this may really be the answer to your question, somebody said to me, they said, well now that you're a Christian, you're not gonna do hair anymore, are you?

And I thought about that and I go, okay Lord, are you telling me that I shouldn't do hair because there's so many gay men in hairdressing?

And the more I thought about it, I thought, you know what, God is the 1 that created hair.

And God gave me this talent that I have, which I love doing hair, even though I don't have any of my own.

But the more I thought about that, that doesn't make me gay because I do hair, because there are some very famous hairdressers that were heterosexual, like Vidal Sassoon, Trevor Sorby.

So there are many people that are still heterosexual that do hair.

And then I thought to myself, I have another friend, Wayne Blakely, who is an excellent floral designer.

You know, does that mean that he shouldn't put floral designs together?

And these beautiful arrangements that he makes for his friends when their parents pass away or for anniversaries or birthdays?

To me, again, I really had to question, are those normal expectations or are those things that we've instituted?

You know, like if a man wears pink, that doesn't make him gay, maybe he just looks good in pink, right?

And so I think that we should question some of those norms.

But there are other areas that I think do lend themselves that way.

And you know, nothing is really coming to my mind that I can think of that would be overt, But I think that in a situation where you see that there's a man or a boy that's maybe more effeminate than others, I don't think that we should assume that they're transgender or that they're gay.

That may just be that they haven't had a healthy male in their life and maybe they only had access to a mother, maybe they were raised in a single family with just a mom and so some of those patterns are set and the same for some girls.

Some girls are born hormonally with more testosterone than the average girl and so they may look a little bit more masculine.

So yeah, let's try not to judge people so quickly and put labels on them, and let's allow them, you know, to show us who they are, rather than to make those judgments.

And 1 of the things that I think was really troublesome is there was a woman in the church and there was a girl who was wearing men's clothing.

And she'd been molested by men, and so she covered up her femininity because that was her protection.

And what this lady did is she was a big, she had a big office in the church, and so she called this young girl up, she put her on the platform of the church, and she pointed to the congregation, and she said, this is how a young woman should not dress.

And she basically exposed this poor girl, not knowing what her history was, when she made a judgment call that was pretty cruel because this girl was wearing men's clothing, not because she was gay, but because she was trying to hide her femininity because it made her a victim.

So I think that we tend to judge people a little too easily.

And I think, again, that there are many ways to express ourselves as male and female and still be healthy males and healthy females.

I also think we as women have sort of a adjacent task to celebrate and become used to ourselves men who are not hypersexual because I think in my experience for example I dated guys especially like throughout well not throughout high school I didn't get any play at Oakwood I dated guys who were very lustful, right?

So the way they flirted was very based on physical attraction.

And so when I dated a man who loved the Lord, he didn't do that.

And I had to get used to, he's just not sexualizing you.

He's being kind to you without expecting anything in return.

He's seeing you as more than physical features, right?

So we have to kind of become, we have to recalibrate our own minds to see that like men aren't supposed to be, you know, these ravenous wolves, you know what I mean?

That's at, you know, when you're in Christ, right?

You're a new creature and you have self-control.

So us normalizing that, I think, as women is also an important task with this.

Lust is, You know, some people think that when Jesus says, do not lust after another woman, people say, okay, so I can lust after my wife.

Because lust in and of itself is not from God.

Lust is objectifying someone for your own pleasure, right?

So do you want to objectify even your spouse for your own pleasure?

So when we're talking about lust and sex, God wants us to approach sex in such a way that we have an integrated sexuality.

Lust, what lust does is it divorces sex from our values, which is based in scripture, right?

So scripture values honesty, respect, consent, all these things, right?

But when we divorce sexuality from values, now we have lust and we have objectification and we have selfish gratification.

And that has nothing to do with masculinity or femininity.

It has everything to do with what God does not desire for sex.

Well, our next question says, what do you think of the growing trend of popular erotic fiction among young girls?

How are women becoming victimized by this era of hyper-sexualization?

I actually have 1 of my closest friends is dealing with this.

She is reading erotic books left and right, left and right.

And for her it started as loneliness, wanting a relationship, wanting a dating relationship, and is slim pickings.

And so she wanted some feeling of warmth and being reminded of how beautiful love can be.

And just recently, she started to share that she feels like it is having an effect on her mind.

She notices herself being more lustful at work, being more lustful when she's watching movies and TV, and just noticing things and reacting to things in more destructive ways than she did before.

And I say that to say, and absolutely yes, I do think it's a form of lust.

And it's to me, it's just kind of a different form of pornography.

It's not better, it's not worse, it's just it's a different form.

You know, most people are watching it on a screen, but reading it, you're still consuming it, and it's still changing and corrupting your mind.

Yeah, I'd like to just piggyback on what you're saying.

For women, it's more of an emotional thing.

Like men are turned on visually, women are turned on emotionally.

And so romance novels are considered female porn.

Gen Z & Alpha — You’re On Part 2 Q&A

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