Episode 475 - (Part 2) Pieter Valk Equips the Church To Love Gay People

Welcome to Voices in My Head, the official podcast of me, Rick Lee James.

I'm a recording artist, a singer, a songwriter, an author, a worship leader, and an ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene. The Voices in My Head podcast is where I discuss music, movies, books, pop culture, theology, and more with friends, colleagues, and sometimes just by myself. Now make sure to let me know what you think of today's episode by leaving me a review on iTunes or by tweeting at me @RickLeeJames on Twitter. And please join my mailing list at RickLeeJames.com where you can receive an email every time a new episode is released. By the way, in case you're interested in a daily dose of kindness and encouragement beyond this podcast, I also run the Twitter account @MrRogersSay where I post daily quotes from Fred Rogers, one of the voices in my head. Well, I guess that's it for the intro, so sit back, relax, and listen to the latest episode of Voices in My Head.

Welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I'm your host, Rick Lee James, and what I didn't realize at the time we were but now I know it's a two-part episode. So if you missed last week, you're gonna want to tune in. My guest is Peter Volk, and Peter Volk is a speaker and author who shares about discernment, vocational singleness, and the LGBT+ topics according to a traditional sexual ethic. We had a great conversation just prior to this in our previous show, and this week we want to continue the conversation because Peter gave us a whole lot to think about last week. We were talking about things like what to do when someone comes to a person in the church and is struggling with their sexual identity, and things that people in the church can say to be a help and not a burden. We were talking about things like how to save lives, because the suicide rate goes up often when people are feeling like they don't have a safe place to tell people about what they're going through. We're talking about things like vocational singleness and the singleness of Jesus and Paul and the way that Peter is living out his life in a different way than many people would probably think about, and talking about modeling what it means to be a gay Christian, what it means to be faithful to Jesus while at the same time identifying as a gay person. So there's so much in that episode 1. If you missed it, you'll wanna go back and listen because we're gonna kinda springboard off into this second part of the conversation today. So Peter, welcome back to this conversation that we're continuing today. I'm so glad. That hopefully people listened last week, had a chance to process a bit of what they are hearing. Maybe it was new to them. We're going to dive right in for the second time.

So, yeah, glad to be back.

Yeah. So, yeah. So where we left off just a few moments ago is you were talking about some interesting things. And I think you used the term vocational singleness, I think, and being called to celibacy. When I hear words like that, instantly makes me think, oh, we shouldn't be trying to hide our gay Christians in the background or push them out the door. We should actually be welcoming them in and saying, hey, show us the way that you are actually living out a costly discipleship here in a way that's a good example. You talked a little bit about how the church hasn't done a very good job of embracing singleness as a way of living, and that doesn't matter whether you're gay, straight, either way. We haven't always done a very good job, at least most churches in my recollection haven't always done a very good job of bringing singleness as even an option sometimes. And right now, probably dreading those Sundays where, like Valentine's Day, if churches do a Valentine's Sunday or something, which sometimes happens, they think, oh, not again, you know, where am I to find my place in this. So I think this is an important part of the conversation. You are actually helping to equip, which is great because that's your ministry, is equip. You are helping equip not only the church to love gay people, but I think you are helping the church to understand in a new way that there is such a thing as being single and Christian too. You know, there's such a thing as being called to a vocational singleness. So I want to hear more about these communities that you are establishing that specifically through your ministry in Nashville, because you have a really unique way of presenting this idea of almost as a new monasticism that you have set up and that you're creating community. So could you talk to us a little bit about Family of Brothers in Nashville and kind of how that came to be and what you're doing in finding ways to help people create new community and new ways of intimacy?

Right, right. Yeah. So, um, yes, I mean, first I'll start with just highlighting that I think it's meaningful that our Savior was celibate, and it's meaningful that what we know about kind of where we'll ultimately find ourselves in the New Jerusalem and the new heavens and new earth— Jesus says in Matthew 22, if I'm getting the chapter right, um, that there will be no marriage in heaven. And, and Christians have historically understood that to mean and there will be no sex, and there will be no making of new kids in heaven either. That we're all going to be celibate in heaven. Um, and so now, that's not a pronouncement that there's anything bad about romance or sex or marriage. Those are good things, and those are things that are of this age, of this era. Um, but ultimately, we're destined for a world in perfect communion, perfect relationship with God and each other, where we won't need the exclusivity, um, that's involved in marriage in order to find family and have faithful relationship in the body of Christ and have our intimacy needs met in, in healthy ways. Um, and we won't— because we will not be bearing new children, there, there won't be sex, but, but the kind of healthy intimacy that we're going to be enjoying with God and each other. And I don't mean in a sexual way or even in a physical way, but just the emotional spiritual intimacy that we're going to be enjoying in heaven is going to be— those who enjoyed sex in this life will look back at that and say, "That just paled in comparison to how beautiful the emotional and spiritual intimacy will be that we're going to enjoy with God and each other in heaven." So it's not going to be a letdown that we're not doing that anymore. We're just going to see that as something that was good for a time, and what we've got in the future is even better. You know, we're not going to miss it. So, but part of what Jesus said was some are called to kind of live into that future reality, to live as if that kingdom was already here, right? And Jesus said that part of what he did was to— part of why he came to earth was to bring the kingdom, was to start establishing the kingdom, right? And so that's all to say, from the beginnings of the church, a meaningful minority of Christians felt they were called to be celibate, to be abstinent and single for the sake of the kingdom. And that was a really visible sign of like, these are the Christians, right? Because in Jesus's time, marriage was the primary way that you secured your legacy, that you were remembered, that you provided for financial and physical stability for different people in your community. So to give all of those up was a crazy, radical cultural thing. And it's one of the things that made Christianity really attractive, was there's this— there's some of them who are willing to give up these important cultural, financial, economic, kind of hereditary things because they really believe in this Jesus guy and they really believe in this vision for a full life that Jesus has offered now. And celibacy is not better than marriage. It's just a different way of walking out faithful Christianity. But, but, but from the beginning of the church, it's been a— it's been a meaningful minority of Christians have walked that out. And the primary way that those celibate Christians have kind of found family hasn't been just living by themselves in a cave or in the desert or out in the country or living by themselves in their own home or isolating themselves from the body of Christ. You know, in the first 400 or 500 years of the church, you know, the, the, the disciples, And the people that the disciples discipled and the people they discipled and the people they discipled, right? The first couple generations of Christians, lots of them were celibate and they just lived in the city and lived in homes with other celibate people in kind of informal ways. And they did life together, but they were also still a part of their local churches and still a part of the lives of married people and kids in their cities. And they were still a part of the economic life of the city. And they saw that they were supposed to use their availability in singleness to serve their city and to serve their church. So we've gotten away from that as modern Christians, and there's lots of reasons why we've gotten away from that. But we know that we're not doing it right, right? There's a lot of single women in our churches who maybe would prefer to marry, but for a variety of reasons are continuing in singleness. And they're saying our church needs to do a better job of singleness. We've got widows who are saying our church has got to do a better job of supporting singles. We've got perhaps some gay Christians who feel called to celibacy, who are saying our church needs to do a better job with supporting singles. We've got increasingly people who just maybe grew up in families of broken marriages and are fearful about making the commitment of marriage. And want to be single, but, but in a healthy way for a little longer. Um, they're asking our churches to do a better job with singleness. And so lots of people asking for us to do that better. How could we do that better? I think the key is offering people family in the body of Christ. And I think the key to that is let's get back to how the early church did it. Let's get back to how Jesus's disciples did it, and their disciples, and their disciples, and their disciples, the first couple generations of Christians. Let's imitate the— let's find the secret sauce of how they did family in the body of Christ and do it today.

That's a lot for us to think about in our American context, for sure, because we are so, in some ways, individualized to the maximum that we think of everything in terms of just, you know, me and myself and what I want. And on the other hand, there's also this thing that we have done, I think, somehow in our society is we have made idols not just of romance sometimes, as I've heard you talk about before, but I think sometimes we've made an idol of just like the nuclear family of, you know, having wife, kids, or husband, wife, two little kids, dog, picket fence, all these things. And we've gosh, there's so much we could talk on today. But it's not just this matter of like singleness and singles. You do have a place in the kingdom of God. And even our Savior was a single, you know, man in his 30s. Um, it's— it brings up these other issues too, like what about the couple who can't have children? You know, how, how, you know, must they feel at times? Um, like, are they broken? Is there something wrong with them? You know, and these are things that Just go through people's minds. There's so many other issues that, that get, you know, that are brought out when we have conversations like this that I think the church could do better on and could, could find better ways. I love the way that you are emphasizing the need for community, the need to have sort of a new family, and it almost creates this countercultural way that is a very Christian thing, you know, like we don't have to look like everybody in the world does on this. It doesn't have to look this way, and it doesn't have to be that way because Christ is doing a new thing. He's calling us to new and good things. And there's this idea that God is continually making all things new. I love the way that you expressed it a few moments ago when you were talking, when you said the way that we are called to live down the road in eternity is the way that maybe God is calling some of us to live now, which is I think, um, a high calling. I think it's a costly discipleship, and I think it's also one that a lot of people may feel inadequate to enter into. But the thing is, we are all probably, apart from Christ's power, inadequate to do anything when it comes to discipleship when we think about this. So you're giving me a lot to think about, as you have even last week. You gave me a lot to think about. And even today, I'm thinking through it again and what it means. And, and I just want to circle back to something again, because we have a bad habit in Christian communities of living lives and pushing people to live lives sometimes, whether we meant to or not, that are based on shame. And we just mentioned a few minutes ago that we have a hard time giving the same message that we want to give to, to gay Christians about being celibate We don't always seem to enforce that like we should among, uh, straight people who are celibate. And yet I just know— I looked up this morning, and this was a statistic back from 2011, okay? So this is not like a new statistic by any means, but at that time there was a published study that said 80% of Christian singles either were or had been sexually active within like the last year of that time. So it's a bigger problem, and it's something that you know, I do feel is part of, again, our discipleship that Jesus is calling us to. And so it's a hard thing. It's a good thing for us to grapple with. But at the same time, I think it's important that we also say to people, if you are one who has found yourself to not have been faithful to these vows or whatever, we also don't want to shame you to the point that we say to you in the way that we've done to a lot of people, well, we don't want you here, you know.

Right, because, because ultimately, what, what is that statistic about, right? That's not because 80% of, of single Christians, um, are just wildly unfaithful, um, disobedient, um, reckless, you know, godless people. I think at the core of that, um, is God has made all of us for healthy intimacy in the context of lived-in community. And if someone is 25 or 30 or 35 and they are not married and their churches is not— are not offering opportunities for intentional Christian community where they could be living in community and meeting their intimacy needs in healthy ways, then they're vulnerable to reach out for the cheap alternatives, and they're vulnerable to think Well, I just need a quick fix with some sexual intimacy through Tinder, and that will get me through to the next week. If our churches did a better job of cultivating intentional Christian community, cultivating the kind of community that was practiced in the early church, the first disciples, the, the first generations of disciples, the first generations of Christians, um, that would meet many people's intimacy needs in healthier ways And we wouldn't have the need for these, these cheap alternatives, because we'd be getting what we truly need in the body of Christ in healthy, God-honoring ways.

Yeah. And, and, you know, as we're talking today, I was thinking about this, this idea that the church needs to be a place of calling people in and not pushing people out. And I've forgotten his name at the conference. Henson was the last name.

Bill. Bill.

Yeah, I don't know why I forgot his first name. Yeah, Bill Henson had the most amazing quote that has stuck with me. I mean, I wrote it down, I've come back to it a number of times, but I think the way that he phrased it was, "The gospel of exclusion has no power to reach already banished people." And I just found that to be something I needed to hear, and I need to tell it to people again and again when we have this, this way, whether a person is straight, whether they are gay, whether they are struggling with who knows what in their life. We know for a fact that if we— if our gospel is one that excludes and pushes away, it's not good news. The good news of Jesus says, come to me, all you, all you who are weary and heavy laden, come to me and I will give you rest. And, and even last night was— we were reading a scripture together as a family before bed. My yoke is easy, my burden is light. You know, come to me me. I think the church has too often been the place that has made people's burdens heavier instead of offering them the yoke of Jesus that says, come, bring it all, bring all those icky places that you don't even want to deal with yourself, and just come and first allow yourself to be loved by the Savior. And, and then let us walk together in this and find out what it means to journey together in Christ. So I think I'm hearing that from your heart too, you know, fully, as we have this conversation, that you want people to find those new ways. I wonder if in our time that we have together today, do you have any stories that you could share? You know, a lot of people used to like to, you know, hold up stories that may or may not have been true. We had this success story of this person that was here, but now they're here thanks to this, and I don't know I don't know how often there was truth in some of those things, but I bet you have some stories you could share with us of maybe some people that have found community and have found fellowship through some of the work that you're doing. And would you have time just to share maybe one or two stories of— I don't know if we want to call them success stories, maybe stories of God's gracious moving in the lives of your community. I'd just love to hear about that.

Yeah, so, you know, On a personal level, you know, when I felt some clarity that I was called to vocational singleness, I went to my pastor and asked him, how am I going to find family in the body of Christ? And long story short, he encouraged me to start an intentional Christian community, to start kind of an ecumenical monastery for men called to singleness for the sake of the kingdom. And he said, hey, just go find 2 or 3 other people who are maybe looking for something similar. Commit to doing something together for a year and see what happens. Um, and, and fast forward to, to today, that, that family is— that I live in is called the Nashville Family of Brothers. And yeah, we are an ecumenically Christian monastery-building family in Nashville for men called the Vocational Singleness. So we're, we're trying to really imitate that, uh, that kind of early church way of finding family and celibacy. So we're still a part of our local churches. We've got jobs outside of our home, outside of our brotherhood. We're still connected to parents and their kids in our community and our churches. And 6 of us pray together every morning and eat a couple meals together every week and worship together once a month and go on vacations together and do some of the big holidays together and live together in a home as a family. As we discern whether to eventually make lifetime commitments to this family. And as we push each other to, to particularly leverage our 9-to-5 jobs for the sake of the kingdom, because we have some extra availability and energy as single people, and we've got maybe another 2 or 3 kind of moving in this fall to our community. So, so that's a way that we've, that we've found family. And, you know, just, just recently, for example, One of the guys in our community, um, he, he had kind of a, um, um, some hereditary predisposition to some pretty difficult kind of, uh, mental health challenges kind of hit him for the first time. Um, and our family was, was there to care for him and to have conversations with him in some of the early scary days of that. And eventually to help him get the help he needs and kind of check into a facility for a couple of weeks. And this was right before we were going to have our family Thanksgiving. And so his, his mom came down to, to our house and because she wanted to visit him while he was in the hospital and she ended up spending Thanksgiving with us at our Thanksgiving dinner table like she was. Kind of sitting in the seat that her son would sit in. And she teared up during, uh, our Thanksgiving dinner because one, she was touched that like she was just welcome into our family. And it clicked for her, this is a real family. Yeah, like, I, I get it now. I get why my son is calling this his family and is treating this like any other family. This is the real deal. 'Like, this is something that could satisfy.' Because ultimately, she, she loves her son, right? And what she knows is that marriage has been the way that she's enjoyed the most beautiful family. And she's scared that her son, if he doesn't get married, that he won't have family in the fullest way. And she felt this peace at our Thanksgiving dinner table because she realized, 'This is real family. This will be enough. This could make my son happy.' That's what any mom wants, right, is for her son to be happy.. And then, you know, yeah, and he returned to our house and we kind of made sense of all this together. So that was a really powerful time. But yeah, I've also got some other friends who they live out kind of celibacy in other ways. So I've got some friends who— there's a pastor and his church who have worked with EQUIP, the ministry that I help run. And he was so convinced of kind of this need for intentional Christian community that he started opening up his home to particularly single people at his church who needed a place to live. And particularly over the pandemic, there was one gay celibate Christian in his church that felt pretty isolated because of all the social distancing measures and kind of necessary kind of COVID bubble kind of things happening. And he said, "Well, do you want to move in with our family and be a part of our COVID bubble?" And yeah, for a year he was a part of that pastor's family, and that pastor was, I mean, inspired by kind of by this work to do that. I had another— there is another pastor at a church that EQUIP has worked with that was so— was challenged by this kind of need for intentional Christian community that he and his wife reached out to another couple who had a couple of kids and said, what if we move in together? You know, and not, not as some weird, like, quadruple thing, you know, to be clear. Like, they were, they were very— they were faithful in their marriage. There was nothing weird going on. It was just, hey, in the early church, they lived in multi-family homes, and they helped bear each other's burdens, and they helped cook for each other, and they, they went on vacation together, and they helped raise each other's kids. And they did stuff together. What if we did that, you know? Um, and they, and they did that for a season until one of the families needed to move out of town for some, uh, some extended family health-related reasons. Um, but yeah, they speak to that and say, you know, they're, they're open to, to doing that again. Um, and so, so that's really beautiful. Um, and what's been encouraging for me as well is you know, this Nashville family of brothers thing we're trying to build, it's— I hope it succeeds. It looks like it's likely to succeed, but, but if it doesn't, um, there's also a couple at my church who, um, uh, I'm the godparent to one of their kids, and I do a lot of life with them every week. I'm over at their house at least twice a week, and just this past weekend I took, uh, their son, my godson, to, to the zoo, and, you know, just, just he and I hung out for 6 hours at the zoo, or 4 hours at the zoo, and it was as a big, big time, big fun times. And they've made clear that like if something happens with the Nashville family of brothers, um, that I could move in with them. Wow. And I could be family with them and, and help them raise their kids. And, uh, so, you know, I think these are the kind of solutions that we need, whether it's people, um, staying connected to someone in their biological family, you know, living with a sister, living with a cousin, and kind of committing to being part of their family unit in some kind of long-term way and, and contributing to that family system, or kind of moving in with kind of an unrelated nuclear family at your church and doing that same kind of thing, or starting some kind of intentional Christian community that's a bunch of single guys living together, or single girls, or kind of a mix. Um, but doing something that involves a lived-in presence that involves some kind of long-term commitment. I think that's what we need to find family in the body of Christ, because ultimately, I think what some people are wondering is, is the mundane things— is who am I going to have dinner with this random night next week that I have no plans? And if I just come home to an empty house and to no one but myself, I'm going to feel really lonely. But if there's just— there's people around.

Yeah.

Having dinner. I've got someone to talk to. Yeah, you know, who am I going to talk to when I'm, when I'm, when I'm cooking, or when I'm doing my laundry, or, you know, when I'm, you know, doing the dishes, or when I'm sweeping the floor or cleaning the bathroom, you know, just, am I going to do these things alone?

Yeah.

But also people are wondering, like, you know, decades from now, if I have some kind of significant illness, who's going to be committed to me? Yeah, you know, um, or when I'm older, am I just gonna— but if I get to the point that I can't take care of myself, am I just going to be shipped off to a nursing home and never visited again? Wow. Or they're going to be people who see me as family, and, and I live in their home, and they care for me, and they hold my hand when I die. Yeah, I think those are the questions that single people are asking, um, and, and our churches need to have robust enough solutions to satisfy those longings.

Yeah. Oh, that's, that's so good. Thank you for sharing some of those stories. I'm always glad to hear of good stories of things that ultimately what I'm hearing is things that God is doing in the presence of the family of God where you are, you know, and I'm glad to hear of those things. And, you know, I was I still am trying somehow to articulate what it is that I experienced at the Love to Love conference that we were both at a few weeks ago, a couple weeks ago now. The time of this releasing actually will be several weeks. But one thing that has come to me just as we close our time together is, you know, for years I've been hearing people say, you know, We're praying for revival, we're praying for a move of the Spirit, we're praying for God to do, you know, something new in the church. But I don't know that most of the people who I've heard pray that have ever opened themselves up to the idea that what if God is bringing about a revival and it's happening among LGBTQ+ people? And, and that was something I experienced as a worship leader like in a room that had a number of people who were not straight, who were Christians, who were worshiping together. And there was something about singing together and worshiping together and seeing some real lived-out faith on people's— like, the perspective I had, I value it because nobody else had it. As I was leading worship, I could see on people's faces, I could see hands raised, I could see God doing something in our midst that was being lived out. And I was just— I was so moved by what I— what I saw God doing through the Holy Spirit in the midst of us fellowshipping together, uh, through the communion service, that which was such a beautiful time of confession of sin and of not only to God but to each other. And then to be able to come to the Lord's table and receive that, um, I guess I'm to wrap all this up on my end, I'm grateful for the way that I'm seeing God move in your life, in the people who I have met, the people who I'm continuing to encounter. And I'm grateful to say that it has somewhat restored my faith. You know, I don't know that I was walking away from my faith, but I feel like my faith is rejuvenated. Maybe that's a better way to say it, because of the, the work that people like you are doing. And the testimony and the witness that you are bringing about. So all that is to say, thank you for letting God use you in that way, Peter. I really appreciate it.

That's really encouraging to hear. Well, yeah, I mean, I'm— it's— I'm definitely— I'm encouraged when I'm, you know, walking alongside brothers and sisters in Christ who have similar stories and similar convictions. And I don't think it's because, like, you know, we are on some mission to like rainbow the church, right? I don't think that's what you're speaking to. No, I think what you're— my hunch is what you're speaking to is there's this group of people who from a young age were confronted with their brokenness, were confronted with the cost of being faithful to Jesus, um, and it would particularly mean giving up some of the, the idols of our culture and the idols of our church that are most prized— romance, marriage, sex, being a parent— and we're willing to give some of those up, um, to follow Jesus and are trying to find a way to have fullness of life and really follow particularly the path of Jesus and Paul and and, and discover a way to do that well, and perhaps are blazing a trail that many other Christians who, um, are either not called to marriage and are, and are also searching a path to, to, uh, to faithfully walk out vocational singleness in a way that brings them life. But also, I've heard from a lot of my married friends, right, who themselves have— are fed up with the idolatry of romance and the idolatry of the, of kind of the nuclear family, and, and, and love their spouse and believe in the institution of Christian marriage, but feel like it's gotten a little twisted or, or outsized in terms of what it ought to provide. And they also, you know, see these people, uh, walking out vocational singleness and attempting to find family in the body of Christ and saying, hey, we as parents, we're lonely too. We need a broader experience of family in the body of Christ, and we need more than just romance. We need something richer and thicker in the church. So yeah, I don't think— it's not that we're trying to rainbow flag the church. It's that in God's kind of humor or in his irony, yeah, he's using a group of people that more conservative people in our church look upon with shame and more progressive people inside and outside of our churches see as fools for following God's wisdom still as gay people. He's taking this, this group of people, and he's saying, let me show you what I can do with the least of these. Let me show you that when they're faithful, they can particularly display what is good and great about God and this fullness of life that Jesus came to offer. For us. So I think that's what's going on. I think it's pretty cool. I'm grateful to be a part of it. Yeah.

Well, and you just said it so much better than I was able to. So thank you for how you put that. I really appreciate it.

Yeah.

Well, I want to let all of our listeners know that we will have links in our show notes, actually. So hopefully, as you're listening to the podcast, you should just be able to hit show notes, go right to these links. One of those links is equipyourcommunity.org, so you can find out more about this ministry, Equip, that Peter is a part of and the good work that they're doing. And there'll be other links like that online, including some of the writings that Peter has done, and there's different videos and things that you can find. So if you want to continue this conversation or even reach out, you can do it on that. So as I say to my guests every week, and I get to say it to you this week, Peter Valk, thank you for being one of the Voices in My Head this week.

Glad to be a part of the conversation.

Thank you for joining me here this week on Voices in My Head. I hope you'll visit me on my website at rickleejames.com where you can find out more about me, get my music on vinyl and CD, follow my blog, and even schedule me for a concert or a speaking engagement. Better yet, even a book book signing in your neighborhood. You can find all that and more at rickleejames.com. Also, it would mean a great deal to me if you could write a review of this podcast on iTunes. The more positive reviews that we receive, the more visible this podcast will be online. And now for the benediction: May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. God bless you, and thank you for listening to Voices in My Head.