WHO WE ARE
Transforming Congregations was founded in 1988 by Rev. Robert Kuyper. Faithfully serving the United Methodist Church for many years, TC was directed by Karen Booth before she finally retired in 2016 and Garry Ingraham was asked to step forward and take over the ministry.
Garry served for 12 years on the leadership team at a large church in Upstate NY in several ministry positions. He became the pastor of Soul-Care Ministries; overseeing lay-counseling, support groups and recover programs, with an emphasis on ministering to individuals desiring relational and sexual wholeness.
Melissa Ingraham is a licensed Christian counselor as well as a key leader in organizing and running inner-healing programs. Our God-given vision, mission and passion is to equip pastors, leadership teams and churches in how to effectively minister within the ever increasing reality of relational and sexual confusion and bondage that characterizes the current culture and much of the church.
Transforming Congregations is a ministry of GoodNews. GoodNews is a member of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA), testifying to our commitment to financial integrity, transparent, and accountable stewardship. For more information, please click here.
OUR VISION:
Our primary goal is to provide local churches and Christian educational institutions the support, knowledge and resources they need to effectively minister grace and truth to the sexually confused and broken within their congregations and communities. Therefore, we offer very little one-on-one work with individuals or families, though we do offer referral and prayer to anyone who contacts us.
As Western culture continues to spin out of control sexually, it’s critically important that local churches understand the role sexuality plays in Christian sanctification – the journey into purity, wholeness, and Christ-likeness that is essential to maturing in faith. Often, mainline critics and leadership – even some evangelicals – dismiss the church’s decades long battle over human sexuality as trivial; a minor distraction that keeps us from our true mission of making disciples. But even a cursory reading of Scripture, especially Paul’s letters to the early church and Jesus' warning to the churches in Revelation, resoundingly indicate otherwise.
In 1 Thessalonians, he writes that sexual immorality (and his readers would have understood the Greek word to include both same-sex and opposite-sex behaviors) is to be avoided. In most other respects, the Thessalonians were faithful believers. They were respected throughout the broader Christian community, they had experienced powerful works of the Holy Spirit in their midst, and they had suffered persecution for their beliefs. Even so, they still apparently failed to live sexually redeemed lives. Paul assures them that they can never hope to be fully sanctified unless they willingly submit their sexuality to God’s transforming work of grace. And he warns them that failure to do so will displease God, insult the Holy Spirit, and blur the boundary between Christianity and the rest of the pagan world.
Research demonstrates that when it comes to pornography addiction, extra-marital affairs, divorce and teen sex, those that claim to be Christian demonstrate little difference from the rest of the world. Unless the church commits to authentic and transparent community, offering real, hard-won answers for some of the most important and defining issues of our time, those trends are likely to continue and perhaps even worsen.
As clearly revealed through the Scriptures:
We believe that a Biblical understanding of human sexuality is key to an effective ministry of healing, freedom and change for sexual strugglers. So we frequently review and recommend printed resources that would be useful for a church library or for group study and discussion, and we track and link to websites and articles that contain helpful ministry information.
The church is called to contend for the faith “once for all delivered to the saints,” and that includes taking a stand for and clearly sharing Biblical truths about sexuality.
We’re also called to be “salt” and “light” in a dark and decaying world, calling God’s people and the culture back to His revealed will – the way we were designed to flourish and glorify Him. To that end, we gladly share our stories of freedom and journey of healing.
Since the battle for truth is being fiercely fought in The United Methodist Church and throughout the Body of Christ, we also network with other denominational and Christian groups to advocate for traditional, life-giving teaching and practice.
Though the ministry does not take direct secular political action, we do alert people to pertinent cultural and public policy issues.
Knowing Biblical truth, and even speaking out about it, is not enough, we as Christ-followers need to live and embody His truth and design. The church also needs to reach out with compassion to a sexually compromised world. Many churches don’t even know how to get started, and that’s especially where Transforming Congregations is prepared to help. We exist to come alongside pastors and Christian leaders, to encourage and equip the local church in these difficult but essential areas of need.