“From Fundamentalist to LGBTQ-Affirming Pastor: A Conversation with Randy Knie" Ep#32

Randy Knie, pastor of Brew City Church in Milwaukee and co-host of “A Pastor and a Philosopher Walk into a Bar,” shares his raw journey from fundamentalist boxing enthusiast to LGBTQ-affirming leader—from a megachurch calling that soured, restaurant friendships that shattered his worldview, a basement church plant amid the emergent movement, to a pivotal sabbatical where he ditched evangelicalism, embraced spiritual evolution, and risked it all to welcome queer folks fully. Packed with moments like shoveling snow in conviction and facing elder fears, this episode of Spiritual Hot Sauce explores deconstruction, biblical gray areas, and compassionate ministry that prioritizes people over ideology.

Contact Randy Knie at randyknie@brewcitychurch.org

http://brewcitychurch.org/

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-pastor-and-a-philosopher-walk-into-a-bar/id1512686327

https://open.spotify.com/show/1r8ms9udlxS4DYT2yIqsDy?si=OsD1UpVTT_Gtm5vLvns_dw

This episode of “Spiritual Hot Sauce” by Chris Jones is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.  

Transcript

Speaker 0:00

Today I'm having a conversation with Randy Knie, co-host of a pastor and a philosopher walk into a bar. He's also pastor of Brew City Church in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. This is his story and how he evolved from fundamentalist to a pastor that fully welcomes and embraces the LGBTQ community. Welcome. I'm Chris Jones. This is Spiritual Hot Sauce.

Chris Jones 0:29

Randy, welcome to the sauce. Thanks for having me, Chris. Excited to be here. Appreciate it. Just before we even get into it, you are a co-host of A Pastor and a Philosopher Walking to a Bar. And I guess you guys have been around for about five years. Is that right?

Speaker 2 0:42

It's crazy to hear that out loud, but I guess so. Yeah. I mean, we, you know, started the conversation pre-COVID in early 2020, and then COVID happened. And that seemed like a really good time. I'm guessing there were tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of podcasts that started in that time when everyone was holed up in their basement, you know. But yeah, five years, that's nuts.

Chris Jones 1:04

So tell me about you, because uh you are a pastor. What what led you down that path, that road?

Speaker 2 1:12

I mean, in my mind, in my imagination, where the journey started to being a pastor is probably my mom's prayers as I was growing up. If if you're a person who still believes in prayer, I don't know what I think of it, but I know that my mom was praying in that direction for a long time. I think she saw something in me or something that I didn't see because I never considered being a pastor. I was going to be a teacher, didn't really know what I wanted to do. And then I, it was one of those things where I went to college ministry in in Milwaukee and listened to the college pastor give a sermon, and I was just instantly like, that's what I want to do. Dove in headfirst and then found out that I A, don't want to be a pastor of a big, big church because it was a mega church, and B, don't want to be college or youth pastor. That's not for me. Through I learned that through doing it.

Chris Jones 2:03

Was it a vocational choice or was this because it was tugging on your heartstring choice?

Speaker 2 2:08

Very much tugging on the heartstring, you know, calling.

Chris Jones 2:10

Okay. So this was conviction of your faith, and you felt like this is something you needed to do.

Speaker 2 2:15

It was just the first time. Well, the so up until then, my life, this sounds silly, but I'm one of those like I was consumed with the sport that I was in, which was boxing. And my dad was a boxer, my uncle was a boxer, my grandpa was a boxer. So it's really in the family, and I was I was singularly focused on getting as far as I could go with that. And that was the only thing in my life that gave me that feeling, if you would, until I really then it was preaching my first sermon. I was an intern at that big megachurch, big evangelical megachurch. I didn't know any better then.

Chris Jones 2:50

What'd you preach about?

Speaker 2 2:51

It was from the book of Isaiah. I think it was Isaiah 6, the text where Isaiah is met by God and he's saying, like, Woe is me, because I'm a unclean man from an unclean people, and they touch the angel touch touches the colonists lips, and God calls Isaiah, basically. That was my first sermon. I still got the notes from it. Probably, well my gosh, maybe 25, 30 years ago. But after that sermon, I felt like, okay, this I've never had this feeling in my life that I I actually feel compelled to do this. I can't not do this. I it was one of those moments where you look back and you just say, that was the Holy Spirit tugging on me right there.

Chris Jones 3:30

Where did you go from there?

Speaker 2 3:33

So I I I did intern at that college age ministry at a megachurch. Great, great experience. But also I got out of it thinking I don't want to be in ministry. Um I just saw too much.

Chris Jones 3:45

And so you went in and said, I have to do this. Yeah. But after you went through and you saw what you saw, it left a bad taste in your mouth.

Speaker 2 3:52

Yeah. I mean, I've come to really respect the people that I worked with and for during that season and really appreciate them more than I than I had, really, to be honest with you. But I didn't like the way they went about business. And I intentionally used the word business there. Yeah. Because that's what it felt like in many ways. And I didn't like it. After that, I went to work at a restaurant downtown in the city that I was in and had no experience in the service industry. I was an absolute mess as a server. But I got an education both in working in the restaurant business because I fell in love with it, but I fell in love with it because of the people and met these folks. I was a sheltered Christian kid who had been doing ministry for several years before that, and just fell in love with these people that honestly I started out scared of them. You know, I mean, I was just I was a sheltered young adult who didn't know much about the world. I learned so much from my years in that restaurant. And in that restaurant was where I kind of got the dream for starting, starting a church, which was the dream was I want a church where these people can feel welcome. And by these people, I mean just mean unchurched people who like to work hard and party even harder. Some of them are queer, some of them, you know, they're there's just all across the board. And I didn't know at that time of a church in our city that they would feel welcome at, because we had these conversations, and that's where that dream started. Tell me about some of those conversations. I mean, it was just the honesty that I got from them that was, I don't feel like people in the Christian community were dishonest with me. And at the same time, the way that community both welcomed me, even though I was completely unlike them, the way they listened to me, the way they were honest and vulnerable enough to like share their story and, you know, the share their truth with me, if you will, I'm putting scare quotes up, just the character in them drew me to them. But then, you know, being able to sit down with, I had never been around a queer person in my life. I mean, I pretty much tried to stay away from people in the LGBTQ community up until that point because I was discipled and programmed to do that. But then when I actually formed a relationship with a queer person who at first I was scared of, that person was full of grace and wisdom and just generosity and maybe could see my struggle, maybe not. But I mean, we we sat down and it's a night that I'll never forget. It formed and shaped me in in profound ways. And I don't think he even, I don't know if he knows that, but he was generous enough to sit down with me for a couple of hours around a couple of drinks and had let me just ask all the questions that I had. And he was so generous and gracious with me to just listen, let me ask the stupid questions, the offensive ones. You know, they're questions that I couldn't ask today, to be honest with you. But that conversation changed my life, changed the way it brought my world from black and white to gray. And that really affected the way I pastored in all throughout my ministry. So those people formed and shaped me more than I ever would have imagined.

Chris Jones 6:56

That's a great important point, though. We all should take the time to sit down and have those conversations with people that may think differently than us because we don't know when we're changing someone's life or helping somebody. Absolutely. Absolutely. That's a great point. Thank you for sharing that.

Speaker 2 7:10

And the ironic thing, right, is that like I'm the one with the worldview in that conversation that I need to be forming and shaping people in the image of Christ.

Chris Jones 7:18

Yeah.

Speaker 2 7:18

But the ironic thing is that he formed and shaped me, but just by being a person who's willing to be vulnerable and loving.

Chris Jones 7:25

So that starts changing your perception of life that from this conversation and probably other conversations. And it just maybe starts into a different direction in life. You start going down a different path and you start questioning have you gone back to preaching yet as you're you're going through this, or are you still just trying to sort out who you are, your identity and your faith?

Speaker 2 7:48

At this point, I once that kind of I don't think I'm done with ministry. I think I want to start a, I want to plant a church, you know, myself, which is such a, you know, ridiculous thought to have. Yeah. I also intersected with a church, you know, in another city that I just really, really loved and had some friends who were connecting there. And that was a very different church than I had been discipled with. I grew up with a Lutheran and dad and a Baptist mom. So very like evangelical, but very different. Then I went to this evangelical non-denominational church, and that's where I, you know, got trained and equipped in ministry life and all that. And then this church that I got connected with was a charismatic, I would say a charismatic church, which was really kind of for people like more blue-collar people, rough around the edges, but really, really beautiful in many ways. Yeah, it's one of those things 20 years later, now I cringe at some of the things that I heard and learned and all that stuff. But so that's where the that was kind of the womb of giving birth to this church plant happened, was in that context at that church.

Chris Jones 8:53

Sometimes I think that it's a progression of our faith. But as you grow and you progress, you evolve. Yes. So, and I guess like what you just said, there's some things that was important in your life and shaping you, but now when you look back, it's a little bit cringe, you know. But at the same time, where you were at, do you think that may have been necessary?

Speaker 2 9:49

Yes. Yeah. I mean, I think it's all part of the journey, Chris. You know, I mean, I I've been parts of a number of different Christian traditions. And to this day, I would say carry the beauty and the brokenness of all of those traditions. You know, I've I've left many of them behind, some of them with a lot of angst and, you know, emotions and scars and wounds. But at the same time, they've all contributed to who I am and who I am as a person, but also as a spiritual person, you know. So very much very grateful for all those experiences, even though, even though the cringe exists. And some of the cringe is what other people said, and much of the cringe is what I've said in the past. But also that's part of the journey, you know. Like I don't try to hide from it anymore, and the especially when I'm preaching in the pulpits. It's something that I'll I'll continually repeatedly point to is that if you stick around the church for a long enough amount of time, you're gonna hear different things from me because I'm changing and growing and evolving as we speak, just like I hope you are.

Chris Jones 10:56

So you you're gonna plant a church. You decide I'm a one-man army and I'm planting a church, and it's for everybody. I mean, uh what year was that? 2006.

Speaker 2 11:10

That was 20 years ago.

Chris Jones 11:11

Wow.

Speaker 2 11:12

Yeah. And I wasn't a one-man army. I did have my lifelong best friend decided, yes, I want to do this with you. So he partnered with me. My wife was very much of a super active part of it. We had a team around us, but I was I was a lead pastor, and I was, if I'm being honest, I, you know, like my energy energy and passion and what I would perceive as calling was the thing that fueled it and pushed it forward, you know, all throughout the the time. But we were as idealistic as of a Christian church plant story as you get, you know. Like, I mean, we started in in our friend's basement with about 10 people, and I was working a full-time job. I was bivocational. You know, we had a young family at that point, young growing family at that point. And I was just willing to do anything and everything for the sake of the local church, of the church that we were building, you know.

Chris Jones 12:04

Tell me about your 10 that you started with.

Speaker 2 12:07

We were doing church in a very idealistic way, which is kind of a fun way to start because you start with those, you know, hopes and dreams and goals and thinking that we're going to change the world. And then one by one, those ideals fell by the wayside. But reality sets in. Yeah. I mean, we didn't want to have any paid pastors because we didn't want one person to kind of be the show, you know. And we we met on every other week, we met in as a large gathering, which was, you know, a large gathering was 15 or 20 people. And then every other week we wanted to meet in homes on Sunday mornings to have that as be part of the the rhythm of gathering to say what happens in homes with, you know, six or ten people. Do you miss that freedom you had? Yeah, it was it was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun. We got told a bunch 20 years ago, if you're if you've been around the church for long enough, Chris, you'll remember the emergent church or the emerging church. And we were, I mean, we're in Milwaukee, right? So I mean, we're not Los Angeles. And we got, we were told many times, I was told, like, oh, I heard your church is the emerging church in Milwaukee. And I was like, I don't even know what the hell the emerging church is.

Chris Jones 13:16

You're heretical. That's all you need to know.

Speaker 2 13:18

That's it. Yeah. That's that's a theme that's stayed from fr from uh the beginning to current, is uh we get labeled as heretics for sure. But yeah, we had a great time. It was a lot of work being bivocational, raising a young family at the same time. It's the thing you can only do in that season of life when you got the energy and passion and stupidity for it. You know what I mean?

Chris Jones 13:38

You're just running through walls. Yeah. What's the most valuable lessons you learned starting there as a pastor? Whoa, man.

Speaker 2 13:47

That's one of those questions that I'll probably, you know, I'll be thinking for the rest of the week and coming up with answers for you that I'd want to add into this conversation, Chris, you know, but so much in different areas. You know, leadership has its own lessons that I've learned so many of just along the way. How to be humble, how to love people well, that like leadership in pastoral ministry is just about loving people well. And loving people well isn't preaching at them well. It's not giving them great advice. It's not giving them, you know, being their life coach. It's being someone who will just listen to them and companion them through the journey of life and the spiritual journey. Aaron Powell Compassion over ideology. Yeah. And I think probably the more comfortable I came became with my humanity and my brokenness and my limitations, the more I could be present with people in the in in those areas in their lives.

Chris Jones 14:42

So this starts growing. Yeah, slowly. How long in the basement or in people's houses before you actually got a building?

Speaker 2 14:49

A couple months. Not not long. A couple months, I would say. But then we were That's fast. I mean, we were the church. We were chur the church that would met we met above a brew pub and in this like really rustic, rough space that we would have to sweep the cigarette butts and the beer cans off the floor from the night before for the people who had been, you know, renting it before. That's I mean, it's a miracle that anybody with kids came because there were there was like a million ways their kids could die in our space. You know, it's just like it was just rough and rugged like that. And the people who were part of our church at that point loved it. These were deconstructed post-evangelicals before that was even a a box to check, you know. So we had people who said, if you guys feel more like church, I'm out of here. So we had a bunch of hipster, young, really young people who said, I think I'm done with the church, except you guys, I think I might be able to do. That was kind of the the character and the kind of the people who who who found us. And then more people started finding us. Eventually we merged with another church, and that's a huge long story for another podcast episode. But just one of those things that felt like a Holy Spirit moment of God in this, a relationship that I had built, and a friend of mine, a woman who was leading a church at the time, had built, and we turned our two churches into one. And that was a huge learning curve, and we did a lot of things really well and a lot of things really poorly. But then things really began to grow after that. We got a we're now in a 120-year-old plus-year-old old church building that's just really beautiful. I love old churches. Oh, it's so fantastic. Yeah. And that building has become kind of like part of our culture. But that's really when things started changing as well in my life. How so? I just started getting honest about some things.

Chris Jones 16:41

Tell me about the kind of things you started getting honest about.

Speaker 2 16:45

I mean, I think at first I was, you know, the more we grew, the more I turned into this performative kind of pastor who, you know, that was when Mark Dr. Skull was still cool, you know, and we all didn't know what we thought about Rob Bell, you know, or by we all I mean my crew. Yeah. So I was just trying to, you know, please a lot of people, trying to sound like I thought I should sound sound as a as a preacher. And then eventually I just started to see through myself. I just became really uncomfortable with who I was becoming and how what I was sounding like. And that the whole time I was, I was open to considering. I was very, very restless about whether to be affirming or not of homosexuality. I was didn't know what to do with the Bible, but I knew that I was coming to a crisis, you know. There's a number of things. Universalism was something that I had toyed with in my mind and in my in my spirit, but I didn't allow myself to go there publicly at all. So there are a number of things that were just kind of gnawing at me in the background that I would say probably in the 20 teens became impossible to ignore. And then in 2019, I I took my first sabbatical, and that changed everything for me.

Chris Jones 17:55

So you had an identity crisis as a pastor.

Speaker 2 17:57

Yeah, who I was, what I believed, would I be willing to say what I believed? You know, I'm an Enneagram aide. I don't know if you believe in the witchcraft of the Enneagram, but and I say that with a lot of affection. I'm joking. But challenging things is normal for me. That's the, you know, like I have to check myself on how much I challenge things. But so all that by that I mean it was just a normal thing for me to question things, but it got to this point where I knew that I was living with some cognitive dissonance where I believed some things that I wasn't allowing myself to actually say I believed.

Chris Jones 18:30

Yeah.

Speaker 2 18:30

I came out of that sabbatical just saying, I do want to be a pastor, I do want to continue being a pastor. You know, it's sabbatical is where a lot of pastors will figure out, shit, I actually I'm sorry, can I swear on your podcast?

Chris Jones 18:41

Yeah.

Speaker 2 18:41

I came out of that thinking if I'm gonna do this for another 10, 15, 20 years, which I hope I can, I need to be more honest. I can't not say certain things because I'm afraid of my elders thinking that I'm not a Christian anymore, or my church leaving, or blowing up my whole life and career. I've just got to be honest if I'm gonna do this and stay a whole person. And so that's when things began changing for me a lot.

Chris Jones 19:05

It seems like that a lot of pastors come to the crossroads where you're at. And that's where a lot of pastors kind of dip out. Sure. They're representing things they don't truly subscribe to anymore, that their organization has a different agenda than they do. Absolutely. Tell me about the sabbatical. Tell me about the questions and the challenges. Tell me about those moments in the mirror.

Speaker 2 19:28

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it a lot of it originated pre-sabbatical, and it was just the seeds were planted, taking root, and I just didn't know it, you know. And I think sabbatical was a time where everything slowed down. I stepped away from ministry, which was pretty all-consuming, and had space to ask those questions. And then I had a spiritual director, which really changed my life as well. Being with somebody in a non-judgmental space, just they're curious about who I was and what my beliefs are and how to honor that that journey the best. You know, that that was really transformative. And I s I just stopped being scared of what I believed. I think that's probably the easiest way to put it, Chris.

Chris Jones 20:12

Is that what's the biggest things that you came away that you realized and you admitted to yourself, this is what I believe?

Speaker 2 20:18

I would say the first one was I was just I couldn't be an evangelical anymore. This was 2019, so we're into the first Trump presidency. And even be pre-Trump, pre-2016, the evangelical movement had just gotten to be more of a political movement than than a spiritual one, a r, you know, one following after Jesus. And I was that was when Rachel held. Evans was doing her thing, and I was, I was proudly said, uh even in interaction with her on Twitter, I remember saying, like, hey, think you're doing great work, but I'm gonna stay in the tent on the edge and try to be a prophetic voice from within it. That was my hope, you know. That was what I wanted to do. And I just realized that that sabbatical that that's untenable. Um, I can't do this anymore. So telling the elders of my church that I'm no longer consider myself an evangelical, even though I'm leading evangelical church was big, you know, hold your breath a moment and see how, see what happens. That was the first one.

Chris Jones 21:14

Break out for me your definition of an evangelical.

Speaker 2 21:18

Well, I mean, you know, the classic, you know, Bebington's, I don't think it's Bebington's quadrilateral, but you know, David Bebington famously has the take the Bible literally, take it seriously. You have theory of atonement that matches somewhat with penal substitutionary atonement, but believe in the life, in the salvific life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. You believe in missional impulse to evangelize the world around you, a personal relationship with Christ. Those are those would be the highlights. Those are those are the classic highlights. And I have no issues with most of those. Now I see the Bible differently, much differently than I used to, and most evangelicals would not be comfortable with how I see the Bible.

Chris Jones 21:58

However, in what way do you see it differently?

Speaker 2 22:03

I don't see the I was just reading a a book today. I just smashed through this book by an author who's an evangelical for our podcast. And I just I just had this realization over and over today as I was reading this of like I it's a book about why women can be in ministry. You know, and this was a big deal for this author to write. And he's a big he's a pretty big name. Preston Sprinkle. Uh from Genesis to Junior is what the book's called, and it's about his investigation as to whether women should be in ministry or not. As he was Going through the book and going through the scriptures and making a scriptural case, my thought was for me to make a decision like this to say that my daughter, for instance, could be part of a church and be a lead pastor, be an elder, be whatever she wants to be in the church. It's the Bible matters in that dialogue. But to me, what matters more what matters as much, I'll say, is are things like what we've learned about science and the nature of gender and men and women, what we've learned about the world and where we are as a society where clearly women can do everything that men can do, if, you know, in me in more and all sorts of ways. And so I would say the Bible is important to that conversation. I never want to discount the Bible, but also the Bible is rooted in a patriarchal world that the authors just bring that to the surface. You know, Beth Ellison Barr has a lot of amazing things to say about the making of biblical womanhood in her first book, but I don't see it as I used to see that conversation, just using egalitarianism as an example. I used to see that the way Preston does, which is if I'm going to land on being an egalitarian, I need to be able to prove it biblically. And I need to be able to prove it airtight. That's where I used how I used to see the Bible. I don't see it that way anymore. It's helpful that Paul, I think, was a really radical person when it came down to household roles and what roles in the church and, you know, the way he treated slaves and women and the marginalized in his world. But I don't want to be like Paul because Paul lived 2,000 years ago and had different ideas about all those things than I do. We've evolved. We've changed, we've grown, and we know more about the world than we did then. He's a smarter person than I ever will be, and at the same time, he's very limited by the time he lived in. And so I want to take all of that into account when having these conversations. Use the Bible as an authoritative source, but also rather than try to break down each of these biblical points, maybe see the larger narrative in the scriptures and say, what do we see from the beginning in the end the way God feels about women? You know, we're I'm still sticking in this con this little category, if you will. But I that's the way I see the Bible is just authoritative, inspired by God, certainly not inerrant, and human, very human, very messy, not very clear, clear about the things that it should be clear about, and then not clear about the thing, many of the things that we've been told it is clear about, and that's the fun of it to me, is mining mining that goodness in the messiness with the help of the Holy Spirit. Really long way of telling you how I see the Bible differently, but kind of on that journey of deconstructing, if you will. I call I prefer to call it spiritual evolution rather than deconstruction, because I I think deconstruction sets us up for this false belief that we go through a season of deconstruction and then we're done. We've arrived, we f figured it out, now we move forward. Instead of just planning on our spirituality bring being a constantly changing, growing, evolving journey. Growth. Exactly. So dropping evangelicalism was my first step on the road. Then telling our elders that I'm affirming of homosexuality was a huge deal. Tell me about that conversation and what happened and how that went. Oh man, I mean, that's 20 years of, you know, processing as a pastor, in a person in ministry. And the reason I say that is because when you become a pastor, you choose to be, you know, plant a church and you have this label alongside your name. Now pretty much everyone who goes to your church is looking to you for direction, and special and especially in some of these areas, and especially in that area. I want to say in the 2000s, 2010s, it was just, it felt like something we were all trying to figure out, trying to trying to land on. And I I I will tell you, I haven't I've lost the most sleep of anything in my pastoral ministry. I've lost more sleep around the question of sexual human sexuality than I have around anything put together. Worried about getting it right or about getting it right. Yeah. It was just it was a thing that I was so full of, you know, now I'm gonna use some charismatic terms. I was full of fear of the Lord, where I I was really, really nervous and scared of standing before Jesus and him, Jesus saying, like, you compromise because it was easy. You know, like I didn't want to do that. And then I also was really scared of standing before Jesus and him saying, you isolated and estranged, hundreds, if not thousands, of my sons and daughters who I'm in love with. And because you were too scared to follow me, they're not here anymore. You know, that fear just haunted me, I would say. But the real thing, because I don't want to center myself, it's hard not to center yourself as a pastor. We do that a lot. There were just some beautiful people, beautiful, queer people who grew up in the church, who loved the church, loved Jesus, loved our church, and really wanted to have a place there. And that was the really, really tenuous place of our church was one of those churches where you could have a place, you could feel welcome, but only so far. There was certainly a glass ceiling, and I broke relationships, you know, like because of what I believed, there was a number of people who who many people who left the church, many people who left the church in pain, some friends who just felt betrayed by me. It was a very, very painful process. Did your numbers drop in the congregation? No, no, they were growing at that point, you know. I mean, this was and also I have my peers, you know, like as I'm as our church is growing in size, I have friends and other pastor friends who honestly, we like that's a that's kind of like an exclusive club. And if you don't have the if you don't have the approval of your fellow pastors, especially the gatekeepers, the ones in your city that are have the really big churches and the really big influence and everyone knows their names, if you get on their bad side or you get or they think that you're a wolf in sheep's clothing or a heretic or a dangerous person because you're affirming, they can ruin your whole ministry. And so there was that this is just scratching the surface of the anxiety in me about all of this.

Chris Jones 28:49

But you you were willing to risk it because you had a conviction of your faith. This is what I believe, and this is what I I have to do this.

Speaker 2 28:56

Yeah, there was a moment I could I literally remember shoveling my driveway. You know, we're there's winter up here. And where are you, Chris? I'm in Louisville, Kentucky, sir. All right, all right. So we get real winter.

Chris Jones 29:06

Yeah, yes, you do.

Speaker 2 29:08

And I remember shoveling my my driveway, and a good friend of mine who was our worship pastor quit. He walked away from the faith. And as soon as he walked away from the faith, he was like, Oh, yeah, of course I'm affirming. Like, but that's not even a question. And I bit remember A, being really jealous of him, of just saying, that must be nice, you know. I wish I could quit and just say what I think. And then B, I didn't like how that felt, admitting to myself, the only reason I'm not affirming is because I have this job. I remember walking into the kitchen after I was done shoveling and praying and you know, all that stuff, and telling my wife, I'm affirming. You know, here's the experience and the conversation in my head and prayers I just had. And I can't live a lie anymore. Your moment in the mirror was out shoveling snow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was just the point where it just bubbled over. And so the sabbatical then didn't happen yet. But at the sabbatical, that's when I was just like, I've got to, I've got to be honest about this. And so came out of it, told the elders, we went on a journey as a church, and it was a really beautiful, rich journey of as us leaders of the church and elders, figuring out where we all stand and where we are on this, on this topic. And we came out of that like a year journey of talking to people and inviting the queer community from our church into our leadership dialogues to tell their stories. And that was holy sacred space. But long story short, we came out of that year and said, okay, we're gonna be an inclusive affirming church. That kind of sparked, you know, not a it well, what I was afraid of was that we were gonna lose our church. I was gonna lose all my credibility and be written off, and I would have to find a new career. And this dream of having the church was gonna implode in my face because we were affirming. And it couldn't have been further from the truth. We did it in a really intentional, artful way, brought people along with us. We, our journey up until that point, it wasn't like out of left field. People knew that we were in process as a leadership team. People knew that we, if we were gonna err anyway, we gonna, we were gonna err on the side of the love of Jesus and the grace of God. Nothing was shocking to our church, but we lost some people and we continue to lose people who will jump less and less because we're becoming more and more known as this affirming church. But especially in the first couple of years, there were many people who were evangelicals who would love, you know, our worship or my preaching and they'd want to stick around. And I'd have I'd have to have the conversation with them that I used to have to have with our career folks, which is hey, love that you're here, love that you love this church, but I gotta let you know we're affirming. Here's what that means in more than half those people I would never see again.

Chris Jones 31:42

So you think you were the subject of many sermons at that time at other churches?

Speaker 2 31:46

So we did get kicked out of our global evangelical church network that we were part of. Super painful, really tough. But surprisingly, the evangelical group of pastors that I'm kind of part of here in my city, when I told them, and I thought for sure they were going to drop me like a bad habit, they were all very curious. And they said, well, this doesn't change anything. If our churches get wind of it, we'll talk to you, you know, kind of deal. But them as leaders themselves, this just shows you where pastors are. Them as leaders themselves were mostly very, very curious. And now I got disinvited from preaching at several churches because of that. But in general, I'm still having, I'm still in dialogue with some of those guys who are endlessly curious about how I was willing to go to this point as a pastor, how we were willing to do this as a church and why and how it's worked, and how what's all the effects and the aftershocks of it and everything. I I'm talking very dramatically. And if there's anybody who's queer listening, I want you to know I'm talking about this as if us pastors are centered in this conversation, and nothing could be further from the truth. However, this is the fear that many of us pastors have, and this is a reason that many of us pastors don't come to a place where we can publicly say that we're affirming and we we think God is as well, is because of the fear that we're gonna blow up our church, or because of the fear that we're, you know, our family doesn't want will disassociate our themselves from us, or because of the fear that my family won't be provided for anymore. You can go down the list. That stuff's real at the same time as like it's a really unhealthy thing to center ourselves so much in this conversation. But just being honest. Yeah. Yeah. But I found uh just to reiterate, Chris, I have found a surprising amount of curiosity from my evangelical pastor friends that I'm encouraged by, to be honest with you.

Chris Jones 33:32

For those who would say, well, what about scriptures in the Bible?

Speaker 2 33:36

Oh man, if if I had to say something in like, you know, a couple of minutes, I would just say those scriptures aren't as clear as you think they are. If you really lift up the hood of the scriptures and look at those, you know, I'm I'm even gonna leave aside the Old Testament stuff because Levitical laws is a different thing. Let's just stay in the New Testament and go to Romans 1 and 1 Corinthians 6 and 1 Timothy, you know, let's let's deal with those verses. And when you really look at the words that are used, the Greek words, when you really look at the the culture of first century Roman, Greco-Roman culture in the world and what sexuality was and the climate and the all the stuff in the air, it is not as clear as we've been told. That is for sure. And if you can't agree on that, that's where I would just say you're either being disingenuous or you haven't done the homework, you haven't done the work to look underneath the hood of the scriptures. And once you've done that, and if we can admit that those scriptures are not clear, then it becomes a work of the Holy Spirit. Then we can look at the scriptures like the fruits of the Spirit in the book of Galatians and in Galatians 5 and say, Paul seems to think that if love, joy, peace, patience, self-control, faithfulness, gentleness, goodness, you know, all these things are being manifested in a person and a community, that is actual, Paul would say, I think, empirical evidence that the spirit of God is there. I can't tell you how many queer people in queer communities I've seen with the evidence, the empirical evidence of the fruit of the spirit in their midst. These are real people in a real, you know, cultural moment, historical cultural moment that they lived in. Imagine, imagine somebody 2,000 years from now looking, you know, beaming into our reality and listening to this conversation and divorcing it of all the stuff that's happening around us and the beliefs that our world has and the givens and the biases that we have that no longer are reality, you could never understand the way we thought and why we thought the way we did and what it what what information we based it on, right? So I think that if we're going to do the work of saying, like, ask what the scriptures say about something like human sexuality, that's a responsibility. We actually owe it to the scriptures, we owe it to the people in the scriptures, and we owe it to our, whether it's our queer siblings or whoever we're talking about, women, queer people, all the communities that the church loves to marginalize and loves to kind of have conversations about divorce from that community and divorce from that context. It just doesn't work, is what I'm trying to say, Chris. It's it's not good biblical exegesis. Can I say to you, I'm please. I don't know who's listening. I don't know the audience exactly. I'm talking about this in a really matter-of-fact way that's really quick. I don't mean to be this dismissive and unpastoral is what I'm trying to say.

Chris Jones 36:25

Yeah. No, no, no. I we're on a podcast. I get it. We're going to give your information. If somebody would like to get in touch with you and talk further, I'm sure you would love to have that conversation. I sure would. What would you say to pastors, but still having the inner conflict, what advice would you give them?

Speaker 2 36:43

I mean, I don't take it as a given that every pastor is even open internally to considering some things that might rock the boat. There are some people who will literally dis and I was probably one of them at one point, who will literally deceive themselves enough to think I do have it all figured out. And my tradition has it all figured out. And that's that's different. But for those pastors who are wrestling with these things, what whether it's sexuality or whether it's eternal destiny or whether it's the nature of the scriptures, whether whatever we're talking about, I think good pastoral ministry looks like being honest. I think good pastoral ministry looks like kind of being vulnerable with your congregation, with the people that are around you, and letting them know I don't have it all figured out. If you can just let people know that I don't have it all figured out and I'm still wrestling with this stuff, yes, I've given my life to studying the scriptures. Yes, I've given my life to being as good of a pastor and a leader as I can. And yet, I've got such a long way to go. And if you stick around for another five years, you're gonna hear a different version of me. And if you stick around for another 15 years, you're gonna really hear a different version of me. I hope that's something that we can just take a lot of pressure off ourselves as pastors and also take a lot of pressure off our congregations to not have to get it right at every single moment, but to see this as an exciting, beautiful, dynamic journey of following the Holy Spirit. And this is the story of the scripture, is just the dis whether it's the disciples or the people of Israel in the Old Testament, the early church figuring things out and not having all the answers, but it's the joy of following Jesus, of asking the questions on a journey in companionship together. In regard to this, is in regard to how to do this as a pastor, there's a book that I read at the very beginning of my time in ministry. So the book is The Wounded Healer by Henry Nowen. The Wounded Healer is this very small book, but in it, the message of it is basically now saying people are not looking for a perfect pastor, people are not looking for a pastor that has everything figured out. People are looking to hear from a pastor who's just like them, who has the same fears, who has the same anxieties, same doubts, same questions, same things that keep them up at night. And they want to hear how you navigate that with the help of Father, Son, and Spirit. And that's something that is just stuck with me. I don't have to perform, I don't have to fake it, even though I have tried too many times. I don't have to be something that I'm not, even though I have tried too many times. That idea keeps coming back to me of just be yourself, be a wounded, broken person who's following after Jesus, and good things will come of that.

Chris Jones 39:26

Because something in there about speaks to getting rid of the hierarchy, the pecking order, creating that mountain to God, where it is it's just us and community encouraging one another. That's right. What would you say to people that are that group that's been minimalized and pushed away that might be hearing this? What would you want to say to them? So much.

Speaker 2 39:49

First of all, I just admire you. You're a hero of mine in the faith. Anyone who has been pushed aside, uh, rejected, told you don't belong, you're not one of us for whatever reason, and still insists on following Jesus, still just tries time after time to be part of a church community because there's something there that's just seems like I've been created for it. If that's you, I'm in awe of you. I'm in awe of your dedication to Christ, to the church, to the to Christianity, to the way of Jesus. And I would say there are safe communities for you. I would love to help you try to find it, but there are safe communities for you. There are safe people, there are safe podcasts like this one, like many others. Find your people, find your community, find where you are loved and where you are celebrated and when you're where you are received, where you do belong, where you can be family. Because those groups of people need you. They need you and your story. They need your the the beauty of who you are and the goodness of who you are, and the way that you refuse to back down, the way that you refuse to give up Jesus, even though you've been told you have to. We need more of those stories in the church. We need more of those stories. So I love you. And I would just encourage you, don't give up on the church. And if you do, I get it. And I don't want to be that pastor that's obnoxiously saying don't give up on the church when really, maybe sometimes that's the best thing for you to do and for your humanity and for your mental health. I get it. And if that's where you are, give up on the church, at least for now. But man, if if you if you can, if you can hang in there, you're gonna be a gift to a community that would receive you.

Chris Jones 41:35

If people want to get in touch with you, what's the best way to do that?

Speaker 2 41:38

Check out our website, our podcast. But I'll just put my email out there as well. So it's Randy Nye. That's R-A-N-D-Y-K-N-I-E at brewcitychurch.org. Randy Knie, brewcitychurch.org. I'm sure you can put that in the show notes or something, Chris. But I'd love to hear from you. Can't guarantee how quickly that'd be, but or I get can get back to you. But I would love, love to have some dialogue with you.

Chris Jones 42:01

Pastor and a philosopher, welcome to a bar. Great podcast. You and Kyle do a great job of the case. Appreciate it, Chris. Thank you for coming on to the show, and I appreciate it. I think for loving people. Do you have a genuine love for people and that comes through? I think that that's where your conviction truly comes from.

Speaker 2 42:16

Man, uh I take that as a very, very high compliment. So thank you for saying that. And thank you for thanks for inviting me. It was really fun to have a conversation with you, Chris. I appreciate it.

Chris Jones 42:26

All right. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Thanks for joining me here on Spiritual Hot Sauce. I'd love to hear from you. So please reach out with questions, comments, and or concerns. And don't forget to like, subscribe, and review us. You can follow us on Facebook for updates and information. And if you enjoy the flavor of the sauce, then please share it with others. I would appreciate that. We'll see you next time.