I was so curious when I picked up a copy of Messy Grace by Caleb Kaltenbach. I’m\u00a0fairly certain that no one in my circle of friends has anything close to his life story.<\/p>\n
Today, Caleb is a\u00a0pastor of a large church, but he had a most unlikely childhood for this calling. He\u00a0grew up being shuttled between divorced parents who both happened to be gay. \u00a0In the book, he shares about his childhood, his conversion, his ministry and\u00a0shares his journey to\u00a0loving others without sacrificing convictions.<\/p>\n
But the more I read, the more something else\u00a0struck me. The personal stories were so transparent and vulnerable. He had a fascinating life without question. By the time I was half way through the book I was just\u2026<\/p>\n
sad.<\/p>\n
I was sad that our Christian culture apparently needed to have a book that told the church to treat people with kindness and respect<\/em>,\u00a0like Jesus treated those around him.<\/p>\n All people. With love and respect.<\/p>\n What happened in our society that the church is just fine with having proud, angry, gluttonous, tax-evading, adulterous, lying, rude, judgmental, hypocritical people in our congregations\u2026but not gay people? Why is this one, in particular, so much harder for people to handle?<\/p>\n I appreciated how he stuck to his convictions, holding true that the Bible never condones homosexuality. He is honest to his friends and family about that.<\/p>\n But dang. Christians can just be mean to the people who don\u2019t line up directly with our beliefs.<\/p>\n Caleb gives some extra insight and\u00a0understanding of gay culture \u2013 which was a great reminder. Homosexuality is not just about who you sleep with \u2013 it\u2019s about a whole lifestyle, culture, community, family. When Christians attack and say that homosexuality is a sin, it\u2019s making a much bigger statement than just \u2018stop sleeping with people of the same sex.\u2019<\/p>\n I love his statements that, when we become Christians, our identity should only be as \u2018disciple.\u2019 Period. We replace all of our hang-ups with grace. We believe first in the love of God. Not conservative, liberal, alcoholic, workaholic, missional, denominational\u2026we are just disciples. All on the same page. All believing the same thing.<\/p>\n Also-kudos to Caleb for posting\u00a0direct questions that churches can ask about how they will treat not only homosexuals, but really\u00a0any other person who comes through their doors.<\/p>\n Loving people, empowering people, listening to people, directing people in growing their relationship with God. That\u2019s our job. Attacking them, making rude statements, telling hurtful jokes \u2013 that\u2019s not a reflection of God\u2019s heart. Plain and simple. His examination of what a messy church looks like goes far beyond welcoming gay people through the doors. It is opening the doors for people who don\u2019t look or act like us. For anyone who is in the margins. It\u2019s believing that Jesus died for EVERYONE and EVERYONE is welcome at the table.<\/p>\n Just listening to the stories of Caleb\u2019s childhood and how Christians were so cruel to his family and him should make us all stop and consider just how we treat anyone in our community, but especially the LGBT community. The church has been so cruel. Let\u2019s go out, make some new friends and let the healing begin.<\/p>\n Messy Grace<\/a> by\u00a0Caleb Kaltenbach is in stores and on Amazon<\/a> now in print, ebook and audible formats.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was so curious when I picked up a copy of Messy Grace by Caleb Kaltenbach. I’m\u00a0fairly certain that no one in my circle of friends has anything close to his life story. Today, Caleb is a\u00a0pastor of a large church, but he had a most unlikely childhood for this calling. He\u00a0grew up being shuttled […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":114,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[147,45,52],"tags":[152,149,148,77,150,151],"class_list":["post-113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","category-faith","category-thoughts","tag-acting-like-jesus","tag-book-review","tag-church","tag-faith","tag-homosexual","tag-lgbt-and-the-church"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8fdt8-1P","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wandertruenorth.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/messy_grace_3d.jpg?fit=2040%2C2408&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wandertruenorth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wandertruenorth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wandertruenorth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wandertruenorth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wandertruenorth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=113"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wandertruenorth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":115,"href":"https:\/\/wandertruenorth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113\/revisions\/115"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wandertruenorth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wandertruenorth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wandertruenorth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wandertruenorth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}