Wendy Vanderwal-Gritter Quotes

It can be unhelpful to wax eloquent about the inerrancy of Scripture without an accompanying acknowledgment that, while Scripture may be inerrant, there are no inerrant interpreters of Scripture.

One retired pastor, who felt that he was being called to write a book about homosexuality, interviewed me. He said he wanted his book to be pastorally compassionate toward gay people while exhorting the church to remain firm in holding to a traditional, biblical sexual ethic. He said, "You have to be careful to not love people too much. Loving people changes you." Indeed, loving people does change you. Loving people who are different than you changes you. But it seems to me that such change is consistent with the call of Christ. Allowing your heart to enter the beauty and brokenness of another's life (which really isn't so different from your own), to hear hopes and dreams and disappointments, fears and hurts and joys does change you. One ought not be afraid of that.

When people misuse a text with "Did God really say...?" to shut down someone's honest wrestling with God, they betray what seems to be their own lack of faith and humility. We ought not to be threatened by someone's searching. We ought not to try to control the outcomes in another's journey. We ought not to resort to using shame or fear or guilt to ensure others share our certainties. God can be trusted to lead those who question and struggle through prayer, his Word, their minds, and their experiences. Let's focus on encouraging one another rather than accusing and condemning one another.

There is an irony in how Christians talk about and understand sexuality. Christians often lament the world's reductionism of sex to genital interaction and raw physical pleasures, but then they typically reduce a gay person's sexuality to just that.

Many of the gay Christians I was in conversation with were not demanding wholesale movement to a fully affirming and inclusive stance. There were those who were uncertain of such a stance even for themselves. What they did desire was space, a safe space without judgment, accusation, condemnation, assumption, and rejection. They desired a generous spaciousness to embrace authentic faith while engaging the quest for an honest, godly, and fulfilling life as a gay person.

I want to remind pastors and leaders that we do not own the church—God does. We aren't called to serve the church from a place of fear with our primary focus on protecting our boundaries. We are called to fling wide the doors, to invite to the banquet those on the margins, those who will challenge our comfort and our aversion to getting our hands dirty. Announcing the kingdom is risky business. When our experience of church becomes so predictable and so controlled, one has to wonder how far we've strayed from the calling to be ambassadors of reconciliation to those far beyond the walls of the church.

The Christian witness never benefits when Christian organizations are known more for what they are against than what they are for.