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Society & Culture:Relationships
Messy Grace (Part 1) - Kaleb Kaltenbach
Messy Grace (Part 2) - Kaleb Kaltenbach
Messy Grace (Part 3) - Kaleb Kaltenbach
FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript
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Loving Our Gay Friends and Neighbors
Guest: Caleb Kaltenbach
From the series: Messy Grace (Day 3 of 3)
Bob: There is a right way and a wrong way for us to hold fast to biblical truth and still have healthy relationships with our LGBT friends. Caleb Kaltenbach offers an example of the wrong way to go about that.
Caleb: Somebody named Joe will meet somebody in their workplace, who identifies as LGBT. So, Joe becomes his friend. Joe thinks that he has to let him know about Leviticus, and Genesis 19, and Ephesians 5, and Romans 1—and we’ll throw in
1 Corinthians 6—but without building a relationship and getting to know him, all of a sudden, he will throw all these verses at this gay man over here that, now, realized he’s being treated like a project. He walks away, rejecting everything / feeling wounded. Joe walks away, feeling like some kind of accomplished martyr; but really, what Joe has done is—he has pushed this man further away from God.
Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Wednesday, July 4th. Our host is Dennis Rainey, and I’m Bob Lepine.
1:00
How can we represent Jesus well as we build healthy relationships with people who don’t live like us, or think like us, or believe like us? That’s what we’re going to talk about today. Stay with us.
And welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us on the Wednesday edition, here, on Independence Day in the United States. I’m guessing there are not many people in America we could talk to who grew up in a home where mom and dad got a divorce; mom moved in with her lesbian partner; dad remained a bachelor and later came out of the closet as a gay man; and where the son, who grew up in that situation, wound up going to Bible college, committing his life to fulltime ministry. I’m guessing that’s a relatively unusual story.
Dennis: I’m guessing it is, too; but it’s what makes this book, Messy Grace, a compelling read. I think this is a safe way for a mom/a dad, a husband/a wife, who is trying to figure out:
2:00
“How do I relate to people who don’t believe like I do?”—this is a safe place to go read—and maybe something that some groups of people need to dig into and do a Bible study around—and just interact around these chapters; because I think what our guest on the show today has done is—he’s invited all of us into his life / into a world we don’t know a whole lot about.
By doing so, he’s coaching us as the son of two gay moms / as the son of a father, who after divorcing his mom, came out as a homosexual as well. You know, I just think—as you said, Bob—there’s not that many that can offer that kind of insight and coach us from that standpoint.
Caleb Kaltenbach joins us again on FamilyLife Today. Caleb, welcome back.
Caleb: Hey, it’s great to be here.
Dennis: Bob gave a good overview of your life. He hit something kind of quickly that I want you to unpack for us. Your moms had thrown you out of the house when you said you were becoming a follower of Christ; your dad had done virtually the same.
3:00
What did they say when you said you wanted to go to a Bible school?
Caleb: Again, my mother’s partner was a psychologist—a PhD / very smart. Both of my parents were university professors. When I told them that I wanted to go to a Bible college—and in their minds, a narrow-minded Bible college—it did not go over at all. They just said: “You’re paying for everything on your own. You—there is no way we’re going to help you out with it—nothing is going to happen there,” and “I can’t believe that you would even consider that. You’re going to wind up homeless on the street; and you’re going to be eating ramen noodles your whole life, if you can afford those.”
Bob: But their view did soften over time, because one of them helped you get a loan; didn’t they?
Caleb: Yes; my dad eventually—because he saw that I was not backing down. It’s part of my German stubbornness, I think—we don’t back down too easily. I said, “This is what I’m doing, with or without my family, because I feel like God’s call is that strong.”
4:00
I said, “I’m going forward with this.” My dad eventually helped me to get my first loan—that’s what they did for me. I spent my weekends preaching in small, country churches to earn money for college; washed dishes in the cafeteria; did everything I could; but I really cut my teeth in Bible college by preaching at a lot of small, country churches.
Dennis: How did they handle your background, or did you keep it a secret from them?
Caleb: No; because I wanted people to know what they were getting into. I remember the first church I ever preached in was in Kansas—small town. We had six people in the church—the youngest one was 60. They wanted to start a youth group—it was going to be a youth group of 40-year-olds. [Laughter] I told them about my background, and they didn’t like that too much.
The second church I was at—I was there for about 18 months. It was in Missouri, and I was near a town called Nevada—[first “a” is long]. It should be called Nevada—[same pronunciation as the state]—but everybody called it Nevada [long “a”] in Missouri. It was near Fort Scott, Kansas. I preached there for 18 months.
5:00
Twenty-five people in the church / fifty people in the town—we were the largest church, per capita, in the world at the time, at best.
Bob: Yes; right.
Dennis: Right.
Caleb: I kind of eased into the conversation about my parents, then; but there was one Sunday that was very, very profound to them. I kept on asking my mom to come to church with me to hear me preach. I was only, I think, at that time, a junior or a sophomore in college. I’d only had one preaching class at my Bible college, and I just really—that’s how I learned how to preach.
My mom finally came with me. She wouldn’t come back the ...
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