Christianity Today Promotes Gay-Affirming Ministry (with Ties to North Point Church)

Next fall, North Point Community Church is hosting the Unconditional Conference, where Andy Stanley will be a keynote speaker. The conference is being put on by Embracing the Journey, a radical gay-affirming ministry that partners with North Point and offers to counsel parents of struggling LGBTQ+ children, all the while telling them that their child cannot change and they need to stop trying to.

Nearly all the speakers at this conference are gay-affirming, including Brian Nietzel, who is married to a man and has spoken at North Point before. Nietzel co-founded Renovus, an LGBTQ-affirming advocacy network, where leaders and pastors of North Point Community Church sit on the board.

Nietzel also founded Making Things Right ministries, where he seeks to bridge the gap between Christians and the LGBTQ+ community by moving Christians into the affirming camp. His mission statement is to “help reform the Christian response and responsibility to the LGBTQ+ community” and he does this by trying to get Christians to shift their theology through the power of ‘story.’

He also has a podcast consisting of seven episodes, where all his guests are gay-affirming, including North Point leader Gregory Cook (co-founder of Renovus who recently said Andy Stanley affirmed him in his homosexuality), pastor Debbie Causey of North Point (the gay-affirming Director of Care Networks who likewise said Stanley affirmed her son in his homosexuality, and who sits on the board of Renovus) and Sandi Hardmon-Waldrop, a gay-affirming leader at North Point church who leads a Parent Connect group (and also sits on the board of Renovus)

The premise of the podcast is straightforward: tell stories about why open and unrepentant homosexuals are our Christian brothers and sisters that must be celebrated and accepted wholly in the church.

Enter Christianity Today (CT).

We’ve rarely been friendly toward CT, and with good reason. Led by Russell Moore, they’re the progressive rag known for virtue-twerking and giving a platform to every weird and liberally insidious bent.

They carried op-ed’s by Karen Swallow Prior saying it was un-Christlike to call women who killed their babies ‘murderers’ because abortion is not murder, had a lesbian Roman Catholic write about her masturbation habits, comparing masturbation to worship and describing Christianity as a “erotic” religion.

They came swinging against the violence at Capitol Hill on January 6th, laying the responsibility for the mayhem at the feet of the “white American church” and any leaders who voted for and supported the President.

They proclaimed that anyone who voted for the GOP was an inherent racist who was committing “politically motivated spiritual violence” against black folk.

They released editorials calling Trump voters “jobless” and “uneducated,” with former Editor-in-Chief Mark Galli explaining that he didn’t even know any Trump supporters, and the next Editor-in-Chief comparing any churches being open during COVID to engaging in “snake handling.”

Despite their smug pedigree, mere months ago, Christianity Today was rocked by a major scandal, revealing that ‘sexual harassment went unchecked’ at the company for a decade, all the while they preened as our moral betters.

Given what we know, it’s no surprise that in January of 2022, CT was contacted by Nietzel who wanted to buy advertising space for Making Things Right, despite it being a pro-LGBTQ+ advocacy scheme. Undaunted, CT took the money, helping to launch the marketing campaign.

Christianity Today promoted the show across numerous podcasts and avenues. Nietzel joyfully exclaimed that the ads would reach over 100,000 Christians and church leaders, appearing on shows like Church Politics, Monday Morning Pastor, and Theology Q & A.

He later rejoiced that midway through the month, they’d reached 6000 downloads.

The ad reads in part: “This episode is brought to you in part by Brian Nietzel and his new podcast Making Things Right, which is an invitation for the church to restore faith in the LGBTQ+ community.”

Christianity Today ran a month of ads for MTR, a gay-affirming podcast from a gay-affirming activist organization that has close ties to Andy Stanley's church. These ads showed up before several CT podcasts, like Monday Morning Pastor. See the story at https://t.co/gFoyICaUUz pic.twitter.com/RncpfkHkFU
— Protestia (@Protestia) February 14, 2023