'Preachers Daughters' Exclusive: Cast Member Talks Another's Struggle With Homosexuality, Missions Pastor Reacts to Wild Behavior
"Preachers' Daughters" has decided to tackle the topic of Christianity and homosexuality in a way that no other show has done before.
In the latest episode of Lifetime's docu-soap "Preachers' Daughters" airing on Jan. 30, one preacher's daughter, Kristiana Flowers, admits her struggle with homosexuality, while her housemate and fellow preacher's daughter, Cierra Vaughn, is strictly against it because of her biblical values. Cierra, 22, is forced to defend those values when she hears about Kristiana's struggles and witnesses lesbians on the party scene in Cabo, Mexico, where nine girls were grouped together to do missions work for the show.
For Cierra, there's no denying what it says in the Bible, which she believes is very clear about the topic of homosexuality. She opened up to The Christian Post about some of the struggles.
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"If we all come from Christianity and we're all reading the same Bible, then I feel like we all should come to the same conclusion — that that's something that's against God's Word," Cierra told CP.
"We are to love homosexual people and treat them as any other human being. However, I still stand with [the belief] that's something God is totally against and that's not in His divine plan. God said a man should leave his house and he shall cling to his wife. He doesn't say he shall cling to his husband, and He doesn't give him an option," she explained.
In a world where tolerance for homosexuality is growing, Cierra said she expected to receive some backlash for her outspoken comments on the matter. However, she's not too worried about her opinion being an unpopular one.
"At the end of the day, I know that God is on my side and I don't need anyone else to be on my side," Cierra told CP. "Jesus only had 12 disciples, so He only had 12 people that would genuinely follow Him wherever He went. I knew that me stating what I felt about homosexuality ... it was not going to go over well with people."
While the preacher's daughter admits she has friends who are homosexual and loves the girls she shared the experience of the show with, despite their differences on the matter, the daughter of a House of Judah pastor from Chicago, Illinois, admits it was a challenge telling people what the Bible says about same-sex relations when she personally struggles with drinking.
"Sometimes I felt hypocritical because I know that I do drink sometimes and get drunk. And that's something I know in the Bible it says you're not supposed to do," Cierra revealed to CP. "I may not have had the perfect approach to the subject, [but] I still stand on that homosexuality is wrong. Me excessively drinking is wrong, and I'll say I need to change that."
Although the topics of homosexuality and drinking proved to be a struggle for some of the nine preachers' daughters sent to live in a house in Cabo, Mexico, they came together to help people while doing missions work under the supervision of pastor Tilo Lopez. However, when the girls finished meeting with Tilo, who outlined the work they would be doing in the first episode, the partying commenced.
The girls broke into a liquor cabinet in the home they were given to stay in and started on their own mission to party and drink. Tilo admits that watching the episode and learning what went on behind his back was surprising.
"I will honestly say that I was very surprised by a lot of things the girls did, however, God did prepare me for it. Again, you're dealing with girls who are anywhere from the ages of 18 to 24, so I kind of get it," Tilo told CP. "I was expecting to see things like this, but I didn't know exactly what I was going to see. In all sense of honesty, these girls go through what they go through and I always tell them, 'you've got to go through what you've got to go through so you can get to where you need to get to.'"
Tilo has six children and four grandchildren. Although he raised his very own preacher's daughters at home, the pastor said it was God who prepared him to deal with the nine different personalities that he encountered on the Lifetime show.
The Morrison, Colorado-based minister who heads Mission Team Impact ministry prayed that God would help him expand his ministry so that he could spread the Gospel in bigger ways. When he got the call to be a part of "Preachers' Daughters," Tilo didn't even have a passport, but managed to accept the position after only a few days notice.
He insists that God authenticated his participation on the show, which helped the pastor use his skills as a professor of theology with a bachelor's degree in urban ministries and master's degree in biblical studies.
"God has tremendously graced me with having counseled a lot of young people, a lot of young couples. That helped me to discern how to deal with certain individuals on different levels when it comes to denominations and religions and belief systems," Tilo revealed to CP. "So I very rarely will not have an answer for them. So that's definitely helped me."
Still, the preacher insists he also learned a great deal from the girls he worked with on the show.
"One thing I learned from the girls is how to love unconditionally. As I watched the girls I saw them making certain mistakes and those were things that I think in my mind might upset me," Tilo admitted. "On the flip side of that, it blessed me to see that they continued to work through it."
While some may criticize Lifetime Network's "Preachers' Daughters" show, Tilo insists that God is working through it and calls on people to pray for the executives at the Thinkfactory Media group and Lifetime networks that brought the show to television screens.
"I just praise God for them," Tilo told CP. "I pray that we as Christian people pray for them because they're getting the Gospel out there whether or not the church believes it or whether or not they choose to believe it."
