Exclusive: Contemporaneous Text Messages from 2019 Support Gay-Affirming Charges Against Andy Stanley
On Sept 19, 2019, Andy Stanley, pastor of the 40,000-member megachurch North Point Community Church, participated in a private dinner with several pastors in Gilbert, Arizona. Stanley was in town for a conference and after it ended, local clergy joined him for a Q&A that was not live-streamed and was closed to the public.
There, Stanley spent the next hour and a half spouting deeply troubling and unbiblical views on homosexuality, shocking other people in the room. He suggested there’s room for gay marriage in the church, that he might officiate a gay wedding, and that we shouldn’t tell people they need to give up their homosexuality to follow and remain in Christ.
Stanley’s true view makes sense, given the abhorrent and theologically bankrupt practices North Point Community Church is imposing on the next generation, covered here Exclusive! Andy Stanley’s Children Ministry Overrun and Led by Pro-LBGTQ+ Activists and here Exclusive! North Point Church Leader Recommends All-LGBTQ+ Queer Counselling Collective For Struggling Gay Children
Two other pastors in attendance at the meeting quickly backed up these allegations from Visconti. Pastor Luke Simmons of Redemption Gateway Church in Mesa, and Pastor Brian Kruckenberg of New City Church in Phoenix confirmed it happened as described.
Protestia has recieved contemporaneous text messages from the same day and the day after the incident, supporting the allegations made. Pastor Visconti sent one message to a pastor friend and the other to a group chat of three pastors, after the event, who were shocked and distraught at the news. We’ve blurred out some details to protect the privacy of the recipients, such as the listing of several churches in attendance.
The second text brings us new information, recounting Andy as saying:
“a gay man who wants to be a Christian has 3 options 1) Celibacy with “no hope of romance or partnership.” (He makes that sound tragic as if romantic relationship is a basic human right). 2) Marry someone of opposite sex (he says that’s a bad idea and rarely lasts. 3) marry someone of same sex. (He said we should make room for those who choose option 3 in the church, and it’s better than promiscuity).
We have reached out to North Point Community Church for comment and will update this post accordingly.
Never forget: Stanley previously said that it doesn’t matter if the bible is true, so long as it’s ‘mostly reliable, and that the “foundation of our faith is not the whole bible. In 2018, he got shellacked from all sides for saying that Christians needed to unhitch themselves from the Old Testament and in a recent sermon, told Christians not to follow Jesus through the Old Testament, but only through the Gospels. A few weeks ago, he said there’s no ‘Clear Divine Standard’ of God revealed to mankind, and then documented him explaining that pastors should preach in a way that gives pagans permission not to believe.
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Dallas Theological Seminary has some ‘splainin’ to do , in my opinion. DTS president Mark Yarbrough enthusiastically affirmed in an alumni publication a few years ago, and the official DTS website under the Academics tab currently boasts of two-year church residency programs for MACL students, of which in the lead-off position is North Point Church in Atlanta, flying under the DTS banner of “North Point Leadership Residency”.
Mark Yarbrough and DTS have been quite enthusiastic about their relationship with DTS grad Andy Stanley and North Point Church for years; but why?
This isn’t new information coming out about Stanley and North Point – the specifics may be new, but the tone and tenor of Stanley and North Point have been obvious to anyone paying attention – his theological drift and aberrations have been well-documented for years. DTS prides itself on expository preaching, and yet Stanley publicly trashes it and mocks it. I can only conclude that Yarbrough and significant ranks of leadership are either thoroughly compromised, or completely lacking in biblical discernment.
My favorite prof at DTS was John Hannah, who cryptically commented in class one day, “in a hundred years, DTS will have gone completely liberal”. That was in the early nineties; I’d say he only missed it by about seventy-five years.
In my opinion, DTS has been liberal for a long time. They began hosting speakers from the who’s who of the contemporary, emergent church ilk a couple of decades ago. The Fellowship Bible Church movement is full of woke, social justice, contemporary, wishy-washy pastors. I’ve never known a serious DTS grad that wasn’t trying to do much more than push dispensational theology. I do know some well educated DTS grads, who upon further study post-seminary, converted to Reformed, Amillennialist.
If humans want it have sex with other humans why does gender matter? We don’t have gender if we wanna get real: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
Sorry, you can’t accept parts of Scripture you like while discarding parts that condemn your sin, and you know it.
You’re not Reformed, you’re deluded. Wake up from your death march to hell before it is too late.
Read the previous verse then the following verse, then the whole chapter and book. 3:28, one of the most abused verses in the Bible, is not at all about eliminating undeniable human identities and existence (nor is it or Galatians about church government or church offices and who may fill them;), but about the liberality and inheritance of the blessings of the Abrahamic covenant in Christ, regardless of national, racial, cultural, or gender (male or female) distinctions. If you want to know Paul’s teaching in Galatians about sexual sin, read Galatians 5:19-21, which is entirely compatible with what Jesus said in Matthew 15:18-20 and Matthew 19:3-9.
It has become pretty obvious that Stanley is an apostate, and that his “church” is a goat pen. Evangelicalism is a complete wasteland populated with wolves in the pulpits. There is not a faithful church I would recommend to a new believer within over a thousand miles of me, and the one I would recommend I’m moving to that area this spring, God willing.
I just think Andy needs a new dresser. Those shirts are just horrible.
The three options he gave show how much he doesn’t have a Biblical worldview. They are rooted in darwinism, psychology, sociology, and a collectivist view of what he believes is best for society, with no concern for individual eternal ramifications.
In reality, homosexuals have the same two options as everybody else:
1) Repent, submit to the Lord, be born again, turn from sin, become separated from, and dead to, sin
2) Pridefully continue in sin, remain unseparated from it, and spend eternity in Hell
Stanley would not only have them choose the second option, but would try to convince everyone else to choose it also, through continuing in the sin of tolerating, accepting, supporting, encouraging, and endorsing sin, in prideful rejection of and rebellion against God.
great post tekton!
Well said! I Love this!
I’m sorry but I’ve always thought Andy Stanley is an effeminate wimp. Maybe he’s had some homosexual adventures, at least same-sex attraction? Why else would a man look and dress like him? Sure explains his liberal ideology and homosexual acceptance. Oh, but I digress, maybe he’s just an metro-sexual pansy.
Oh wow, a real tough guy.
He reads as super cool to me, but I guess I do see the metro-sexual aspect now that you point it out.
I live in the area and have many acquaintances who attend there. He’s still highly thought of in the evangelical community here. Maybe God will open people’s eyes soon.
I attended his church for about 8 years and Andy is not effeminate wimp. He dresses very normal –Oxford cloth button down shirts and jeans. Nothing wimpy about that. What do you mean, “his looks”? He looks like anyone else.
As is always the case, success breeds hatred. Andy Stanley is the founding pastor of North Point Ministries, the parent organization of the 8 North Point Community of churches in Atlanta and 100’s more around the country and world.
I began attending NPCC in January 2002. I accepted Christ on Easter 2002, but Andy spoke to me in every service. I could no longer live without Christ. The journey to today has been wild.
I find all these attacks on Andy Stanley and North Point to be quite disturbing, as I have a long relationship with the organization.
Andy is not shy about wading into topics most pastors wouldn’t touch. I’ve gotten to the point that when Andy makes certain statements, I think, “Oh, they’re going to use that comment out of context.” Andy always backs up his teaching with scripture.
What about what he said is untrue?
All the controversy over how the church handles the LGBT community is a big nothing burger. Everyone know someone who is gay. What is the church supposed to do? Tell them they cannot worship with us? No, Jesus said, “Love God and love one another as I have loved you”. We don’t get to judge, that’s God’s job. All we can do is love and be the hands & feet of Jesus, or as my wife says, Jesus in skin.
This website seems to be very negative, very judgmental. In short, not very Christ-like.