Abstinence ceremony at TBC

Teenagers at Temple Baptist Church are participating in a True Love Waits Commitment Service Wednesday.

“It’s the biblical thing to do,” said the Rev. Randall Brown, Temple Baptist youth pastor. “It’s also appropriate that the date of the ceremony is Valentine’s Week.”

They will participate in the True Love Waits program introduced by LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention, which encourages teens and college students to commit to sexual abstinence until marriage.

The curriculum is designed to encourage moral purity through adhering to biblical principles.

It utilizes peer pressure by encouraging those who make a commitment to refrain from pre-marital sex to challenge their peers to do the same.

The first True Love Waits national celebration took place in July 1994, when more than 210,000 covenant cards were displayed on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

An estimated 3 million youth have signed commitment cards pledging sexual purity until their wedding day, and that number continues to grow worldwide.

In Uganda, True Love Waits has been a catalyst for bringing people together around the abstinence message in schools, youth groups, communities and other places.

In the years that followed the outbreak of HIV/AIDS, Uganda’s prevalence rate, which in parts of the country was above 30 percent, dropped to 6.7 percent.

True Love Waits currently is expanding its reach in Africa and the Philippines.

True Love Waits encourages students to commit to sexual abstinence until marriage and challenge their peers to do the same.

The pledge states: “Believing that true love waits, I make a commitment to God, myself, my family, my friends, my future mate, and my future children to be sexually abstinent from this day until the day I enter a biblical marriage relationship.”

For general information about True Love Waits, call 1-800-LUV-WAIT, send email to truelovewaits@lifewaycom or visit http://www.lifeway.com/true-love-waits.

Tags: life, religion