Calvary Chapel and Gay Celibate Theology

Gay Celibate Theology and Calvary Chapel Concerns

Welcome everyone to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris, to have a conversation today with Pastor Michael Selecki. Pastor Mike, thank you for joining me. I appreciate it.

Yeah, thank you for having me, John.

And we were just together in New Mexico. You're the pastor of Redemption Hill Church. And if people wanna find out more, they go to Redemption Hill, New Mexico. It's just nm .org, redemptionhillnm .org.

And your sermons are there and everything else. And if you're in that area, I would suggest in Albuquerque, check out the church. And it was a delight being there. So, thank you for that time. And I'll have to come back and do dirt biking with you at some point.

Yeah, absolutely. We would love it. I would love it personally.

Yeah, well, I would love it too. I've never done it. So here's why you're on, just so everyone knows what we're gonna talk about. Calvary Chapel is a denomination I really haven't talked about. And people who follow this podcast, as you, I know, know this, they know that I talk about compromises in evangelical circles in Christianity, mostly along the line of social justice, which would include the LGBT stuff.

And Calvary, in my mind, like I always associate them with good things, right? Like they were the ones that, before John MacArthur ever opened his church, they were on the beach doing services during COVID in California.

They're people of the Bible, verse by verse, Chuck Smith, I associate him like with just solid Bible teaching for the most part. Like if you ask a Calvary Chapel pastor what to do about something, they're gonna open their Bibles up.

Like that's what I think of when I think of Calvary Chapel. And it's concerning to me that, and you kind of were the first one to notify me that this was going on, that they're adopting some, not broadly perhaps, but in certain churches and in certain, I guess one of the denominations associated with them or associations, this kind of gay celibate theology.

And I guess that's my first question for you, because you were a Calvary Chapel pastor for years and you were trained through Calvary. Like how did that happen that they went from, well, I'm not saying they're all bad or anything, right?

There's good things there, but like how does that happen with churches in a network like that, that are known for being Bible teaching?

Right.

Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, to be honest, I never would have thought that this adoption of gay celibate theology would come into a Calvary. I just, I wouldn't have expected that at all. I love Calvaries.

I mean, that's where I cut my teeth and I'm so thankful for Calvary Albuquerque and even Pastor Skip answering the call to come to Albuquerque way back in the 80s and to start teaching the Bible. And the Lord just did a tremendous work.

And I was able to, I got saved and I started going to a church that wasn't really good theologically when I first got saved, but in a short order of time, just in a couple of months, God pulled me out of that and planted me right in Calvary Albuquerque.

And I sat under Pastor Skip and just saw it honestly. I mean, just one of the best Bible teachers in the nation, just verse by verse through the scriptures, love it and just started to grow. So many solid believers.

So to see an adoption towards gay celibate theology, that it's okay, you can be gay as long as you just don't act in an action, engage in homosexual activity. It's okay to be gay and a Christian is essentially what gay celibate theology teaches.

Or you might've heard for those maybe listening, if you're not familiar with maybe a distinction between side A Christianity or side B Christianity, side A Christianity when it comes to homosexuality has to do with those that affirm gay marriage.

So they just straight up, I think any conservative Christian would look at it and go, we disagree with them. That is not traditional view of marriage scripturally. No way the Bible affirms homosexual marriage.

So side A is we believe you can be a homosexual who gets married and remains in a monogamous homosexual marriage and the Bible's okay with that. I think everyone would readily see, go that's not what the Bible teaches.

Side B on the other hand, it comes off like they adhere to an orthodox understanding of marriage, a traditional biblical view of marriage. And as you work your way through, it seems like it, they say, we believe that marriage is between one man, one woman, that's how God designed it.

I agree with that. That is exactly what the Bible teaches. As you continue to get deeper, they'll say, we believe that being gay is not a morally culpable sin in and of itself. That same sex orientation or same sex attraction is not a sin.

And so that's not something that you have to repent of. That's not something that needs to be changed or transform. There's some sort of like holy good way that you could live that out. You just cannot engage in homosexual activity, but the attraction, the orientation itself is not a sin.

And that's where it departs from an orthodox view of sexuality and the way God created us as image bearers. And it undermines the doctrine of sin. It undermines what the Bible has to say about indwelling sin and the flesh.

And so at the end of the day, it ends up undermining how you go about making disciples, doing evangelism and encouraging people to grow in sanctification with their own walk with the Lord.

Leaving Calvary Over the Issue

Well, we'll get into more broadly the different associations in Calvary and also I guess Preston Sprinkle and what he's been doing at a Calvary church in Boise. But I want to maybe hear your story or have the listeners here, because part of what contributed to you becoming an independent Bible church, which is I understand you're not with a denomination, is that correct?

Correct.

Is you were with Calvary though is over this issue. Yes. So why don't you like just let people know kind of like this was serious enough for you to actually leave. What happened? What transpired that made you think like, okay, I can't really be part of Calvary Chapel because of this issue?

Sure. Sure.

I still think, I mean, in my mind, I think there's a large majority, vast majorities of Calvaries that one, they might not even be aware that this is happening in some of the Calvaries. They, I don't think, I think that most Calvary Chapel guys, if they were to just read about gay celibate theology or pick up like Greg Cole's book, Single Gay Christian, you'd read it and go, this is not something to be embraced or had, but it is coming in to certain Calvaries.

And just, I guess, to be clear, Calvary never considers itself a denomination, but in some ways after being around so long, it's a flavor of Christianity, no matter how you wanna slice it.

It's an association, I guess, but like hierarchy is kind of inevitable. I noticed this in like Bible believing churches where they have the conference circuit that they like to go to. And it's like, they look up to those guys.

Like there sort of ends up being like a somewhat of an influence coming down, but so sure, yeah.

And there's, and so then there's like the Calvary Chapel distinctives and there's some core like doctrines that Calvary guys, you have to adhere to. Like there's a doctrinal statement when you're going to affiliate to be a Calvary pastor, you fill out where you stand on doctrines, on salvation, justification, eschatology, things like that.

So that they wanna make sure, do you adhere to these core beliefs? And are you gonna be in line with the Calvary Chapel distinctives? And then there was maybe going back to when Chuck Smith passed away, Calvary Chapel was all one affiliation.

Then after Chuck Smith passed away, his son-in-law, Brian Broderson took over Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa. And within a short amount of time, it became clear that he was moving in a different direction than where Chuck Smith was moving and the way the distinctives would hedge things in and how he would go about affiliating different churches or different pastors that wanted to be Calvary pastors.

And that caused some of the older Calvary Chapel pastors that were directly like were discipled under Chuck Smith to go, hey, this is moving in a wrong direction. So they created the Calvary Chapel Association.

So there's Calvary Chapel Global Network that's under Brian Broderson. And I've always seen the Calvary Chapel Global Network as something that's, they're a little bit looser with some of their theological stances when it comes to people affiliating.

So without those distinctives being there, it's gonna allow, I think for, it allows for greater people to join, but the unity on core issues is gonna be gone. So Calvary Chapel Association was established to say, no, we're trying to stay tried and true to the original vision.

So when I did eventually affiliate, growing up in Calvary has come out of Calvary when we did this church plant, when it came time to do the affiliation, we affiliated with Calvary Chapel Association, based on that.

I looked at Calvary Chapel Associations like they're going down a more tried and true path. And there seems to be a stronger clarity of direction as to where we're moving as a brotherhood of affiliated churches going forward.

Calvary Chapel Networks and the Book *Single Gay Christian*

Okay, so, and just a little aside, you mentioned Calvary Global Network. And when I was looking up online, I didn't do a lot of research. I really just did like a search engine just to see, hey, where does Calvary Chapel on same-sex attraction and homosexuality?

And this is one of the first articles that came up by David Guzik and it's from 2015, but he says a homosexual can be a Christian in right standing with God. If by homosexual, you mean one who was attracted to people of their same gender.

So as long as you're not acting on it, just as you said, that's that gay syllabic theology. And then you just mentioned Brian Broderson. And he, in 2015, this is long before Alistair Begg was saying similar things, I suppose.

But he says that you should consider going to a same-sex wedding, if that would be something that the Lord could use in the life of your friend or relative or unbeliever. So it's just like, if I didn't know that there were two Calvary Chapel networks, I would have thought like, okay, so they've just compromised.

But like, this is only one association. But the association that you were in, that you ended up leaving though, wasn't this one. You left the more solid one over the same thing. So explain that maybe.

Yeah, so I mean, I could start to see the conversation when it came to homosexuality in the evangelical church, a lot of talk was happening about same-sex attraction. And then whether or not that was actually sin.

And so even before what led to me parting ways with Calvary Chapel, I started looking into like, what is this argument about? Like, what is being said here? And essentially what's being said is that, that a same-sex attraction is not sin.

It's not something you would need to repent of. It's not something that you would need to go before the Lord and ask him help with. But the orientation itself is just fine. And that's where I began to see, I think, the razor's edge, if it were, between

This was at Skip Isaac's church then?

So this was just me studying in general.

This was just you, okay.

Just me studying in general about the issue. So I had started to looking at it going, do, does the Bible, it's like, the Bible clearly says same-sex attraction is sin. Like we're desiring things, or I'm attracted to things that are off limits, that God has clearly made off limits.

And those attractions would be there as a direct result of the fall. God did not create humanity to be same-sex attracted. Just because I desire something in my heart, just because I desire it, or even if it feels natural, doesn't mean that that's right.

I have, I'm attracted to things that are not good just because of my sinful nature. And the Bible only gives one remedy for the flesh and the sin nature, and that's the cross. We're to crucify the flesh and all of its sinful passions.

So in my mind, it just became clear, same-sex attraction is sin, but they wanna differentiate between same-sex attraction and full-blown, you know, lust and behavior. And I don't see a distinction at all in scripture about that whatsoever.

If we just, are we desiring things that are evil and wrong? That's, it's evil and wrong. So we need to repent of it right then and there. When it came into Calvary, the first time I noticed it was two years ago, and we were teaching through Leviticus, and we're just teaching book by book, chapter by chapter, verse by verse.

That's really kind of the Calvary MO. And so I could soon see that in May, when it comes to June, we're gonna be in Leviticus 18 during, you know, the world's celebration of Pride Month. Yeah, and so I was like, okay, Lord, I guess this is where we're going.

And then I got word that Calvary Albuquerque had invited Greg Coles to come and speak at the church, and that he had wrote a book called Single Gay Christian. This is the first time I'm being introduced to Greg Coles.

Well, when you hear it, I hear Single Gay Christian, and I go, that's, you know, it raises a red flag just with the title, but sometimes it's like, well, titles of books can be just written that way. Yeah, it's a hook.

Okay, let me read it. And then you read the inside and it's gonna be okay. So I thought, well, maybe it's something like that. But we wanna go ahead and look, like, let's just check out, my wife says, well, I'm gonna check out his Instagram page and see what this guy's all about.

And as soon as you look at his Instagram page, it just becomes very clear. This is not a guy you should have come teach at your church. I mean, he talks about celebrating Pride Month. He's got some other stuff about, you know, a gay church hunt, this like diagram that you're supposed to follow for gay people to find the right church and make sure that they're affirming of your sexual orientation.

You look at this stuff and it's completely off base. That leads me the following day because Greg Coles, I found out about that on Sunday. The following day on a Monday, I'm gonna reach out. I knew one of the pastors there.

I just reached out via text message and expressed my concerns that this guy Greg Coles is coming, I know he's going to be teaching there Wednesday night, I don't think he's a guy you should have. Now, pushback had already been happening within Calvary, Albuquerque for weeks.

I happened to just find out about it the Sunday before he was coming to speak. And the word I got back, I think after several pushback is they decided not to have him come, which was good. I thought, okay, they're not gonna have him come.

This thing's over. They were gonna have another pastor teach on homosexuality and what the Bible says about homosexuality just to clear things up because I think for years, they've been teaching people to be Bereans.

So when this comes up and they knew that this speaker's coming, he wrote this book and people looked inside of Single Gay Christian and saw what it said, they had people rightly pushing back going, why are we bringing the speaker?

Right.

And so they decided not to have him come but that Wednesday evening when I decided, I don't normally watch like their services online but I said, well, I'm gonna watch. I wanna hear what they have to say.

So Pastor Nelson Walker was gonna teach on homosexuality that night. And Nate Heidsick, who's an executive pastor there before Nelson teaches, he says, hey, Gray Coles is not gonna be here but we still have his book in the bookstore and it's the best, most biblical book on the subject.

I encourage everyone to go and buy it.

Oh.

And so that, yeah. So that is what kind of led me that Saturday. Well, that Thursday I said, well, I'm gonna buy a copy of this book and read it. Well, I didn't buy it. I actually checked out a digital copy from the library, read it that day and I read it cover to cover and it's just, there's some blatant like glaring problems.

Yeah, I've read it, yeah.

Just glaring, glaring problems. And in light of that, I said, well, look at if this is being promoted publicly, Calvary Chapel, New Mexico is the regional overseeing church for the affiliated churches in this region.

So this is my overseeing church that's promoting this guy and saying this book is the best, most biblical book on the issue. And I love, I mean, I do. I sincerely do love all these guys and they've made major impacts in my own life.

But I'm like false teachings, false teaching. It's just very, very, very clear. And so

And that book, just so people know, it does promote, I think, in a sort of subversive way, gay marriage, because he says, like you talked about the distinction between side A and side B. And I'm like, I read that book and I thought, I don't know if this guy is gonna be side A or he's almost side A or where he's at, because he was open to same-sex marriage at the end of the book.

And even said that there's other issues. I think he said free will and predestination and eschatology maybe. It was other stuff that he's like, well, these issues are of greater importance. And I'm like, what are you talking about?

Like, we're talking about basic creation, like God created male and female and we're gonna. So yeah, I was pretty surprised when I read that, that there were people, but you know what? That's a warning to even me.

We can all, there's deception that can happen when we wanna believe something, right? So that's why we need correction. And that's what it sounds like you tried to do and you went through the proper channels, but you weren't really taken seriously or at least not seriously enough to change direction.

Yeah, and so that Sunday I spoke openly about what was happening. I figured this is being endorsed publicly from Calvary, New Mexico. I wanna share with the flock that the Lord's entrusted to my care to shepherd.

And I just see this, this is just false doctrine. And I'm not trying to encourage anyone to like go rile up and just start making nasty calls to Calvary Chapel, but just to be praying, but here is what this book teaches.

It becomes like, I'll share just to read a quote from the book so people can hear just very clearly what it has to say. In chapter four, which is a chapter entitled, What God Called Good, he writes, Greg Cole does about his own same-sex orientation.

He says, is it possible, I finally dared to ask myself that homosexuality isn't merely a disordered form of heterosexuality, that instead every sexual orientation and right away I go, every sexual orientation, every sexual orientation after the fall is a disordered form of the original sexuality that God had intended it to be.

And you jump just another paragraph down. He says, is it too dangerous, too unorthodox to believe that I am uniquely designed to reflect the glory of God, that my orientation, mind you, he's saying I'm same-sex oriented, I'm a gay Christian, that my orientation before the fall was meant to be a gift in appreciating the beauty of my own sex as I celebrate the friendship of the opposite sex, that perhaps even within God's flawless original design, there might have been eunuchs, people called to live lives of holy singleness.

And so this happens quite a bit within gay celibate theology is to lump same-sex orientation into like a category of a eunuch. And then it says, we recoil from the word gay, from the very notion of same-sex orientation because we know what it looks like only outside of Eden.

And I mean, I would pause there and go, it's only existed outside of Eden. It never existed in Eden.

That's right.

And he says, we only noticed that outside of Eden where everything's gone wrong, but what if there's goodness hiding in the ruins? What if the calling to gay Christian celibacy is more than just a failure of straightness?

What if God dreamed it for me, wove it into the fabric of my being as he knit me together and sang me into life? This is a problem because we're no longer encouraging people like in 1 Corinthians 6, where he says, hey, don't you know that neither drunkard nor reviler nor immoral nor homosexual inherit the kingdom of God?

And he says, and such were some of you. Like you were this past tense, but God has washed you, he's cleansed you, he sanctified you in Christ. And so to have, to hold onto an identity that is mutually exclusive with Christianity is a problem because your identity is gonna drive the direction you're gonna move and walk in.

I always liken it to like, if you were a Marine and you're in combat, I mean, once you sign up, you're a soldier, you're enlisted, you're a Marine. And so your motto is Semper Fi, always faithful. You're not gonna leave a brother behind.

Well, in combat, I mean, there might be gunfire. If my brother gets shot, you're like, I don't wanna leave him behind, but you're scared, you're panicked. Everything in you is telling you, I don't know, just up and leave.

But you tell yourself Semper Fi. I'm a Marine, Semper Fi. But my identity is driving me to go in a direction that is contrary to where my cowardice is lying so that I would go and get my brother and move out.

The second you say, well, you know, I'm just a civilian. I'm not really a Marine. I still am a civilian, so I can walk away. You try to hold onto both of those identities at the same time, it becomes a problem.

And it's not gonna help you move towards the real sanctification that the Lord has for you. And at the end of the day, I think that's where a big problem with gay celibate theology is, is it's a truncated gospel that actually leaves someone like Greg Coles or anyone else who would be struggling with same-sex desires in a place of hopelessness, because gay celibate theology teaches that same-sex attraction is, it's an unchangeable part of who you are.

He just baked it into creation. He just said, God designed me. So like that's, if that's the design, then like that's the blueprint. Like, and it strikes me as interesting. He said multiple, well, he used the plural, right, for orientations.

And, you know, I wonder, I mean, some people don't like this, but whenever I hear these arguments, I always wonder like, well, what if you put like pedophilia in, like swapped out the word? And I'm not saying they're the same thing or the same action, but I'm just saying like, would the principle still apply?

Would this be a good argument for pedophilia? Like, I'm not gonna act on it, but it's like this hidden beauty that God wove into me. And maybe it's the reason that I have friendships with children, right?

Like you could say everything he just said and we would all reject it. We would all run for the hills and say like this, like lock this guy up, maybe. Like we're gonna keep an eye on him. Like, but as soon as you say it about a popular sin that the world wants to celebrate, like there's a tremendous amount of pressure to accept that.

And so, so no, I appreciate that explanation. And I thought maybe what would be good, cause I wanna talk about Preston Sprinkle a little bit is as a pastor, since you've had to deal with this issue, maybe we could play some clips.

I thought maybe first one from Calvary Global Network and just cause they're really like on board with this. It seems like based on their website and then Preston Sprinkle, he's part of the other association, the one that you were part of or at least a church in that association.

And I have an interview queued on that. So if you wanna share more, we can keep talking, but I thought maybe that would be a good thing for you to just like bring your pastoral expertise and refute kind of what's being taught out there.

Sure, sure. Yeah, I mean, the only thing I would say is, there was back and forth about three in-person meetings with Calvary New Mexico. I had just trying to, I mean, pointing out things just like this in the book that I'm asking, hey, does Calvary New Mexico believe that single gay Christian is a good book that's filled with good teaching that's beneficial for the body of Christ?

Right.

And I couldn't get an answer. At the end, the answer that I got back with my final meeting that I did meet with Skip and the final answer that he gave me was, he believes it's one person's narrative and they decided not to act on that inclination.

And so he believes that that's a win. And I just, I don't think it's one, it's not really answering the question. And two, it's not a win because at the end of the day, it's introducing some concepts that are problematic.

And so in talking with Calvary Albuquerque, I also brought this up to the Calvary Chapel Association just to find out like, where does the association stand on this particular issue? And the answer that I finally got back with after back and forth there was, they believe that this is a social issue and that every Calvary is free to choose how they want to engage with this.

And so upon hearing from the leadership council that that's where they stood on it, that's what ultimately made me choose, well, I don't think I can no longer be affiliated with Calvary Chapel Association.

Now, I do know that there's, I mean, I think there's plenty of Calvary's that might even know like, hey, there's stuff that's happening, but we think that this is good and hopefully they're hoping for change to happen.

I think there's a ton of great things that are still happening in Calvary and reasons that people would wanna choose to stay affiliated. For me, just at working my way there, I thought, oh, I don't think this is for me.

And part of the reason even just agreeing to do the podcast with you, a question I asked myself was, well, if I was another Calvary Chapel, somewhere else in another state and the same situation happened and they got word back from the association that they believe it's just a social issue and any Calvary can choose to deal with it as they want, would I wanna know about it?

And the answer is I would wanna know about it. I would wanna know about it if I was joining, I would wanna know about it if I had stayed in and people can choose to do what they wanna do or if they want to address that, it is gonna be an issue that has to be addressed eventually.

I think people are wondering who are in Calvary, is this a policy? Is this in writing? Is this word of mouth?

This is an email that I got back.

From the association.

They believe that the distinctives are enough to hedge in what needs to be hedged in. And I think obvious, in my opinion, it's not because this is obviously coming in. And for me, without the clarity of language as to where is Calvary going to stand on this issue, it's gonna be very hard to keep unity moving forward.

Where does Calvary stand on this? And other people should know, look, I don't think everyone in even the leadership council of Calvary Chapel Association even agrees with it. Just the way the association works is, from my understanding, the association, for them to change anything or do anything, all 11 council members have to be in 100 agreement to make a change.

So even if 10 council members decided, hey, we should do something about this, we should write some clarifying doctrinal statements. If one of them says, no, I don't think we need to, this is the direction, we're okay with just the distinctives as is, then nothing is going to change.

And so this getting brought up, honestly, my best read would be, well, all the council members heard about it, but if one person decided not to do anything, well, then by default, you're going to have to say, we think it's a social issue and every church can just deal with it.

Yeah.

That must have been tough for you. I mean, I can't imagine having, that was your spiritual network. That's where you cut your teeth, learning how to study and preach the Bible. And now there's a riff there.

Like I just, I don't know, my heart goes out to people that you did the right thing, right? But it probably felt in the moment, and for people listening who might be in a similar predicament where they just like, they know the right thing, but it's like, oh, this cost is going to be so high, it's going to hurt.

You're okay. I guess I just want to get that out there. I mean, I'm sure that it still hurts in some ways, but like you have a thriving church.

Sure.

The people there are happy and growing. And you came out the other side of this, following the Lord and the Lord rewarded you for it. Like you weren't just abandoned by your spiritual network. You still have a spiritual network.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And to let people know too, there are, I do know of other Calvary's in this area, when the issue rose up and they found out about it, there were other Calvary's that personally wrote Calvary New Mexico too, to say, hey, what's going on here?

So, but it kind of stays contained, I think, at least just to this region. I don't think anyone really knows that Calvary Chapel Association, at least in me pursuing and trying to find out, well, where do we stand on this issue that they landed?

It's just a social issue. And Calvary's are free to choose what they wanna do with it. And so at the end of the day, like I do love Calvary's, but it was in my mind, this is a deal breaker. If we can't figure out this issue, it's only gonna lead to further liberalization within the church.

Like if we can't square this away, it's gonna be a problem.

Preston Sprinkle, Calvary Boise, and the Conference Model

Well, Skip Hysak's kind of a big name too. I mean, it's not just like it is local, but it's also like, yeah, that's a pretty influential church just in the whole movement as I understand it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Skip is. And the Lord has used them just in a tremendous way. And so I think for me, I was really taken back because I thought there's, I mean, for 14 years trained and discipled there, ministry school there, I never for the life of me would have even thought that something like this, their bookstores always, they've always tried to do a good job even vetting out books, like which books we'll have.

And even in the, so early on in the Calvary Chapel days, vineyard movement branched out. It was a branch off of Calvary. For John Wimber, he's wanted to emphasize signs and wonders and pursuing like experiences with the spirit over the word of God.

And Chuck Smith said, you can't basically, that's where some of the distinctives start hedging in too. It's like, you can't be, if you're gonna do that, you can't be a Calvary. Our focus is gonna be on the word of God, and any experience with the Holy Spirit has to be in submission to what the scriptures say.

We're gonna emphasize the word. And so if you're gonna do this, you don't be a Calvary Chapel, don't call yourself a Calvary Chapel. And that's, I think we're at a spot, even on an issue that's more important,.

Where it's like,.

If you're gonna embrace this theology, then just don't call yourself a Calvary. This is the direction we're gonna go, and we're gonna be united on this. We're not gonna say you can be gay and a Christian.

Yeah, yeah.

It's like you wonder,.

And it's all speculative. So I don't wanna say one way or the other, but if Chuck Smith were still around, I know people are saying the same thing about, because Crewe is in turmoil over this same issue right now.

And they ask the same questions. Like if the people, the founding generation was still around, like some of the old timers will say, oh, they never would have put up with this, right? But it's like, yeah, I guess that's a cycle that not just churches, but businesses and other things go through, right?

Like you have these solid founders that are put in the work and stuff. And then we have such a blessing that's passed down to us. We have this great institution that's preaching the Bible and teaching, and we take it for granted, but it could go away.

It could go away very quickly if we don't defend it, if we don't defend the truth. And that's the lesson, I think, in your passion. So yeah, thank you for sharing that with everyone. And I do know that there are listeners in Calvary who, they listen to this podcast, they have the same concerns.

They're solid. They're trying to make sure those things don't come into their churches.

Oh yeah.

I mean, honestly, if it was me and I was moved somewhere else and I was looking for a church, I would be looking right away. I'd go, well, where's the local Calvary in this area? That's just, I would still be doing that.

I would go, well, where's the Calvary? I think this is good. Now, if I started finding out, okay, they're starting to buy into some of these social justice issues, especially with gay celibate theology, I go, oh, I'm out.

Yeah, it's a deal breaker.

So let me, so we've been going about 39 minutes. Let me do this because I wanna talk a little bit about Preston Sprinkle. And I don't know how much time we wanna give to, I have two videos queued up. I know you watch them both, but the first is an interview that was posted, I think like two years ago.

It wasn't that long ago on Calvary Global Network, their website, right? So they're the ones that are pushing this more. They don't just let churches decide. Well, I guess maybe they do, but they're like very out front on their website.

This is what we believe. And it's gay celibate theology. So you can tell me to stop whenever you want, or we could just play through the clip. But this is an example of what you were talking about, Pastor Mike, with that theology for people who don't know.