Does Andy Stanley Allow LGTB to Serve in Church?

Overall, he's going to talk about an event where he had a couple in his church, a guy he knew, that ends up divorcing his wife and getting into a relationship with another man.

So two men get into a relationship. They go to one of these campus churches, these satellite churches, and the partner is not allowed to serve because that partner hasn't fully divorced his wife, and so he's not allowed to serve because of adultery.

So this is going to be a thing. Now, he's going to end, as Drew mentioned, he's going to end on the fact that the wife, who is very hurt, eventually softens and starts to show grace.

That's the pitch. Welcome to The Rap Report with your host,

Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of striving for eternity in the

Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Welcome to another edition of The Rap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rappaport, the Executive Director of Striving for Eternity and the

Christian podcast community, of which this podcast is a proud member. You can check out strivingforeternity .org,

and if you want to check out all the podcasts, go to christianpodcastcommunity .org.

As some of you know, those who are regular listeners, well, let's welcome the new listeners.

Welcome. But to the regular listeners, you know you've been hearing different co -hosts as we have gone through.

In this couple of episodes, you're going to hear the voice, well, half the voice of Matter of Theology.

Drew Von Nida is with me. If you're a regular listener to my other podcast, Paul Jack's Live, you have heard him on multiple times, but I want to give a shout out for Matter of Theology, which is another podcast on the

Christian podcast community. At some time in the future, I'll probably get his co -host on as well, and I'll let him also mention he's got another podcast.

It's kind of like the Forgotten Child because it's not part of the Christian podcast community.

He just does it on his own. I don't understand. But anyway, Drew, welcome. Thank you.

I'm glad to be here. Honored to be here. This is my first time on this podcast because like you said,

I'm pretty regular on Apologetics Live. That one's just, it's so much fun to do live stuff.

Well, it's fun because you get to just jump in. We never know what's going to happen.

Someone asked me how I prepare for debates on Apologetics Live, and I said, well, most of the time

I can't because the person who called in is expecting the debate. I didn't know they were going to call in.

And so the person was like, how do you prep for that then? I said, I don't. He's like, well, what do you do?

I said, I only look at two areas. I look at the area of hermeneutics and the area of logic, and that's it.

Sometimes you get into church history with the old heresies, but that kind of still falls under hermeneutics.

So if you study hermeneutics and logic, that's mostly where all these arguments end up being anyway.

So that's all I study. That's right. Yeah. And then the key to any debate, right?

The first thing that you have to know how to do is listen. If you listen, yeah, exactly.

People miss that because they go, well, how did you catch this? How did you catch this? How did you know about this?

Well, I just listened. And if you just let people, because people love to talk, and if you just let people talk and ramble, you give them enough rope and they'll hang themselves.

And you and I had an, we were doing a open Q and A, and we had a guy that came in wanting to talk about the topic of Calvinism, and he told you and myself, and I forget who else was in there.

I think it was Anthony, who told us what we believed. Right. And I actually stopped him at one point and I said,

Drew, do you believe that? You were like, no. Anthony, do you believe that? No. I said, I don't believe it either. So we don't know who you're talking to, but you're not listening to us.

So if he comes in, what I got to do is I got to get like a little straw man, a little like, you know, just something that I can hold up to be like, here, here's who you're arguing with.

Well, what would be really funny is if you had Justin Pierce's logical fallacy poster, and then every time he does one, just point to it.

Yeah, I should get one of those. That would be, that would be really good. So what we're going to do today, folks, is we actually planned, let's give them the behind the scenes.

You and I planned on continuing our series on what we believe, which we are going to do.

We will get to that, which might mean that Drew is going to be on for, for, you know, four weeks, but we'll see, because we're going to pick up the topic that we had of security when we talk about the doctrine of salvation.

So instead of that, what we're going to do is pick up, because Drew, you had posted a video that you clipped from a sermon from Andy Stanley, and you put this on your

Facebook. And now, look, folks, I'm just going to tell you upfront, when you hear what we are going to talk about today, you may be shocked to hear someone that says he's a pastor argue the way he argues.

In fact, I can predict that some of you listening may throw your phone at the wall.

This may be a dangerous episode to listen to. It could be frustrating, but it is necessary because this is what's being taught by quote unquote pastors around the world.

So let me start first, Drew, before we jump into that, let me let you introduce yourself to this audience so that they not only get to hear your voice, but know what you're all about.

Yeah, thank you. So my name is Drew. I live in Georgia. I am married to my beautiful wife,

Brandy, and we have two little what Vody would call vipers in diapers.

We have Lawson. He's our oldest, and he is named after Steve Lawson. So we have

Lawson. He's three years old. And then we have Rhett, who just turned one. So we love our boys.

They keep us on our toes. But yeah, I do a podcast with my friend

Huff, and it's called Matter of Theology. We started that back in 2019. And so it's been going.

It's gained a lot of traction as the years have gone on. And I'm really, really shocked and really surprised.

I didn't think we would even make it out of the first year. And then we ended up partnering with Striving for Eternity and the

Christian Podcast Community, and it just took off even more. So we're really thankful for that.

But one of the things that I also do on the side, another podcast called

For Life and Godliness. I started that at the beginning of last year. And basically, what it is, is the goal is to be just kind of short, 15, 20 minute podcast getting right to the meat of things.

And it's basically just anything. If there's a thought that I have during the day that can encourage people, or if there's a scripture,

I think that people need to know and go over. Or if there's an interview that I'm having,

I want to bring those things out and basically take whatever I'm talking about and help the listener apply it to their life so that they can grow in godliness.

And that's kind of the whole point, because as we were talking about a couple weeks ago on Apologetics Live, the gentleman that came on had a really tough time distinguishing between sanctification and regeneration.

And everything that I'm trying to push out on that particular podcast is about sanctification, those who have already been regenerated and now moving and progressing in sanctification.

So holiness, living in holiness, living to the glory of God, that's kind of the point of that.

And people don't quite understand what that means to live to the glory of God. And so that's kind of the whole point of that.

But I love theology. I've graduated from Liberty University. I've got my bachelors and masters there.

And so that's what I do. I'm just a guy who's a sinner saved by grace that loves talking theology.

And that's what we love to do. But today, you also like to kind of tweak people or trigger them.

And so you did. So we're going to play a clip that we're going to play through and stop and discuss.

And you decided you wanted to make sure I got well triggered. So that's what we're going to do today.

We're going to play a clip that you grabbed. And why don't you first give some of the context of this clip, and then

I'll give the context, some context of what we're going to hear about the clip and about his church.

Okay. So this clip is from a sermon, a sermon series that Andy gave around 2010 or 2011.

So this is so when you see all the clips that are coming up now, like this is nothing new. Andy's been on this track for a long time.

And so the sermon series is called Christian. And he's really trying to go through and talk about what a

Christian is according to the Bible, which is interesting since his position now is we can't rely on the

Bible says, but anyways. So he's talking about Christian, what it means to be a

Christian. And in this particular sermon, it's called when grace met truthy.

So the idea is about how Christ was the embodiment of both grace and truth, because what we tend to do when we get into churches or we're looking for churches is we either side on the full truth side and we neglect the grace or we side on grace and we truth.

But his whole point is Jesus was the embodiment of full of the fullness of grace and truth.

And so that actually kind of, and when he starts the sermon, it's weird that he starts here, but it's once you see how it ends with the clip that we're, that we're going to go through, you kind of, it's kind of the foretelling of where we're going because he's, he kind of starts the sermon in the introduction by talking about how people in the homosexual community that go to churches that are gay affirming, they were leaving those churches and coming to his church because they, he, they say that he taught the

Bible and he was kind of addressing these things, but yet he wasn't addressing them as though they were sin.

And that's kind of the problem. And so we're going to see that in this clip. Yeah.

And so some things that folks are going to first need to understand about Andy Stanley's church, he's going to mention some things that I just want to explain because not everyone will understand these things.

So what we have is the way his church has done is that they have where Andy Stanley will be the preacher and they have these other campuses, satellite churches.

And what they do is the campus churches will have their local band, because that's usually what it is, a local band playing and a worship team up singing.

They may have the local pastor who prays, but then they put up a screen when it's time for the preaching and you have

Andy Stanley on screen at multiple churches. So he's at one location, but they put project him in other locations.

And so that's, that you're going to end up seeing that that becomes necessary just to understand most genuine believers are not familiar with that because they go to good churches.

But there's, there's churches that this is what they do. So they, they, they're really, those are churches that are built off of a celebrity status.

And so what they're doing is they want to try to build lots of multiple churches to be bigger in different areas.

And so they just project the celebrity pastor in multiple areas, but is he really their pastor?

Well, they have local pastors that serve at those churches. So you're going to hear him talk about things like that.

Let me give an overview because we're going to chop this up, but I want you to give you a summary of what this clip is and what he's going to say overall, before we play this, because you're going to,

I want you to see where we're going to go with this clip is about. So this is Andy Stanley. He's going to be well, oh,

Drew, I was going to say preaching, but yeah, I guess it's not really preaching. Okay. This is

Andy Stanley storytelling. Um, that would, that'd be more appropriate. You think?

I think he's one of those guys that got on board with this whole, I'm not going to preach today, but I want to start a conversation.

Yeah. Yeah. Cause he's usually sitting in a chair and he's got a television up there as his means of, um, communication.

Yeah. Like here, here's a picture because my words are not powerful enough. And that's the thing about Andy too.

That's one of the things that people that draw people to him is he is a very good communicator in his, his oratory skills.

You can hear that. And that's one of the things that draw people to Andy. Yeah. And he, he seems likable in his, in his speech.

So I get it. But what he's going to do is he's going to talk about a situation that occurred in his church years ago.

And, and this was a clip. What was the year that you grabbed this from again? It was around 2010 or 2011.

And he's going to reference three years of time. So it had to have been somewhere before 2007, these events actually happened.

But overall, he's going to talk about an event where he had a couple in his church, a guy he knew that ends up divorcing his wife and getting into a relationship with another man.

So two men get into a relationship, they go to one of these campus churches, these satellite churches, and the partner is not allowed to serve because that partner hasn't fully divorced his, his wife.

And so he's not allowed to serve because of adultery. So this is going to be a thing.

Now he's going to end, as Drew mentioned, he's going to end on the fact that the wife who is very hurt eventually softens and starts to show grace.

That's his, that's the pitch, right? So I kind of gave you, you know, the spoiler, but I wanted to give you the summary because when we play through this,

I want you to, we're going to be clipping it and I want you to get the overall picture first. So Drew, if you could play this, and I'm just going to tell you folks, we're going to be stopping, this is a seven minute clip.

I'll put the links in the show notes. You, you'll be able to find it on Drew's page on his, his

Facebook page, because, well, Drew took the clip and, and, and clipped just this part.

So this isn't something you're going to find on YouTube. You're going to find it from Drew. And so I'll put the link to his page and it's, it's public for people to see.

So you'll be able to get it. So it's not private. My page isn't private. It's public. And so we're going to be,

I mean, seven minutes. I think this is going to take us an hour to get through. And I will just, I will apologize upfront.

If you hear screaming from your podcast app right now, yes, it will be me or Drew screaming because even though we've heard this,

I just can't believe it. I just still want to scream. But if Chris Hanholtz was here, you would hear banging of the head on the table.

Yes. Well, you know, we should request, we should request that Chris Hanholtz does a video while listening to this episode so that we could see what the host of Voice of Reason Radio looks like when he gets a headache.

Because he always, he always complains when he gets a headache when listening to Apologetics live, when we have these people come in.

And I think you figured it out. It's not he's pounding his fist on the table. He's pounding his head on the table.

Right. Yeah. That's it. Now I understand. Chris Hanholtz and many others, your head will hurt.

You will pound it on walls, tables, or throw your devices. But please listen anyway.

Here we go. We're conflicted like Jesus, you know, where you're trying to figure this out.

And it's messy. It's messy. And so consequently, the network of church. Did he say

Jesus was conflicted? Yes. In coming to some of these situations, right?

Jesus is conflicted. He doesn't know what to do. Now, here's the thing that's puzzling to me.

I don't, I don't know any passage of scripture where I could say, Jesus, the

Holy Spirit, nor the Father were conflicted over issues of sin. And that's going to be the point that,

I mean, I may sound like a broken record throughout this, but Drew, you correct me if you think I'm wrong.

The whole thing here is an issue that we're going to address a sin issue. And he, he's going to ignore sin and focus on.

It's just about grace and love and making people feel good.

Well, the interesting thing about this particular sermon is that in other parts, he talks about the necessity of sin, right?

So he talks about the woman who was caught in adultery, um, in, in, in John. And he'll say, he'll, he'll interrupt himself and he said, well, did you have to bring up the sin thing?

And he says, yes, because it's necessary to talk about sin. But what we see is we see some things are sin, but some things aren't sin according to Andy Stanley.

And that's going to become essential as we discuss as a, what he considers sin.

And I think what it's going to be interesting is when we look at this, we're, you know,

I think he's conflicted with what to do, but he is now projecting that onto Christ and projecting that Jesus is conflicted with situations like this.

And I don't think Jesus will be conflicted with what we're about to hear. I think

Jesus will be very clear with what to do in situations like this.

And I think we're going to be able to turn to scripture to make that clear. Right.

So keep going. Large is ours. And we have, you know, again, a bunch of churches in Atlanta and around the country.

We run into these situations all the time. I just want to tell you one story. I was going to tell you three stories, but no time for three stories.

One story that I just— Okay, wait a minute. He doesn't have time for three stories? That's all he does is tell stories.

That's right. This must be a really long story. No, folks, it's not. Seven minutes. Yep. Years ago, when we first started the church,

I met a family in our children's ministry, a husband, wife, and their elementary school age daughter.

And we got to be friends and meal together. I did a couple of funerals for parents and just, you know, not super best friends, but knew them, tracked with them, knew what's going on, see them at church.

Okay, hold on. If you're their pastor, you should know them. It's kind of like, how can you shepherd them if you don't know them?

Well, okay, let me give benefit of the doubt. If you have a church of a couple thousand people, you can't effectively shepherd everybody.

And that's why you need multiple shepherds. And you need to have enough shepherds to be able to get to know.

I will defend him to this sense of saying, he's not going to know everybody in a church of that church's size.

So the only thing I would, because immediately what comes to mind is John MacArthur, right?

A church, the size of grace community. And so you have John MacArthur, but he's got multiple elders that help pastor all the people in the church.

But then one of the things that sticks out in my mind, and I heard this from the

MacArthur Center podcast that's put out, is whenever someone is going to the hospital or has something going on,

John is the first one there. He beats everyone to the hospital somehow. But he always knows, and he's always involved on an intimate level with the people and what's going on.

Yeah. And I mean, remember, they have 75 elders in that church. I mean, that's larger than most churches.

Their elder board would make some churches happy to have that size of people, right?

But yeah, there is a case where for a lot of the larger churches, and I'm sure

John MacArthur probably doesn't know everybody in his church anymore, just with the size of it.

But you're right. They said when he hears someone in his church is in a hospital, he goes down.

It may be the first time he's meeting them. It very well could be. But with the number of people, especially after COVID that started attending that church,

I don't know that he could possibly get to know everybody. Right. Because that church literally grew outside of their doors and put tents outside.

That's right. That's a good point. But we'll continue. About five, five and a half years ago, she discovers that he's in a relationship with another guy.

And it's devastating, of course. And it breaks her heart. And there's just the deceit and all the stuff that goes with those kinds of things.

And of course, confusing for their daughter and embarrassing. It's just a big mess. So she gets an attorney.

And to their credit, they asked the attorney to represent their daughter so that however this worked out, it would be best for her.

Did we skip some? No. So did he explain why they got divorced yet?

Did I miss that? Or is that still coming? No, I think he did. I think he explained it.

I'll rewind it. Let's rewind it. I want to make sure because maybe I just missed it.

Okay. Or maybe when we stopped it, we missed it. She discovers that he's in a relationship with another guy.

Okay. So that's it. So I did miss it. Sorry, folks. So here's what you end up having.

He's counseling a couple where they're in a divorce because he is in a relationship, in a homosexual relationship.

And he's describing the divorce as messy, as any other type of divorce.

And I just want you to think about that because as we play this part where he describes this divorce,

I want you to hear how he describes it and think whether he is considering homosexuality a sin.

Because if you think homosexuality is a sin, I think every one of you listening that considers what the

Bible says is true, you're going to think differently about how to handle this situation.

Do you address it as a divorce situation or as a sin issue over homosexuality?

So I want you to just think about that as we play this clip. Play that again. And you notice what he didn't say about the relationship.

He didn't say it was adultery right here. He also didn't say it was homosexual.

That's right. He just said a partner relationship with another man. Correct. So you see right there, he avoids the...

And this is, again, this is true to what you had said about the communication. He's avoiding the trigger words and just making it sound as if this is a normal thing.

This isn't a big deal in the sense of, I mean, it's a big deal. He's making it a big deal because there's a divorce.

But he's basically attributing this as that this is another relationship no different than if this guy left his wife for another girl.

Right. And so you're going to see in the way he describes this divorce that he attributes a homosexual relationship as equal to a heterosexual relationship.

So if people are going to defend and say, no, Andy Stanley thinks homosexuality is wrong, the issue is listen to the way he's describing this.

You're not hearing that. Right. That's right. Of course.

And it breaks her heart. And there's just the deceit and all the stuff that goes with those kinds of things.

And of course, confusing for their daughter and embarrassing. It's just a big mess. So she gets an attorney.

And to their credit, they asked the attorney to represent their daughter so that however this worked out, it would be best for her.

So a single attorney worked this out. And in six months, they're divorced. And there's all the shrapnel and all the wounds and all the betrayal and all the confusion and all this all there.

You've been through that. You've seen it. You have family members. Okay. So I want you to know, is there mess in divorce?

Yes. Yes. We've seen it. Drew, I'm sure you've seen this even within church.

Divorces are messy. I will admit, I love the description they have. If you ever watched the movie,

Fireproof with Kirk Cameron, and there's a scene in there where they're discussing divorce.

And one of the characters takes a salt and pepper shaker and just glues them together and sticks them together and then hands them to Kirk Cameron's character, who's the chief.

And it's like, Kirk Cameron's character was like, why do you do that? He's like, well, here, break it apart.

And Kirk Cameron's like, well, I can't because they're going to break and there's going to be a mess everywhere.

And that was the guy's point. You're going to destroy one or both of them. Yes. You're going to destroy one or both.

And that is what divorce does. And so is Andy Stanley accurate in describing what happens in divorce?

Yes. I want to be fair, as fair as I can be with this and say, what he's describing is right.

And if this was a point about the divorce, like if he wanted to make his point and think about this, folks, remember, his point is about the grace that the wife will show toward the husband.

So the homosexuality is not the point of the story, correct?

No. The grace is the point of his story. So you might say, well, then why would he bring the homosexual aspect into it?

Well, because he wanted to. You see this story about grace with a divorcee who who is hurt by the relationship because her husband divorces her to have a relationship with another person.

And then years later, they they can restore that relationship, though they don't get married. See, I just explained the point of his his thing without mentioning the homosexuality.

Right. So it causes us to wonder if you have a good communicator who thinks through these things, why did he bring up the homosexuality?

Well, I would argue that I think the reason is, is desensitizing people to it.

He wants people to have pity on the husband in this relationship, because as you're going to hear the story, the woman who gets who's divorced, whose husband goes and shacks up with another man, she's not the victim in the story.

She's the victimizer in his story. The victim is the guy who left his family to go be with another guy.

And the other victim of the story is the other guy who leaves his family.

So let's give credit where credit's due. Yes, he talks about the mess of divorce.

It is messy. But what I want to train you on is to be able to see why people say what they say and what the agenda they have is and how it's revealed.

You start to break these things down. You start to see what he's really trying to get at, because the homosexual relationship has no bearing on the point.

Unless, of course, the point is not just grace, but grace towards homosexuals.

Right. That's it. It's softening the blow. Correct. That moves towards accepting and affirming homosexuality.

That's what this whole thing is about. Because like I said, he's at the beginning of the sermon, he's talking about how homosexuals will leave homosexual affirming churches in order to come to his church.

And this is the softening the blow, because yes, we talk about sin, but we're not going to call that a sin.

But also what he doesn't talk about, why is divorce so messy? Why is divorce all of these things?

Why is it devastating? Because at the core, what leads to divorce is a sin problem.

So even in talking about divorce, you have to get down to the sin problem that led to parties wanting a divorce.

Yeah. When you have someone telling a story like this, just watch to see who's in this storytelling, who is the real victim and who's the victimizer, because it's going to tell you quite a bit about what someone thinks.

So as we go through, I'm setting this up because I want to train you in critical thinking.

I want you to be able to hear someone like an Andy Stanley, who is a good communicator and very smooth sounding.

And I want you to be able to hear him and go, oh, oh, I see what he's doing. He's projecting his confusion, his struggles onto Christ.

He's now trying to soften this and make the one who's the actual victim, the victimizer to say, oh, but in the end, oh, look how good she is because she showed grace to the guy in sin, rather than confronting that sin.

That's what we're about to hear. So let's go. And a divorce, it's just all there.

It's as painful as it can possibly be. And then some months after the divorce was finalized, he shows up here at our

North Point campus with his partner and she's here. And it was either Easter or Christmas.

I can't remember. It was a big Sunday. And she is - Okay, let's just stop there because obviously that's the only time people go to church, right?

Christmas, Easter, right? Now, you and I were talking before we recorded, right?

His church is going to be bigger on those days because one of the things that might be helpful for you to explain at this point for the audience is how he started this church because they are geared toward unbelievers and making them feel comfortable.

So give the audience a little bit of the background that we had explained before we started recording.

Yeah. So for the audience, if you want more in depth about this background, you can get, if you want to spend the money and get it,

Andy's book called Deep and Wide. And it's how North Point church was basically planted.

It's kind of the blueprint. And so he goes into that a little more in depth. But he was with his father at a church in Atlanta.

And his father, a lot of people looked up to Charles Stanley. And for a long time, people would say that he was a pretty solid

Bible teacher up to a point. There were a lot of things that he said were off, very off, like where God tells you to get your

Thanksgiving turkey. I know Justin has mentioned that. But what happened is

Andy split from his dad's church because at his dad's church, obviously, they weren't going to let people like homosexuals or nonbelievers serve in the church or be a part of the church because what is the church?

It's a body of believers. It's Christ's bride. And so Andy basically split and went off to go plant his own church.

And if you listen to Andy, you'll hear him say this a lot. We want to be a church for the unchurched.

And so his whole goal was to plant this church so that unbelievers, so that people who are living in sin can come to his church and they can feel welcome.

They can feel accepted. They can feel not judged. They can feel comfortable being at his church.

And that was the whole point of planting North Point Church and then the subsequent satellite campuses that they ended up planting as well.

And we're going to see that exact mentality in how he describes this story.

Three -syllable mad, okay? She is upset. She is. Okay. I had to stop it because you and I were talking about this.

He's going to say things and you're going to hear, you might, you might be able to hear it.

The audience laughing when this is not a laughing matter.

This is a serious matter, not just because of the divorce, but also because of the homosexual nature in the divorce.

This is not a laughing matter. This is when we look at scripture.

These are things that God takes seriously because they are sins that keep people out of the kingdom of heaven.

So this is nothing to joke about. This is nothing to laugh about. Yeah. I mean, this is a thing where he's trying to say how upset she is.

And I do hope it came through. You heard the audience laughed and there's going to be a later time where you're going to hear them laugh again at a time they should be cringing.

Now this one, okay, he's saying something that's coming off funny, right? They're really mad.

Okay. I get what he's doing. It's to emphasize it. And it is generating that reaction.

And so what Drew's saying is because later there's going to be a point where both

Drew and I cringed at the fact that people laughed. And so I think though what you're saying,

Drew, and this is helpful for folks to understand, you see how he lightens it, he softens it.

So don't take this too serious, folks. Don't be focused on the homosexual issue.

Because what is he doing now? She's mad. This is the beginning of turning the victim into the victimizer and the victimizer into the victim.

Yep. You're about to hear it right here. And this is... So how do you do that? Well, one thing to do is lighten the mood, drop those defenses so people that...

Because if people are starting at hearing this, if they're starting to get upset in the audience, this little bit of humor just lightens it so that, oh, okay, they're not so defensive.

Right. Eases the tension. Eases the tension. Look, I teach this with evangelism. One of the ways that we teach at Striving for Eternity, when we teach our ambassador evangelism, one thing we say is disarm the person that you're talking to, disarm their defenses by using humor and being polite.

In other words, when we're discussing and sharing the gospel and you start seeing them get defensive over things, not about sin issues, but when you just see something happening where they're getting tense because you're starting to discuss things that are spiritual, humor helps to break that down so you keep a good conversation.

He's using it differently though. He's using it to soften sin and to confuse an audience so that they don't recognize what he's doing with the role reversal of the victim and victimizer.

That's right. Because there should be a strong tension between adultery and homosexuality and divorce right here.

There should be a strong tension where the crowd is sitting on edge because they should be understanding the sin issue.

Like you're saying, there's that using this as a joke to ease the tension and soften the blow.

It's that point of you do this in communication. When you realize things are getting tense, you find the point of agreement and then make the joke out of it.

Should she be mad? Yeah, she should be really mad. You get that and I get that and she has a right to be mad, but we're going to make a joke out of it to soften the tension.

We found our point where we agree, but we're going to soften it. Correct. You would feel if it was you or your sister or your daughter and she got in his face and she said, look, this is my church.

You caused this problem. You go to any church you want to in Atlanta, but you can't come to this. This is my church. I need a worship free.

I need a trauma free zone. You go somewhere else. Basically, that's where she became the victimizer.

Well, in the very next, what he's going to say right next, I was going to stop it right after, play the next line and then stop it.

He kicked him and his partner out of our church. Stop it there. That's where I was going to point out because what you have there is he's basically saying she approaches him and says,

I'm in this church. I want a trauma free zone. Why would she need a trauma? Because she was victimized.

But now she's got the audacity to kick him out of church. That's so mean of her.

That's what this is supposed to do. She's now the one that is wrong in his story.

She's now the one that you're supposed to, in the way he's telling the story, she's the one that you should now be upset with.

That's how that's changing. And you hear it in the inflection in his voice. Right.

With the inflection in his voice, that use of humor leading into this, this is where it changes.

I want you to be able to recognize this because this is what these well -spoken preachers do all the time.

And when you start to be able to identify the behavior, identify the tricks, the tactics, you see what's going on.

Listen to this clip and see how much of this actually focuses on the woman and her divorce and how much of it's going to focus because we're pretty much done with the discussion of the divorce already.

And it was just a minute of seven minutes. The rest is he's going to focus on these two men and their relationship.

That's the focus of the story. Right? Yep. We have lots of churches in the city of Atlanta.

And as it turned out, they decided to attend a different one of our churches. And it was the one that was closest to them. So they attended

Buckhead church. And as the story goes, the very, if I remember this right, the very first Sunday they showed up at Buckhead church was our

Sunday. Hold on one second. I do want to stop for one thing and you could back it up a bit, but he says, if my memory serves me correctly.

Now he's talking about which day they showed up, I gotta be honest. One of the things that I wondered with this is whether he's making up the whole story.

I mean, you and I talked about this. Here's a woman, if this story is true, right? Here's a woman sitting in that church hearing this and going, that's me, that's my family.

How's she going to feel? But the thing that I wonder, because people sometimes say things like that when they are completely making up a story too.

And to be honest with you, I wouldn't put it past them. Because there are people who make up stories not because they're trying to get a great story.

It's because they have something they want to point out and they don't have a real story that proves the point.

I would need to rewatch the video. There's micro expressions people do when they lie.

And you can see that. In one of my seminars, I play a clip of Beth Moore where she tells a story.

And I point out, I actually stopped the video and I point out which direction her eyes look.

Because when you're telling a story that you're recalling something, and people don't even realize they do, is you look up and to the right.

When you're making up a story, you look up and to the left. And she looks up and to the left and then proceeds to tell a whole story.

Mm -hmm. And so, it's one of these little things. Now, what part did she lie about?

Well, I can't tell. It's just one of the things you could tell. There's things that profilers are trained to do to know lies.

I would need to watch his body language a little bit better and closer. It's hard to do it when it's on video sometimes.

But I kind of wonder if the whole story is made up. And if it is. Well, so I don't know that the whole story is made up.

If it's true, okay, it's true. But I think there might be some elements that are true that he could be embellishing.

Because in the original sermon, he talks about a point where they were coming to their

Christmas Eve service or something like that. And he made this whole thing, well, they have to save seeds and we don't save seeds.

But I talked to the guy who does the seeding or puts the seeds out or something like that.

And I said, hey, can you save six seeds right up front? But how much of that is actually tied to the truth of this story?

Okay, so you had six seeds saved. That might be the only part of the story that's true.

Or someone went through a divorce and whatever. And that might be the only part of the story that's true.

And then he's tacking on another story at the end. Now, I'm not saying that it's not true.

I'm just putting it out because this is what storytellers do. They embellish. And if,

I'm just saying if, this is an embellishment, that makes this even worse. Because then the real purpose of it is in the embellishment.

And therefore, my own curiosity, not that I'm going to go try to investigate. But I'd be curious to know who the couple is and find out how many of these details are accurate.

It would just be a curiosity thing. Because that might tell us some things. But that was a rabbit trail.

Yeah. I mean, it's also a pretty detailed story that people in the church would probably know who he's talking about.

Maybe. Because this is an event that happens between five to eight years prior. Actually, it's back when he said this couple started when the church began.

So, they got to go back. I mean, we could probably try to figure out, find out when the church started. And the couple at least goes back toward the beginning.

Right. Right. So, they may not be there anymore. Well, I mean, because when they first started, they didn't have the other campuses.

So, it couldn't have been that long before 2010 because of the other, he mentions the other church campuses.

He mentions Buckhead Church. And I don't know when that church started. It's after the divorce is six months.

And then he doesn't give a time when the two men come to the church and then go to Buckhead.

So, this could have been further back and then they go to Buckhead early on. It's possible.

That's true. Right. Folks, I want you to see what we're doing here. We're not just trying to criticize for criticism's sake.

We're pointing out different aspects based on what he's saying. We're engaging with it.

We're trying to see, okay, some of this stuff, like we're saying with this, is it possible?

Yes. Do we run with this? No. Now, I'm saying this to point this out.

What we see a lot in discernment ministries is someone might grab that little piece and make a whole thing about that and say, he's lying.

Maybe they find out that part of the story is not true and they make that everything. I mean, this is what many in discernment ministries do.

And that's not fair to do. We got to be fair with those who we're criticizing.

And I'm pointing out something that could be, but listen to the language I'm using. Could, if, maybe, why?

Because what I just brought up is something I can't clearly argue. I don't have the facts.

Could it be? Maybe. And I'm saying, the only point I'm saying is that if he's making it up, then it really becomes essential what points are not true.

What is it he can't know? And the reason I bring it up is because he says he can't remember the day, but then he gives a specific, he says he can't remember which, they have this church event where they invite people to come and serve.

And he says he can't remember, but then he does give the date. Not the date, but the event.

So, and if you could, Drew, just back it up a little so that when we play it against people, but because this is why it made me think it because he says,

I can't be sure, I can't remember, and then provides the information that I think he was looking for.

And so, the only reason it caught my attention, and it only caught my attention on listening through it again, is because one thing that people do when they're telling a lie is they will say things like,

I can't remember the detail, and then they provide the detail. I'll give you a way you can do this. Check this out anytime

Joe Biden speaks. When Joe Biden tells you he's being honest, he's lying.

It's a tell that he has, and people have learned after 50 years of listening to him, he does this like every time.

He'll be like, I'll tell you the truth. When I was a kid, my father, he was president of the United States.

He'll say the most absurd things, and he'll do it right after he tells you he's telling the truth.

That's his tell. And so, that's just what caught my attention.

Yeah. Well, one of the things is that even if this story is made up, he's telling it as though it's true, and that's a problem in itself.

Because either way, his focus is really pushing this, the issue of the two men in the story.

They're the people we're supposed to feel sorry for. They're supposed to be the heroes, or the victims.

They're the ones who are, you know, they're the central part of the story. Not the wife, or in this case, two wives who are abandoned.

Yeah, that's right. So, I'll back it up some. They attended

Buckhead Church. And as the story goes, if I remember this right, the very first Sunday they showed up at Buckhead Church was our

Strategic Service Sunday. And at Strategic Service Sunday, we spend the entire time recruiting people to volunteer.

And I cast a big vision, and you know, we're going to change the world, come help us change the world. Okay, let's stop there for a second.

And so, my friend and partner... Okay, so, Drew, let me ask you.

Is it Andy Stanley's job to cast a big vision to change the world?

Or, I may be going out on a limb, and you can help me in case

I'm wrong here. Is it his job to cast the vision so that his church can take on the world?

Or could it be, just possibly, that what his job as a pastor would be, would be the same job that we would see in Acts 6, when there was dispute with the

Hellenistic Jews that were over the divorce, and they call for, the apostles call for the laying on the hands of the first deacons, first servants, and they said, according to them, but we will devote ourselves to prayer and the ministry of the word.

Okay, which one do you think, Drew? It is. Is the pastor's job to cast the vision to change the world, or to be in prayer and the ministry of the word?

Yeah, it's to be in prayer and the ministry of the word. And we can also go from Acts 6, and we can go to Paul writing to Timothy, where he tells them to give devotion to public reading of scripture, right?

Where he tells them to preach the word, where he tells them to instruct the people in what

God says. So, we don't need a vision caster, the vision has already been cast.

Amen. Why deviate from the vision? Yeah, and the thing is, is that he also,

Paul also warns Timothy and Titus to protect the flock by addressing, confronting false teaching.

So, those who may say what we're doing here is wrong, bring it up with Paul. Oh, wait, no, sorry.

Bring it up with the Holy Spirit. He's the one who wrote it. So, that's the thing that we end up seeing with this, is this tells you what

Andy Stanley thinks his job is, to cast a big vision to change the world.

Ladies and gentlemen, I got news for you. You and I will not change the world.

God will. This is God's world, and He will change it if He wants to.

That's not our job. You know what our job is? Our job is to be faithful to the word. Our job is to proclaim the truth of the

Bible, to proclaim the gospel, and then leave the work up to God.

This is where Andy Stanley reveals the issue. He's trying to change the world.

Now, keep that in mind, because he's the one telling these stories that I'm going to make as making the case that he is accepting homosexuals to serve in church.

Okay? That's the claim that I'm promoting here to say, and I think we're going to prove that out.

So, that would be a false teaching, but that's why we're addressing this, because you end up seeing what he's doing.

He thinks he's changing the world, which would then say, for the good of the world, he must be saying that homosexuality should be in the church.

Mm -hmm. It reminds me of this quote from J.

Vernon McGee, where he said, this is God's universe.

He does things His way. You may have a better way, but you don't have a universe.

Right? That is a brilliant, brilliant quote.

Right? But just as a side note, um, there is a clip.

I think it's on YouTube. I forgot where I saw it, but it is a, it is a testimony clip of a homosexual talking about being baptized at North Point Church.

I think it was North Point. It was, it was either North Point or one of his, one of the campuses, um, but talking about being accepted in and then being baptized into the church.

I'm sorry, ladies and gentlemen, you do not have a church at that point. Yeah. Well, you know,

I remember when we had a couple, heterosexual couple, they were not married, but living together, and they wanted to get baptized and become members of the church.

And I remember counseling them. And I taught, I spoke to the, the gentleman in the relationship.

And he asked me, why, why can't I get baptized? Why can't I become a member? I said, because the very first thing we would have to do is discipline you out of the church.

I said, now, if you want to, they were planning to get married and, and I understand their financial finances were tough.

I get all that. But I said, move out. You could stay with me.

You know, you could, you find somewhere else to stay until the wedding, right? I mean, you could get married tomorrow, go to the justice of the peace and have the wedding ceremony another day.

I gave lots of options and, and, and excuses, but I would not allow them to be baptized living in sin.

And, and so obviously I had already discussed them being in sin before that conversation.

And that's, that's the difference of what I think we're seeing here in this, in this account. But let's back it up just a bit, because he mentioned some, just a bit about the partner.

I don't want that to be missed. If I remember this right, the very first Sunday they showed up at Buckhead Church was our strategic service

Sunday. And in strategic service Sunday, we spend the entire time recruiting people to volunteer.

And I, you know, I cast a big vision and, you know, we're going to change the world, come help us change the world. And so my friend's partner said,

Hey, I like this church. I think we should get involved. So on the first Sunday they're there, they go down and sign up to be in strategic service and join a host team, one of our guest services teams.

Well, a few weeks go by. Hey, I like this church. Yeah. So John MacArthur has said in the past that unbelievers don't come and stay at Grace Community Church.

They either get saved or leave because the unbeliever shouldn't feel comfortable in a biblical church.

The fact that this guy's comfortable, okay, concern one.

Concern two, he's in a homosexual relationship, wants to serve, and no one said no.

He's allowed to serve. So one of the things I want you to note, because this is going to become important later, his homosexuality did not prevent him from serving, either one of them.

It wasn't the homosexuality that will prevent them from serving. We're going to find out what prevents them from serving.

But the thing is, I also want you to listen to how, we mentioned it already,

Andy Stanley refers to this, these two. It's his friend and his friend's partner.

You're going to hear that consistently throughout. Why that usage?

Well, when he's talking about someone who's his friend, what that does to people in the audience is, especially when they look up to an individual and that individual's referring to my friend, you want to like that friend.

You want to have sympathy for that friend. That's what he's doing. Then when it's that friend's partner, there's that tying.

So now you want to be attached to that. That is what, whether Andy Stanley's purposely doing that or not,

I don't know, but that is the effect of it because he's going to later, because you hear toward the end, he's constantly up talking about his friend, his friend, his friend, his friend.

Then later he ends up revealing that their friendship's kind of really awkward now and they're not so close.

They're not really friends. So it makes me wonder, why does he keep talking about my friend?

Could it be that he's doing that on purpose for sympathy? It could be, but I don't know if it is. But I could tell you what the effect it does have, whether it's purposeful or not, what the effect it does have is to soften people in the audience so that they are starting to see these two gentlemen as victims, as the ones to be caring for in this story.

Because now is when we already showed how the woman who is victimized and abandoned is the real aggressor in the story.

She's the victimizer in the story. Now we start to see the story work out to where these men are the victims and we should feel sorry for them.

I'm checking on her, how's it going? And she said, good. She kick him out of church and how's that going?

And she said, well, the good news, I guess, is that they're back in church. I said, oh great, where? She said, they're going to Buckhead Church.

She said, and then she kind of chuckled and she said, not only that, they're serving. I said, really? She goes, yeah, they joined a host team.

Now what I knew, and I double checked with her to make sure I was correct, was the last I, where we had left off, was he, my friend's partner, and he's a friend now, but back then not so much, my friend's partner was still married.

And so I said to her, I said, now he's still married, right? And she said, yeah, the divorce is taking longer than they expect.

It's getting dragged out. So I called my buddy and said, okay,

I know things have been awkward between us, but look, and I'm glad you're in church.

That's a good thing. And I'm glad you're at one of our churches. That's a good thing. But your partner, he's still married.

So see, this is just good old fashioned adultery. You're in a sexual relationship with someone else's. I'm glad you put your,

I think we had the same idea. So notice the issue, right?

This is now an issue for Andy Stanley to address that he's got to say, you can't serve in this ministry because this is good old fashioned adultery.

It was adultery when both these men were shacking up together.

So notice he doesn't consider it adultery when the two men are sleeping together.

He considers it adultery when the man is married and shacking up with someone else.

And so there's two things here. And I know, Drew, you're going to address this as well.

Notice what he's calling the real sin. It's not the homosexuality.

It's that a guy is still married and sleeping with somebody. So he's acknowledging that these two guys are sleeping with one another.

Mm -hmm. That's not an issue. The fact that the one guy divorced his wife to shack up, that's okay.

I mean, because hear how he's saying it. His friend, it was okay because he at least divorced his wife to be with this other guy.

So one, he's saying that divorce is okay. Now, there's a couple of different views you can have on divorce.

There's some who say divorce is never allowed or really the issue is remarriage.

And so there'd be the issues that say you can never get divorced and remarried. Some will say you can divorce and remarry for anything.

But where most Christians see is that the scripture allows for divorce and remarriage in certain circumstances.

And those circumstances being that the victim of adultery.

In other words, in this story, it's the wife who could remarry, not the guy who abandons her to be in a adulterous relationship.

So you see that he's not calling out the guy for having left his wife, abandoning his duties as a husband and father, abandoning his marriage.

He's not addressing that. He's not addressing the homosexuality.

It's just this little technicality that your divorce didn't go through yet. Yeah. So we didn't see the addressing of adultery in the first instance.

You pointed that out. Now they're together in a homosexual relationship.

Well, that's not a big deal. He just now admitted you guys are sleeping together.

So not only is there a homosexual relationship, there's a homosexual fornication.

Okay. That's taking place. Actual active sexual relationship that's taking place.

Apparently that's not sin. The sin is that he, the partner is still married.

That's the sin, the adultery. Okay. Well, there's adultery all over the place, but you're only addressing it in one area.

Now, if you don't mind, I just want to go to this scripture real quick.

This is first Corinthians six. Okay. And this is

Paul verse nine. He says, or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?

Do not be deceived. Neither the fornicators nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

Okay. So these sins that are taking place in this clip that Andy is describing, okay, he's only calling one thing sin, but what have we looked at?

We've seen adultery, we've seen homosexuality and fornication in here. Oh, we forgot divorce.

Oh, and divorce. As far as sins that, that is in this mess. Right, right. So these are sins that Paul here says will keep you out of the kingdom of God.

Okay. And how do, and part of Andy's thing now is, and I've, I've just heard this from, from other people who have attended some of his leadership workshops and stuff who have confronted him on this, where he has, he has affirmed homosexuality, um, to them, but his, his, his justification is he saying that they were, you know, that's who they are.

That's how they are. And that's how God made them. And they're trying to live according to how God made them and God accepts them.

Okay. But Paul here in the very next verse, verse 11, such were some of you, and this is the mark of the true

Christian, but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the

Lord Jesus Christ and in the spirit of God. Okay. So in the church in Corinth, they did not continue with this sin and they definitely didn't identify themselves by their sin.

They put that sin aside and became a new creation.

That's what we should see. And that's what Andy should be encouraging. But you know, what I think his counsel here would do,

I don't, I don't, I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt and say that I don't, I'm going to assume that Andy Stanley didn't mean this to be the way people would take it.

But if you've been counseling long enough, I could predict that what this would do, what he describes would cause the guy in this relationship to try to speed up the divorce.

In other words, what Andy Stanley is saying is you really enjoy serving. The issue is you're still in the process of getting divorced.

So if you could speed that up, then you can serve, right? Because basically what

Andy Stanley is saying is once you get divorced, he doesn't have a problem with these two men who've both committed adultery, both divorced their wives, have no right to a remarriage, and are in a homosexual relationship, abandon their families.

That's not the issue. Right. Right. They can serve once this guy's divorced.

And the result would be that the guy's probably going to, if he wants to serve in church, speed it up.

What you should be doing is saying to the guy, go home, return to your wife, both of you.

Yeah. And we never find out anything about this other wife that was just abandoned.

Yeah. And we assume that the divorce does go through in the end. It's assumed, but we don't know.

Yeah. I think it does go through. I'm going to talk about this.

Now, again, just look at how much time we're spending on the homosexuality issue and not the original victim in this story, right?

The one that we're supposed to be really caring for, because she's supposed to be the central part of the story.

She's the one that this story is about showing grace, but you don't hear much about her yet. Right. Right. Well, now you've added a second victim with the other wife that adultery was committed against, and now they need to be divorced.

Yeah, but he makes her just a non -issue. The husband who caused it is the real victim in his story.

Right. That's right. That's right. Husband. I've never said that before, but anyway -

Let me back that up. I was going to say back that up, because this is a thing where, before you play it,

I'll just say what I was going to say after that clip played, is what you're seeing, and we've said this already, this is desensitizing an audience to hearing things.

So, when he calls the other guy his husband, he plays it off like it's a slip of the tongue.

Okay? It could have been. Maybe he wasn't planning on saying it.

Okay? There are times, when preachers will plan on saying it and then make it sound like it was a slip of the tongue.

Okay, let me get myself in trouble. There is a well -known preacher who wanted to use foul language at a pulpit, and after he did so, played it off like a slip of the tongue.

It was not a slip of the tongue, because he prefaced it by saying, I don't use this language around my children.

I don't use this language in my house. But, well, then it was purposeful.

He planned to say that, but he kind of makes it sound like it's a slip of the tongue. Now, if he had said that after he used that language, maybe it was a slip of the tongue.

Right? But he said it before. It wasn't a slip of the tongue. It was planned. They had an elder meeting about that beforehand, where he said, this is what

I'm planning on doing. And I think only one elder, you can probably guess who, said,

I don't think that's a good idea. I know what you're trying to do, but I don't think that's a good idea.

And the Greek word doesn't mean what you're claiming it means. I teach

Greek, and no, it doesn't mean what you think. That's how I see it going. But, all right, play that again.

And I want folks, I want you to see how he, it's this slow desensitizing of his audience, the use of humor, the changing of the victim and victimizer, and now slipping in a word that the culture would accept, but Christians would have a hard time with.

But you see how he just slips this in and just goes, oh, wow, this is hard for me to think about. So what is it that's going to cause you to have sympathy with Andy Stanley?

And therefore, that sympathy is projected to these two men. You know, that's a good thing.

But your partner, he's, he's still married. So see, this is just good old fashioned adultery.

Like you're in a sexual relationship with someone else's husband. You know, it was, you know,

I've never said that before. But anyway, so I said, so you can't be on a guest services team.

Okay? This you're just living in, you know, this is, this is clear. Okay. You can't do this. And he, okay, stop there.

He said, this is clear. You can't do this. Yeah. You see, you see why folks were addressing this.

He's made it really clear that homosexuality does not disqualify you from serving in his church.

Divorcing your wife does not disqualify you from serving in his church. The only thing that's a squall or not the only thing, but the thing that does disqualify in this account is being married while having an affair.

You divorced to have an affair. Okay. Or you have the affair and get divorced.

Okay. You ha you're, you know, in a homosexual relationship. Okay. But you just can't do it while still being married.

You got to get the ink dried. That's right. This is, you know, what a low view of Christ church.

Right. And so if you have such a low view of Christ church, uh, that's a, that's a good indication.

You're not in one of Christ's church. I get this.

He said, well, and it's funny now. It wasn't funny then he said, well, he's married, but he's almost divorced.

Okay. We're always almost. That's, that's not, it's not funny. It's not funny.

That's that's tragic. That's the, everyone should go almost like, why, why are you encouraging that?

Yeah. He's he's saying it's funny now. It wasn't funny then. No, it's not funny now or then it's just not funny.

Sin is not funny. You know, when we look at this, funny is at the time something happens,

I did something stupid and it wasn't funny at the time. It's funny. Like, like, okay.

I got in the ATV accident some, some months ago. And after that accident,

I couldn't remember my bride's name because I had a concussion and I was struggling with that.

That wasn't funny at the time. I can kind of laugh at it now because we've recovered.

It wasn't funny at the time, but it could be funny now. Right. But sin is never funny.

Now I'm going to give benefit of the doubt and try to show some grace here and say, you know, was

Andy Stanley saying that sin is not funny? Because it's very easy for us,

Drew and I to sit here and, and Monday night quarterback or whatever they call it when people watch after football, you know, the

Sunday footballs and, and they describe the game with all the time watching reruns. Armchair quarterback.

Armchair quarterback. There we go. You can tell I'm really into the football stuff. Hey, at least I knew the sport.

But the, the thing is, is that we could, it's very easy for us to sit here and be critical, but I can tell you as, as a pastor and a preacher and Drew, you, you know, this as well.

When you're behind a pulpit and you're, you're preaching, there are things that you say that you just get caught up and you may say, this is funny.

And, and you don't really mean the sin is funny. You may not even have meant the situation is funny.

It could be, he just said, it's an awkward thing. It's a filter word that he then realizes he said, and now he's got to compensate for and, and explain how that is possible.

Yeah. You know, I've got an example and, and I haven't, you know, I also haven't mentioned this to you or a lot of people.

I haven't just broadcast it, but I am now an elder, um, in our church. Um, so they have installed now tens and tens of people know this.

That's right. But, uh, but one of the times I was preaching and you know, it was kind of, it wasn't funny then, but then even then it was kind of funny, but it was kind of cringe, but it's funny because I know better.

Um, you know, I was, I, I had finished preaching and then I went to pray and I made just the, the awful mistake of, you know, when people pray that they don't really know how the right way to pray.

And so they'll say something like talking to God, but then attributing

God dying on the cross for us. Right. So like the, and so I did that and I had to stop and I said, wait a minute, let me stop that.

I just made a mistake. And so I addressed it. So it wasn't funny because right.

I I'm, I'm erring on the Trinity and how to pray.

So it wasn't funny, but it was funny because I know better and I teach against doing that.

So, so it's one, so that's, that's just one of those things. Like it's not funny. But then when you look back, you're like,

I made that. I can't believe I made that mistake. Right. And, and, and that's where I'm going to say,

I want to have show some grace to Andy Stanley and say, maybe this was just, he caught himself saying something and is trying to make up for it.

You try to balance it out. That happens. Okay. This is why I think we see in scripture, you know, those who teach and preach are going to be held more accountable because they use more words.

They're more likely to mess up. You're going to hear things from people who are preaching.

They're going to mix up words, especially as they get older. And maybe someone is going to say something.

I wouldn't know who it is that might've done this once, but supposedly someone on this once preached that Judas died for your sins.

It's really bad when a 12 year old walks up to you and says,

Pastor Andrew, do you know you said Judas died for your sins? Oops.

I know that there was once when I got done preaching and my bride said, do you know that you just referred to the pastor of the church by the name?

Oops. Yeah. These things will happen. So I want to, you know, notice that we're not here.

Drew and I are not here to just try to find every little way we can nitpick Andy Stanley. We understand slips of the tongue.

I mean, we, you know, you've been preaching for a long time. I've been preaching only a couple of years, but you know, even some of the guys who are well seasoned,

I've heard Jim Osmond do it. I've heard John MacArthur do it, but it's just slips of the tongue and they happen, you know, and sometimes you don't catch it when it happens and it just makes it through.

You just got to let it ride. You know, I heard Jim Osmond once do a slip of the tongue introducing me.

He was introducing me to preaching and he said, Andrew's a wonderful preacher. It just, it slipped out and he had to correct that afterwards.

But you know, you were talking about softening the blow and stuff and talking about my friend and stuff.

That's what I say when I tell people about you, I say my friend, Andrew. So it just kind of softens the blow.

All right. Let's, let's keep going. Of course, they're at the very end.

I'm like, you can't be almost divorced. Okay. You're married or you're not, as long as he's married, you can't serve on a guest services team.

And so I kind of, you know, kicked him off the team. He said, well, my partner, he's going to be really upset about this because he loved the church and he loved the fact that we're going to be able to connect.

I said, well, you know what? I'll, I'll talk. Okay. Notice you can't be almost divorced.

Can you be almost homosexual then? Right. Can you almost commit adultery?

Yeah. Or while you're committing adultery, is it, is it almost adultery?

Right. It makes, he's, he, again, he makes it sound as if it, the, the issue here, the, the, the problem is the paperwork hasn't been filed.

Right. It's not that they, the guy separated from his wife.

It's not that he's in a homosexual, it's just this technicality of the paper.

It's, you're not almost divorced. Well, they're separated. There isn't almost divorce.

It's the fact that they're functionally living two separate lives and not living together. They're practicing their, their lifestyles if they're divorced, but you can't almost practice homosexuality.

You either did it or you didn't. Right. So he focuses just on the, the court giving the approval.

Okay. You're divorced. Yeah. The clerk's a little slow. Yeah. Getting the paperwork in.

And so he says, well, then you can't serve in this way. And what's, what's his friend saying?

Well, you know, my partner's going to be upset now that becomes the issue. Oh no.

Why Andy Stanley doesn't want people having hurt feelings. That's what this is all about.

Yep. That's why he doesn't address the things as a sin issue because it's not about the sin.

It's about hurt feelings. That's it. And what, what, should have happened is, uh,

Hey, I heard you're, you're serving. Okay. You can't because you need to repent of your sin.

And not only, not only that, but you can't be a member of the church unless you repent of your sin.

Okay. Now, now I understand with you, my friend, you're divorced with your wife and that went through,

I get, I get it, but you're still living in sin. Okay. You're, you were the reason for the divorce.

Your sin was the reason for the divorce. Your wife is the victim in this. Um, you need to repent of your sin and that's not is what is being communicated.

And that's what needs to be community. You shouldn't be a part of any church because you're in sin. You shouldn't be serving at any church because you're in sin.

Okay. You have committed adultery against your wife. You've divorced your wife. You're in a homosexual relationship.

This person has committed adultery against their wife. They're divorcing their wife and they're in a homosexual.

This is sin. Like it's nothing could be more of a clear cut issue than this.

Right. And it almost reminds me of, uh, the clip that Justin Pierce played on, uh,

I think it was Bob Hope. Right. What's the problem. Oh, no, that was me playing. Oh yeah. You are stop saying no, just stop it.

Stop. I still be it. Stop it. Yeah. The, the, the thing is, is really you're right, but you're too late when these two came to this church and asked to serve initially when they first asked to serve, they should have gotten a response of no, you two men need to repent of your sin, homosexuality, adultery, divorce, and return to your wives.

Remember both of these men are the ones that caused their divorce.

Yep. That's it. Keep that in mind. So who's the real victim?

The wives. Yeah. And notice they're not even being talked about except the one wife who was the victimizer.

Yeah. Who's made into the victimizer. Correct. Yeah. If you guys want to come in,

I'll talk to you about this. So they came in to see me now a few weeks ago during the Anne Rice message,

I introduced some of you to a new word. The new word was disputatious. Okay. Disputatious. So when they came to see me, the three of us had a disputatious conversation.

It was really, really awkward and bad. And to our, you know, to my friend's partner's defense, it's because they showed up at Buckhead church and they never saw me down there except on a screen.

And so he said, how can you kick me off out of a church? You're not even the pastor there.

I'm like, well, you're right. So I did what every great leader does. I said, let me give you the name and number of the pastor at Buckhead church.

And you can call him and talk to him about this. All of our churches have different pastors. And so I gave him Jeff Henderson's name and I called

Jeff and said, someone's going to call you. It might be disputatious. And so to their credit, to their credit, cause who's got time for this.

They talked to Jeff and Jeff said, as long, you know, you're married, this is just adultery. You can't serve on a guest services team.

Okay. So first off, I don't know what disputatious is. That's a big word. I don't know. I went to Liberty, so we didn't use words like that.

Notice though, what he did, it's, you know, he's saying I did what every great leader did. Now, maybe this again, he's using humor, so maybe he's just joking, but that's not what a great leader would do.

He's passing the buck. Right. Right. That's not what a good shepherd would do, but it's almost as if he's saying,

Hey, I found a way I could get out of it. I'll let this other guy deal with it. And then I called the other guy to say, you deal with it.

The interesting thing is, is he makes a partner saying, you can't kick me out of the church.

You're not the pastor here. But if you go back to when they attend, they went to showed up at North point.

Who did Andy say kicked them out? The wife kicked them out of the church. Well, the wife's not the pastor at North point church.

So why didn't he make that argument there? You can't kick me out. You're not the pastor. Okay. So, so apparently

Andy's not even in control of his own church. The, uh, people's wives are, you know?

Well, yeah, it's interesting. You know, I think what this guy is actually revealing and Andy is submitting to really is the fact that this guy is saying, you're not my pastor because you're only the guy who preaches on a screen.

Right. Which is a good point to make. You know, this is where this guy actually is, is more accurate.

Right. And Andy Stanley's conceding that point, which tells you their whole way of doing church has got problems.

But it also tells you that this guy doesn't even know who the pastor is of Buckhead church.

Correct. Yeah. Understandably, they, um, left the church.

And you know what, if I were them and saw the world, the way they saw it at the time, I would leave too. Who wants to go to a church that says, oh, we want you to come help us.

Oh, you can't help us. Again, right back to the point of why he planted the church in the first place, because they, they looked out and they, and they saw, you know, they left and, and because they saw how they were being treated, who could blame them right now, they're the victim who could blame, who wants to be in a church that says,

Hey, we want people to come help, but not you. Okay. Well, if you understand biblical ecclesiology, the people who are supposed to be a part of the church are people who are born again, believers who whose nature has been changed.

They're now a new creation because they are in Christ and they're serving Christ. They are a part of the body and the bride of Christ.

When you have someone living in sin, like this open rebellious sin, like homosexuality, like, uh, adultery fornication, like this, they are, they are displaying that they are not a part of Christ's bride.

They're actually displaying their hatred towards Christ because, and I know

Andy's not this guy, but he can seem like this guy, the kind of guy that says, if Jesus didn't say it,

I don't follow it. Right. You know, those guys, the guys that, Oh, that was Paul. That wasn't Jesus. I go by what

Jesus says. Okay. Well, Jesus addressed the homosexuality issue when he addressed the divorce issue, because what did he say?

A man will leave his mother and father and cling to his wife.

So you see, you see the heterosexual nature of a marriage, but you also see gender distinctions right there, right?

Man, woman, despite what our current culture might, might want to think.

So you have Jesus addressing the homosexuality issue with the marriage issue as to who can be married and who can engage in these, these acts together.

And one of the things that we see is he's saying he there's two things.

One, he wants you to have sympathy for these two men. What he's trying to do is say, well, think about it from their perspective.

What is that that he's trying to do? What he's trying to do is get you to view things from these two guys perspective.

Again, they become the center of the story. They're the victims here. They're the ones who you got to feel sympathy for, empathize with.

Okay. But as a shepherd, the thing that bothered me with what he said there is he's sympathizing with people that are being told you could come to church, you can't serve.

Why can't you serve? Because of a sin issue. Well, what does scripture say over and over again?

What is it that we see is the behavior of a Christian is to receive correction throughout

Proverbs. It is the fool who rejects correction and the wise person who receives correction.

So basically what Andy Stanley wants is a church full of fools.

He wants a church full of people who can feel comfortable in their sin and be able to serve because they're not going to be confronted.

That's the issue. And you see that in one of the recent clips that has come about where he's talking about if heterosexuals had the desire to serve in the church the same way the homosexuals do, we would have a backlog of people wanting to serve in the church.

He should have been lovingly correcting them so that they would come to repentance and serve

Christ. That's right. But what seems to be paramount in this story is that these two men in a homosexual relationship who divorced their wives or in the process of divorcing their wife and committing adultery, they should feel comfortable.

And what he's doing in this is now turning to his congregation and basically saying, and we should make them feel comfortable.

Right. Right. Because the only thing they did wrong was not get the divorce before they shacked up.

Right. Right. And where this should have been caught, and you've already addressed this, where it should have been caught was in the first act of adultery.

Correct. Because otherwise you don't even arrive here, Andy. You don't even arrive at this point where you've got to have these disputatious conversations about your homosexual couple that's not divorced from their wives or whatever, being upset that they can't serve in the church.

You don't even arrive there if you already deal with the initial problem and saying, repent of your sin and cling to your wife.

Let's keep playing. Left the church. And that was the end of that.

I would see this gentleman every once in a while. He did contract work for a company we worked with, but it was awkward, awkward, awkward.

So from time to time, I would check in with his ex -wife. How's it going? How are things going?

And I noticed something interesting as time went by, and this is over the course of about three years, as time went by, she began to -

Okay. Now this now is to the heart of his story. All the story was now for this point.

So this is where we're going to get started to hear what Drew said for way back when I told you the seven minutes is going to take us a while to get through.

Think back to what Drew said in the beginning, right? The whole story is about grace. So now we're going to hear about the grace.

We've said it before, there was no mention of the homosexual sin. Wasn't mentioned.

They're just partners. It's softened. But here comes the grace. Let's play.

And this will probably end up playing almost all of it without stopping. We'll see. Significantly softened toward her ex -husband and his partner.

And next thing I knew, she said, hey, I'm cooking for everybody for Easter. And I'm like, who's everybody?

Well, my daughter, my ex -husband, his partner. Hey, I'm having everybody over for a

Christmas thing or Mother's Day thing. I'm like, who's everybody? My daughter, my ex -husband, his partner.

And then eventually she began to date a guy named Doug, who's a great guy. And so all of a sudden, there's another guy in the scene.

Who are you? Who's coming over? Well, my boyfriend, my daughter, my ex -husband.

So what do you end up with? So let me just continue the thing real quick, because he goes through all this thing, all this

Mother's Day and Thanksgiving. Well, what it ends with is she invites them to a

Christmas Eve thing at the church and wants them to save season. So now they're all coming together.

She's now accepting and loving of them because over time, she began to soften and she began to grow in grace.

And he used that word, she softened. And so the idea is she softened to her ex -husband and what he did to her.

I think that's what Andy Stanley means. But what

I think it communicates to the audience is she softened also to the homosexuality.

Yeah. And we should too. Because there was a part where, and it wasn't in this clip, but where she attended one of their ministries for people who had gone through divorce.

And she makes mention that there was this lady there that had been divorced for seven years and she was just spewing vile hatred towards her ex -husband and things like this.

And she had the epiphany, right? I don't want to be that person.

And so she began to soften. She began to open up. She began to be accepting and loving.

No mention of, I actually looked through my scriptures and saw what

Christ said. And instead of softening up, I firmed my position because this is what the word of God says.

And then I confronted Andy and said, why are you allowing this nonsense to take place?

Yeah. So the question that you were challenged with is, does

Andy Stanley allow homosexuals to serve in his church? Well, I think we clearly see that he doesn't prevent them from serving because of homosexuality.

He only prevents them if they're in a homosexual relationship while still married.

Right. And so this was a longer episode than most. Now, one of the things I wanted to do, I was curious. And so I decided to go out to a tool called

ChatGPT. You can go search for it. But basically what this is, is this is an

AI, an artificial intelligence chat that goes through the entire internet, goes through all of the communications and things.

And you can type things in and it gives you answers. You've been having fun with this, haven't you?

I have. Well, I have a background in AI and cybersecurity. So yeah,

I do have an interest in this. And I do think it's a very dangerous thing to see how this could get used.

So that's why I look into it. But I have been looking into this and it is interesting to see what it comes up with with things.

So I decided to ask the question. And I will say that when you ask certain issues on this chat

AI, it will be very clear that they are going to be very open to issues,

CRT, homosexuality, things like that. They're going to be more that leaning. You're even going to see it in this answer.

Because I asked the question, does Andy Stanley believe in homosexuality? So this is going through, using artificial intelligence to go through everything that's on the internet and very quickly come up with an answer.

And this was the answer I received. Andy Stanley is a pastor and author who has spoken publicly about his belief that the

Bible is clear that sexual activity should only occur within the context of a marriage between one man and one woman.

He has also stated that while he personally disagrees with the lifestyle of homosexuality, individuals should be treated with love and respect.

It's important to note that some people may interpret his statement differently and that it's always best to read or hear his words directly rather than rely on second hand sources.

I agree with that, except for one thing. Is Andy Stanley a pastor and author who's spoken publicly that his belief is clear that sexual activity should occur within the context of marriage between one man and one woman?

Yes, that's true. But this is the reason we've done this whole episode, because that's what people think.

This is what people are thinking. And there's even some of you maybe listening to this that are disagreeing with what we're saying because you think that.

But this is the reason we put him in his own words. This is the reason we spent the time going through this and pointing it out and dissecting this so that you could see the tactics played, the way this is done, and what's happening in this story that he tells.

Because when it states that he personally disagrees with the lifestyle of homosexuality, we didn't see that in this story.

When it says that he thinks individuals should be treated with love and respect, we do see that in this story.

In fact, we see that so much that we see no mention that he disagrees with the lifestyle.

And so we did exactly what Chad AI told us to do. We played him in his own words so you could hear it.

And so we went directly to the source. We're not giving you secondhand information. We didn't say, okay, we'll just clip this part and take it out of context.

We played the whole story. You can go back to my summary, ask yourself, was it out of context?

You can go and grab the clip that from Facebook that Drew has.

There you go. You can get it. The thing is that what you see is that he is softening.

He is not saying he disagrees with homosexuality. The only thing, think about this, the only thing that he really was critical about in this account was the fact that the guy was having a relationship while not divorced.

Maybe you could say he was secondarily, indirectly critical of the original wife for kicking the husband out of church and being mad at him.

That's indirect, wasn't direct, but he was clear that directly the issue he had with was the adultery.

Yep. That goes against the idea of what Chad AI is saying that he personally disagrees with the lifestyle.

Yeah. He allows homosexuals to serve in his church.

This is becoming the thing. You know, Justin Peters did a thing with a friend of mine,

Pastor Casey Butner, who's down in Orlando, Florida, about First Baptist Church Orlando.

You could go see, we've dealt with it on Apologetics Live as well, where Casey has pointed out that they allow homosexuals to serve as ushers.

Well, then you're not saying, okay, you're having one of two things then, folks. Either you're saying that anybody can serve, service doesn't have any kind of criteria for it, or you're saying that you don't think that homosexuality is a bad thing.

In Andy Stanley's case, though, he does have qualifications for those who serve because he told the person he can't serve because he's in an adulterous relationship.

But being in a homosexual relationship doesn't disqualify him. That's the point.

So in answering the question, does Andy Stanley allow homosexuals to serve in church?

The answer is yes. By his own words, he clearly does not have an issue with homosexuals serving in church.

He only has an issue of homosexuals serving church while still married to someone else.

Yeah. And in the Atlanta area, Andy's not the only one. So Andy's best friend growing up was

Louie Giglio. Louie Giglio planted Passion City Church right in the heart of Atlanta.

And at Passion City Church, they allow open homosexuals to serve.

Now, in the church I used to be a member of, there were people who were there from Passion City, and they left

Passion City for this specific reason. They said that Passion City allowed open homosexuals to serve at the church, but they were not allowed to say anything about it.

They're not allowed to talk about it. They're not allowed to disclose it to anything. They're allowed to serve, and everyone else must remain quiet about it.

There were actually a lot of people that left Passion City Church because of that.

Now, you'd never know because, of course, their big attraction now is Sadie Robertson.

She comes in and speaks, and Passion City is all about basically a big youth group for adults.

But see, this is the state of church. And folks, I know this was a longer episode than I typically do, but hey,

I couldn't clip the context, right? We want to make sure we play it in context, tell his story, or let him tell his story because we wanted to answer his question.

So there's a lot of talk with Andy Stanley, and maybe eventually we'll talk about him unhitching the

Old Testament. But the thing is that I just want to remind you, this was not a clip from 2023.

This is an older clip. And so this has been his stance for a long time.

Remember, he's telling this story and saying that the event happened when he put this guy out of the church.

Oh, that was three years later is when the wife is restoring the relationship. So this was years before.

And he preached this, what was it, 2010, you said? Yeah, somewhere around 2010, 2011, might have been 2012.

So again, it had to have happened in 2007, right?

So this has been a long -held position. So I know it's longer. Next week, hopefully,

Drew will come back on and we're going to talk about something more theological. We'll talk about the doctrine of salvation and whether we are secure in our salvation.

In other words, once we are saved, can we lose that salvation?

That's a big question. A lot of people ask that. A lot of people ponder that. And that will be what

Drew and I cover in the next episode of The Wrap Report. I hope you're there.