I’m absolutely delighted with this broadened focus! But to be honest, I’m also concerned. I worry that—as with most pendulum swings—we evangelicals may overreact against our previous focus on sex. There’s a chance we could get to the point where we follow the broader culture and start minimizing the importance of sex as a moral issue.

The truth is, Scripture shows us that God is very concerned with our sexual behavior. And what makes this even more important is that America—and the American church—is in the middle of a very destructive epidemic of sexual immorality.

Several years ago I saw an episode of the sitcom “Friends” that illustrates the point. Monica (one of the main characters) had begun having “casual” sex with a friend and asks him, “Can we still be friends and have sex?”

“Sure,” he said, “it’ll just be something we do together—like playing racquetball.”

These days I believe the phrase is “friends with benefits.” And I’m told it’s very common.

That “Friends” episode sums up the contemporary American view of sex. It’s merely a form of recreation. The attitude is reflected in the fact that roughly 65 percent of teens in our culture today engage in sexual intercourse before graduating from high school, and an additional 10-12 percent engage in oral or anal sex. (Shockingly, most young people today don’t regard these latter activities as “having sex.”)

By the time they get married, only one in four women and one in five men are still virgins, and the percentage of newlyweds that haven’t had oral or anal sex is even smaller than that.

Sadly, as with most other areas of American life, statistics on the sexual behavior of professing Christians do not vary much from the general population. In fact, some research suggests that being involved in an extra-curricular sport does more to lower the rate of sexual activity among teenagers than attending church!

While the rate of sexual intercourse among Christian teens is slightly lower than the national average, research reveals that the percentage of Christian teens having oral or anal sex is actually higher.

Just as concerning is the number of professing Christians who use pornography. Here too, statistics vary only slightly between Christians and non-Christians. It’s reported that in 2006, just under half of all Christian men and 20 percent of Christian women had viewed pornography in the previous year. A survey of Christian college campuses revealed that almost 70 percent of the male students had viewed pornography in the previous year.

And a Christianity Today survey in 2000 revealed that about a third of all clergy had visited porn Web sites in the previous year. It appears that Christians, to a significant degree, are conforming to the sexual decadence of the broader American culture.

This national epidemic is having destructive consequences for our society. (Rejecting God’s ways always does, doesn’t it?) For example, in 1960 just over 5 percent of children were born to unmarried mothers. In 2005 this statistic was up to 37 percent. This tragedy contributes to the rising rate of poverty, and thus to the alarming rates of crime and violence among our young people.

On top of this, a study just came out that discovered one in four teenage girls in America now has a sexually transmitted infection. And the rate of abortions in our country is still well over a million a year, despite the increased availability of “safe sex” products. This epidemic is, quite literally, killing us.

So what can be done about it? It’s easy to point the finger at the broader culture and get mad at Hollywood, the liberals, the porn industry, and so on. But as with all social issues, we shouldn’t start by trying to fix the culture around us, but by taking a close, critical look at ourselves.

The Bible clearly reminds us that judgment begins “with God’s household” (1 Peter 4:17). We have to ask: Why has the Church been so ineffective at motivating believers to embrace God’s design for sexuality? Why does the sexual behavior of professing Christians pretty much mirror the sexual behavior of non-Christians? What has allowed us to become so decadent?

There are no easy answers to these questions, but in my next column I’ll attempt to offer a few ideas about why this problem exists and what might be done about it. Right now, however, my only point is this: while we should celebrate our broadened focus and continue to see social and environmental problems as moral issues, we must be very careful not to forget that sex is still centrally important.

Indeed, if there was ever a biblical value that we as the church are falling short on, it is this one.

Greg Boyd is the Senior Pastor of Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul and former professor of theology at Bethel University. He has published 15 books, including the best-selling and award-winning “Letters From a Skeptic” and most recently “The Myth of a Christian Nation.”