Tag: parent connect

Categories
News

North Point Pastor Recommends Struggling Christians Attend ‘Queer Parent Summit’

The Q Christian Fellowship is the world’s most prominent gay-affirming Christian activist and advocacy group. Founded by Justin Lee as the Gay Christian Network in 2001, its mission is to cultivate radical belonging for LGBTQ+ Christians and allies. They are perhaps best known for their Q Christian Fellowship Conferences, also widely considered the largest annual LGBTQ+ Christian event in the world.

Past speakers have included fetishist Sam Britton, the non-binary government official that Biden appointed to the Department of Energy that was also into “puppy play” and wearing leather dog masks, mystic Richard Rohr, and Danny Cortez, the gay-affirming pastor who was famously disfellowshipped from the SBC after his son came out as a homosexual.

Other speakers have included Candice Czubernat, who founded a counseling collective of all-LGBTQ therapists that North Point church pastors recommend for struggling gay kids, UMC Bishop Karen Oliveto, and an assortment of random feminist clergy from dying mainline denominations.

They are joined by North Point Community Church pastors and leaders. 

Debbie Causey, the gay-affirming pastor and Director of North Point’s Care Network has spoken there, along with Amy Blakselee, the gay-affirming Director of Parent Connect, which is North Points’ ministry to parents with gay kids. Other speakers have included Greg and Lynn McDonald, Parent Connect leaders and founders of Embracing the Journey, a gay-affirming organization North Point church uses and recommends.

During one of their breakout talks at the QFC, Causey and Blakeslee recommended a slew of gay-affirming resources including Embracing the Journey, Harbor, and the QCF’s own Parents’ Summit.


The Q Christian Fellowship Parent’s Summit is being held this year at Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago, IL, one of the largest congregations of the apostate PCUSA denomination. The conference’s mission is to “encourage, equip, and connect parents of LGBTQ+ children” through a series of Q &A, breakout sessions, panels, and workshops. The thrust of the messaging is simple: your child cannot and will not change, and so you need to love and affirm them, lest they kill themselves or cut off all contact with you.

Speakers at the upcoming sessions will include the aforementioned Danny Cortez, Linda Robertson, author of Just Because he Breathes and QFC board member, and some other gay-affirming ministers. North Point church’s Amy Blakeslee was the panel facilitator last year, and it’s unclear if she will again serve as moderator this year. 

One thing that is clear, however, is that North Point Church is thoroughly corrupt and compromised. Parents coming for help with their struggling and questioning gay children will not be given hope, but rather pointed to a pathway to hell and hopelessness paved with rainbows and gay-affirming resources. 

From Embracing the Journey to Harbor, the Christian Closet to Q Christian Conferences, is there no one that will point children and parents towards sound biblical orthodoxy rather than capitulation to confusion?

None that we have encountered. 

Those North Point kids are goners. 

For more resources detailing Andy Stanley’s LGBTQ+ affirmations:

Gay Man with a ‘Husband’ Scheduled to Speak with Andy Stanley At His Church’s Family Conference
ALMOST ALL Speakers at Andy Stanley’s Upcoming ‘Christian’ Conference are LGBTQ+ Affirming!
Celebrating Transgenderism?! North Point Church Staffers Rejoice After Man Comes Out as Woman

Audio: Gay North Point Church Leader Says Andy Stanley Affirmed Him in His Homosexuality
Dr. Michael Brown Says He’s Spent 8 Years Exchanging Texts and Emails with Andy Stanley, Who Has REFUSED to Condemn Homosexuality

Did a Pastor at Andy Stanley’s Church Just Out Him as Gay-Affirming?! Read the Excerpts
North Point Leader Recommends All-LGBTQ+ Queer Counselling Collective For Struggling Gay Kids
Contemporaneous Text Messages from 2019 Support Gay-Affirming Charges Against Andy Stanley 

Andy Stanley’s Children Ministry Overrun and Led by Pro-LBGTQ+ Activists
North Point Pastor Praises Gay Man’s Affirming Org. ‘Lord, Let Him Create More Allies for the LGBTQ Community’
Andy Stanley’s Church Hosts and Promotes Pro-LBGTQ+ Ministry
Surprise Surprise, Another North Point Church Leader is Gay-Affirming and Wildly Liberal

Categories
News

Another One?! Gay-Affirming North Point Church Leader Hosted Same-Sex Wedding Reception

With the news that Andy Stanley’s North Point Community Church has become a cesspool filled with LGBTQ+ affirming pastors, leaders, ministries, guest speakers, and conferences, it’s unsurprising that as more stones are overturned, more deviant theology emerges.

Gay Man with a ‘Husband’ Scheduled to Speak with Andy Stanley At His Church’s Family Conference
ALMOST ALL Speakers at Andy Stanley’s Upcoming ‘Christian’ Conference are LGBTQ+ Affirming!
Celebrating Transgenderism?! North Point Church Staffers Rejoice After Man Comes Out as Woman
Audio: Gay North Point Church Leader Says Andy Stanley Affirmed Him in His Homosexuality

Did a Pastor at Andy Stanley’s Church Just Out Him as Gay-Affirming?! Read the Excerpts
North Point Leader Recommends All-LGBTQ+ Queer Counselling Collective For Struggling Gay Kids
Contemporaneous Text Messages from 2019 Support Gay-Affirming Charges Against Andy Stanley Andy Stanley’s Children Ministry Overrun and Led by Pro-LBGTQ+ Activists

North Point Hosting Conference With Founder of World’s Largest LGBTQ Christian Advocacy Org
Andy Stanley’s Church Hosts and Promotes Pro-LBGTQ+ Ministry
Surprise Surprise, Another North Point Church Leader is Gay-Affirming and Wildly Liberal

Sandi Harman-Waldrop is a long-time member of North Point Community Church. After her child came out as gay in 2011, she searched for resources but found none she liked, until she and her husband became leaders at Parent Connect, where they’ve been for the last six years.

Where did Parent Connect come from? Amy Blakeslee is the Director of Parent Connect, and she explains the origins in her Q Conference bio.

Hello! My name is Amy. I identify as gay, my pronouns are she/her, and I’m the proud parent of three adult kids, one of whom also identifies as gay. Over the past ten years I had the privilege of meeting with hundreds of parents of LGBTQ+ children through my position on the Care staff at North Point Community Church. 

As more and more parents reached out to the church for support, I began meeting with them in their homes. Parent Connect was birthed, one of the first church-based ministries in the nation created specifically for Christian parents of LGBTQ+ kids.

Parent Connect exists to “inspire parents of LGBTQ+ children to follow Jesus by providing a safe environment where they can experience community and personal growth.” This is done through a series of meetings, get-togethers, mentorship, and curriculum studies with parents and their gay or trans kids.

Parent Connect uses a curicculum from Embracing the Journey, a pro-LGBTQ group, who believes that children cannot change their sexuality, and that if they say they’re gay, they must be affirmed no matter what, lest they be led to suicide. She explains some of her backstory.

Harman-Waldrop eventually became a board member of Renovus Network, a pro-LBGTQ+ advocacy group whose mission is to “Connect LGBTQ+ individuals to reclaim and develop their relationship with Jesus” and who envision “a world where no one has to choose between their faith and sexual orientation or gender identity.”

Renovus was co-founded by Gregory Cook, a leader with the North Point Community Church Production team for the last 13 years. She’s joined on the board by North Point pastor Debbie Causey and North Point leader Greg McDonald, founder of Embracing the Journey.

Harman-Waldrop is a big fan of gay pride parades. She considers herself a “Pride mom” and attends to give out hugs and show her support for the LGBTQ+ community.

A couple of years ago she hosted a same-sex wedding reception at her house for Brian Nietzel. Nietzel is the co-founder of Renovus and speaker at at upcoming North Point Conference who ‘married’ his partner Dan. Naturally, several other leaders at North Point Church were in attendance at the nupitals.

At this point we’re left wondering; given that all five leaders of Parent Connect that we’ve investigated so far have been gay-affirming, are they the rule and not the exception?

Categories
News

Gay Man with a ‘Husband’ Scheduled to Speak with Andy Stanley At His Church’s Family Conference

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.

In recent weeks Protestia has uncovered that not only is Stanley gay-affirming, but rather several ministry heads are as well. We wrote how when parents come to them with concerns and counseling regarding their struggling LGBTQ+ children, North Point recommends an affirming ministry for the parents, and affirming, progressive, all-gay counselors for the children.

We also learned that almost all the speakers at this conference are LGBTQ+-affirming.

One speaker we wanted to highlight is Brian Nietzel, an open and unapologetically affirming ‘Gay Christian.’ Brian ‘married’ his partner Dan last year and now lives unrepentantly in a grotesque parody of a one-flesh union. 

Crucially, Nietzel also founded the Renovus Network, a pro-LGBTQ+ advocacy group whose mission is to “Connect LGBTQ+ individuals to reclaim and develop their relationship with Jesus” and envision “a world where no one has to choose between their faith and sexual orientation or gender identity.”

Along with Nietzel, Renovus was co-founded by Gregory Cook, an openly gay man who serves on the board of Directors. Cook has been a leader with the North Point Community Church for the last 13 years. He’s joined on the board by gay-affirming North Point Pastrix Debbie Causey and gay-affirming ‘Embracing the Journey’ founder Greg McDonald.

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.’

The pastors at North Point Community Church have opened their arms to Nietzel, and he was recently a guest speaker at their Parent Connect group. He shares: 

I presented to nearly 200 parents, LGBTQ+ folks, and church staff at Parent Connect, a vital ministry in Atlanta helping parents love their LGBTQ+ kids well. It was an epic experience!⁠

I shared some of my story and struggle to find peace with God as a gay man, and my long yet full-circle experience with my parents. Then my good friend Caleb shared his story. He bravely brought some edges and urgency, as he chronicled disappointments with his parents and more so with the Christian Church.⁠ The response was overwhelmingly positive. 


Nietzel is speaking at the upcoming North Point Conference with Stanley, and he’s overjoyed to be given the opportunity. Given his close ties with other North Point leaders and all the ways they intersect and connect, knowing full well who he is, what he believes, and what his theological proclivities are, he’s likely an integral piece in moving the church in the dark direction it is inevitably barreling toward.

Categories
News

Exclusive! North Point Church Leader Recommends All-LGBTQ+ Queer Counselling Collective For Struggling Gay Children

For years North Point Community Church, led by Andy Stanley, has been partnering with and promoting affirming LGBTQ+ organizations when desperate parents come to see them for help with their struggling gay children, all done through the Parent Connect Ministry. This is no surprise, as Andy Stanley sets the priorities for his church, as revealed in a private, shocking Q&A where he offered some heretical hot takes on homosexuality.

Parent Connect exists to “inspire parents of LGBTQ+ children to follow Jesus by providing a safe environment where they can experience community and personal growth.” This is done through meetings, get-togethers, mentorship, and curriculum studies with parents and their gay or trans kids so they can work through their issues. Recently, they had Queer Eye for the Straight Guy icon Mama Tammye as a guest speaker and teacher.

Parent Connect is led by Amy Blakeslee, an openly queer woman, and is overseen by Debbie Causey. Causey is a long-tenured pastrix at North Point Community Church and the director of their Care network of ministries. Years ago, after her son came out as gay, she wrote the book The Big Reveal: Loving Your LGBTQ+ Child While Strengthening Your Faith, which details her experiences handling her son’s revelations. Prominent gay activist Justin Lee wrote the forward of her book, and she has his endorsement on her website. Causey speaks at pro-LGBTQ+ events such as Q Christian Fellowships.

One pro-gay organization that North Point leaders highly recommend and refer out-of-state parents to is Embracing the Journey, which we covered in our exclusive article here. That article also details how pastors and church leaders at North Point are board members of another Pro-LGBTQ+ activist and advocacy group called Renovus, including Causey. 

But there are more.

In a conversation about her book with Embracing the Journey leaders, Causey gets asked about recommendations for a “safe” counselors, which is a coded word they use to describe affirming counselors. She recommends an organization called ‘The Christian Closet,’ which she describes as a “great group” specifically designed for children and youth struggling with their identity, and McDonald agrees.

The Christian Closet is a collective of all-LGBTQ+ Christian counselors that offer virtual mental help on topics like depression, coming out, transitioning, starting your first queer relationship, deconstructing, dealing with trauma, and everything in between. It’s “an online therapeutic resource for people who are trying to work out what it means to have a LGBTQI sexual identity, or gender identity within a Christian context.”

This is not to say that some of the counselors are gay or that a majority are gay, but rather that all of them are gay.

Their website reads:

It’s a rare thing to find a therapist who personally understands the intersections of faith with sexual and gender identity. When most people find us they exclaim with relief “In finding TCC, I’ve found a needle-in-a-haystack.” When you choose a Christian Closet therapist, you don’t have to choose between someone who gets your faith or sexual orientation. That is why all of our clinicians identify somewhere on the LGBTQ+ spectrum and have done the work of reconciling their faith with that.

By doing the work of reconciling, they mean that they are all affirming in their theology and believe that homosexuality is something to be celebrated. 

Once you are ready to commit, you can peruse through the bios of individual counselors to see who you mesh well with. You can pick Karen Pace Poland, an ex-Southern Baptist who shares: 

“I also began to experience shifts in my beliefs which caused tension in our marriage. When our marriage ended I had become gay affirming and embraced that my gay friends and family members could be both Christian and gay. Since that time I’ve made peace with those two parts in me, which has been a beautiful journey. Today, I am in a loving relationship with my partner, Kim. We are both really late-bloomer lesbians.” 

Or there’s Britt Kesserow.

I identify as queer, lesbian, and genderfluid. I am a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in California, with a specialization in LGBTQ+ Affirmative therapy from Antioch University. I am passionate about working with LGBTQ+ individuals, particularly those of you whose multifaceted identities include an important, central, faith practice, and/or relationship with divinity. My work is relational and client-centered, guided by anti-racist principles, and the belief that we can deconstruct harmful stories and co-author new ones for the betterment of ourselves and our communities.

Or a dozen more options, whose price per session ranges from $130$/h to $245/h

But what if you’re not LGBTQ+ but are a parent or sibling trying to relate to their gay family member? The Christian Closet offers those services through Progressive Christian Counseling, which they describe as their “sister site” with all the same counselors. 

Here we read: “We believe in an inclusive, transformational God who’s more interested in a “soft and open heart” versus a prescriptive way of living.” and “We’ve seen the link between shame and the requirements to work to be like Christ’s perfection. And we’ve seen the damage that comes to someone’s life when prescriptive ways of living lead to feeling worse about one’s humanness.”

We further read that: ‘We believe that you were born into original goodness and that even pain from a focus on purity comes from a beautiful place inside of you,” where “All of our therapists come from Christian backgrounds and now identify as progressive Christians themselves” Then we get this banger:

There is no hope for children struggling with their sexuality if they’re going to these places to get this sort of help. The adults have stacked the deck against them. All the paths to freedom and deliverance have been taken away.

North Point Community Church leaders, when faced with a family who is struggling because their 13-year-old daughter or 10-year-old son says they think they might be gay or non-binary, and is looking for some sound, biblical counseling and resources, directs the parents to pro-LBGTQ+ organization Embracing the Journey, and the kids to pagan pro-LBGTQ+ counselors at The Christian Closet.

My God.