One of the littles is getting married next week, so we’re off to prepare for and participate in the festivities. While I’m gone, my childhood friend, military veteran, author and brother in Christ, Bruce Gust, will handle the blogging duties here. I’m so grateful that he agrees to step in almost every time I need a sub.
If you haven’t ordered Bruce’s book, American Devotional Series: Part One: The Revolutionary War, let me encourage you to buy a copy. It’s an interesting and creative combination of American history and Christian devotional, putting the lie to the claim that “America was not a Christian nation” or that “the founders were not Christian men.” It’s true that not all of our founders were Christians, but many (if not a majority) were, and many of those who didn’t fully accept the Bible as true accepted the virtues of the Christian faith as necessary for a thriving nation.
I’ve read it and have benefitted from it.
Before I leave, I want to call your attention to an article by R. Albert Mohler Jr. over at World. It’s about Andy Stanley, the pastor of North Point Community Church in metro Atlanta, one of the most influential pastors in the United States, and his departure from a biblical Christianity.
It’s not like we have not seen this coming. Andy Stanley is set to host the “Unconditional Conference” at a campus of North Point Community Church in the metro Atlanta area in the coming days, and the website for the conference bills it as a “two-day premier event” especially designed for parents of LGBTQ+ children and ministry leaders. “You will be equipped, refreshed, and inspired as you hear from leading communicators on topics that speak to your heart, soul, and mind,” it promises. One statement stands out in the description: “No matter what theological stance you hold, we invite you to listen, reflect, and learn as we approach this topic from the quieter middle space.”
The promise of “the quieter middle space” might appear attractive, given the volatility of cultural discourse on LGBTQ+ issues, and a conference designed to help parents of LGBTQ+ children and ministry leaders work through these issues in clearly Biblical terms would be a welcome development. But the advertising for the Unconditional Conference indicates clearly that this event is designed as a platform for normalizing the LGBTQ+ revolution while claiming that the conference represents “the quieter middle space.” In truth, there is no “middle space” on these issues, and it is no longer plausible to claim that such middle space exists.
Two men who are married to other men will be speaking at the conference, as well as “David Gushee, a prominent intellectual who has been honest about his own change of mind on the moral status of LGBTQ+ behaviors and relationships. In the ‘definitive edition’ of his book Changing Our Mind, subtitled as a ‘Landmark Call for Inclusion of LGBT Christians,’ he traces his own pilgrimage to eager LGBTQ+ advocacy.”
The road to embracing LGBTQ+ conference speakers begins with subtley teaching people that LGBTQ+ people matter to God, then moving people to engage with them by accepting them where they’re at, then inviting them into the church to hear the gospel and to experience the love of the congregation.
That’s the core of the teaching: what’s important is that Christians “love” these people. Yes, we are called to love all people, no matter who they are. But we are not called to affirm sinful behavior, beliefs, or choices.
I’ve seen this at work in a large church that I attended for years, but eventually left as it became clear that the lead pastor was caving to the LGBTQ+ agenda. The congregation’s rally cry was “Love everyone always.” But what it led to was “Affirm everyone always.”
This isn’t the first time that Stanley has been controversial, which is why Mohler says we saw this coming.
Andy Stanley, one of the most influential pastors in the United States, has been moving in this direction for years, often by suggestion and assertion but clouded by confusion and the deliberate avoidance of clarity. Back in 2018, he called for the church to be “unhitched” from the Old Testament, arguing that the Old Testament should not be understood as the “go-to source regarding any behavior in the church.” There goes “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination” (Leviticus 18:22). But, in truth, there goes the entire Old Testament. A few years before that, in a 2012 message Stanley seemed to argue that adultery is a sin but told of two men in a relationship with no suggestion that the same-sex coupling was forbidden by Scripture. When the message became controversial, Stanley did not clarify the situation at all. More recently, in another message Stanley dismissed Biblical texts against homosexual behavior as “clobber” verses and said, “If your theology gets in the way of ministry—like if there’s somebody you can’t minister to because of your theology—you have the wrong theology.”
This is not a misunderstanding. This is a trajectory that points to the Unconditional Conference and two speakers married to other men on the platform. This is a clear and tragic departure from Biblical Christianity.
As Christians, we have to be exceedingly careful where we draw lines. We don’t want to be legalistic, but we don’t want to err the other way by not calling sin what it is: sin.
Pray for Andy Stanley and North Point Community Church, that the Lord would call them back from error, if indeed the conference is affirming LGBTQ+ men and women as brothers and sisters in Christ.
I’ll be back at the end of next week.