Annual Exodus meeting begins

… This scene played out as part of the Tuesday night kick off of the 33rd annual Exodus conference, with more than 700 people planning to attend workshops ranging from, “Journey through Lesbianism,” to “Breaking the Myth of Masculinity.”

Alan Chambers, president of Exodus International, told people gathered in the auditorium that, “We hope this will be an amazing week of breakthroughs, breakthroughs of freedom from homosexuality.”

The event will help people “explore freedom from same-sex attraction in a Christian context,” said Randy Thomas, executive vice president. “There is a culture war going on, and people need answers to their faith because the pro-gay side says embrace and accept.

“The church hasn’t had an answer to it, and we fill that void. Their feelings do not define them.”

The five-day conference will not include any reparative therapy sessions, as Exodus leaders say that reparative therapy is commonly mistaken as their practice. It is intended to help people struggling with unwanted same-sex attraction.

“We have 30 Exodus-affiliated counselors across the country, and even though reparative therapy informs them, so do many other forms of therapy,” Thomas said. “We get lumped into the groups that do reparative therapy, when it’s just not true.” …

[From Annual Exodus meeting begins | CITIZEN-TIMES.com | Asheville Citizen-Times]

Well, one clarification or maybe two. We have around 30 professional counselors among the 206 Exodus Member Agencies. Some would say that they are "informed by" reparative therapy but I am not sure of any that would outright say that they are a "reparative therapist." I also tried to communicate that we often get cast as a reparative therapy organization and that isn't true. We are a Christian Ministry.

Here and here are two more articles from the Citizen Times.