Generous Spaciousness Quotes

“I believe that hospitality is central to the heart and ministry of Jesus and that to the extent we fail to extend this hospitality to gay people, the church will fail to walk in the way of Jesus.”
― Wendy Vanderwal-Gritter, Generous Spaciousness: Responding to Gay Christians in the Church

“If a young person experiences same-sex attraction, nothing you can say will change that experience. However, what you say can impact whether or not that student feels safe with you and whether or not they will be willing to share their story with you.”
― Wendy Vanderwal-Gritter, Generous Spaciousness: Responding to Gay Christians in the Church

“I want to remind pastors and leaders that we do not own the church—God does. We aren't called to serve the church from a place of fear with our primary focus on protecting our boundaries. We are called to fling wide the doors, to invite to the banquet those on the margins, those who will challenge our comfort and our aversion to getting our hands dirty. Announcing the kingdom is risky business. When our experience of church becomes so predictable and so controlled, one has to wonder how far we've strayed from the calling to be ambassadors of reconciliation to those far beyond the walls of the church.”
― Wendy Vanderwal-Gritter, Generous Spaciousness: Responding to Gay Christians in the Church

“Many of the gay Christians I was in conversation with were not demanding wholesale movement to a fully affirming and inclusive stance. There were those who were uncertain of such a stance even for themselves. What they did desire was space, a safe space without judgment, accusation, condemnation, assumption, and rejection. They desired a generous spaciousness to embrace authentic faith while engaging the quest for an honest, godly, and fulfilling life as a gay person.”
― Wendy Vanderwal-Gritter, Generous Spaciousness: Responding to Gay Christians in the Church

“The question to ask is: do we view Scripture as stories to imaginatively live into or do we view Scripture as prescriptions for how to live?”
― Wendy Vanderwal-Gritter, Generous Spaciousness: Responding to Gay Christians in the Church

“One retired pastor, who felt that he was being called to write a book about homosexuality, interviewed me. He said he wanted his book to be pastorally compassionate toward gay people while exhorting the church to remain firm in holding to a traditional, biblical sexual ethic. He said, "You have to be careful to not love people too much. Loving people changes you." Indeed, loving people does change you. Loving people who are different than you changes you. But it seems to me that such change is consistent with the call of Christ. Allowing your heart to enter the beauty and brokenness of another's life (which really isn't so different from your own), to hear hopes and dreams and disappointments, fears and hurts and joys does change you. One ought not be afraid of that.”
― Wendy Vanderwal-Gritter, Generous Spaciousness: Responding to Gay Christians in the Church

“When people misuse a text with "Did God really say...?" to shut down someone's honest wrestling with God, they betray what seems to be their own lack of faith and humility. We ought not to be threatened by someone's searching. We ought not to try to control the outcomes in another's journey. We ought not to resort to using shame or fear or guilt to ensure others share our certainties. God can be trusted to lead those who question and struggle through prayer, his Word, their minds, and their experiences. Let's focus on encouraging one another rather than accusing and condemning one another.”
― Wendy Vanderwal-Gritter, Generous Spaciousness: Responding to Gay Christians in the Church

“The world I live in is composing a magnum opus to the heart-stopping, outrageously unbelievable unconditional love and acceptance of God that crushes and demolishes the vestiges of self-righteous “us and them.” It’s”
― Wendy Vanderwal-Gritter, Generous Spaciousness: Responding to Gay Christians in the Church

“Those on the verge of leaving the church do not want to be told the answers. They want to be invited into the conversation of seeking what is life-giving, truthful, and consistent with the person and ministry of Jesus.”
― Wendy Vanderwal-Gritter, Generous Spaciousness: Responding to Gay Christians in the Church

“Part of living into postures that nurture a deep reliance on God's leading is that no good tool is tossed out of the toolbox. But if you've come from such a dominant paradigm that you always find yourself reaching for the same tool regardless of the situation, you may need to leave that tool alone as you learn to listen and follow and make use of the right tool in the right situation.”
― Wendy Vanderwal-Gritter, Generous Spaciousness: Responding to Gay Christians in the Church

“My ministry is focused less on trying to teach the scriptural formula for what faithful discipleship for gay people is, and more about living with my gay friends in the pursuit of faithful discipleship.”
― Wendy Vanderwal-Gritter, Generous Spaciousness: Responding to Gay Christians in the Church

“It can be unhelpful to wax eloquent about the inerrancy of Scripture without an accompanying acknowledgment that, while Scripture may be inerrant, there are no inerrant interpreters of Scripture.”
― Wendy Vanderwal-Gritter, Generous Spaciousness: Responding to Gay Christians in the Church

“We are pastorally-focused, not politically driven. We are relationally-focused, not program driven. We are discipleship-focused, not change driven. We are partnership-focused, not empire driven.”
― Wendy Vanderwal-Gritter, Generous Spaciousness: Responding to Gay Christians in the Church

“Might it be that the voice of truth can come from the suffering soul who has wrestled with God over mysteries and paradoxes? Might the voice of truth be the one that in wisdom and humility says, "I don't know"?”
― Wendy Vanderwal-Gritter, Generous Spaciousness: Responding to Gay Christians in the Church

“There is an irony in how Christians talk about and understand sexuality. Christians often lament the world's reductionism of sex to genital interaction and raw physical pleasures, but then they typically reduce a gay person's sexuality to just that.”
― Wendy Vanderwal-Gritter, Generous Spaciousness: Responding to Gay Christians in the Church

“Happiness can be a confusing concept for Christians. On one hand, if we serve a good God who promises us a full and abundant life, shouldn't we be happy? On the other hand, any careful reading of the life and way of Jesus reveals a life open to suffering and self-denial. The very message of the gospel confronts the shortcuts humans take to happiness and calls those who follow Christ to a new way of life. This apparent tension has commonly become a weapon in the shouting matches between gay-affirming voices and traditional voices. The affirming voices call for the unimpeded opportunity for LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) people to experience self-fulfillment through sexual intimacy, relationship, marriage, equal status, and so on. The traditional voices point to a path of self-denial and suffering as the way to live out God's standards. For a gay Christian, when happiness and suffering are pitted against one another, this dilemma can disintegrate into a no-win situation and a source of shame.”
― Wendy Vanderwal-Gritter, Generous Spaciousness: Responding to Gay Christians in the Church

“One tendency that I became aware of was the way the Christian community at large seemed to misuse testimonies. I encountered many Christians, often family members of gay loved ones, who heard one individual's story and projected that experience on all gay people in general and on their loved ones in particular.”
― Wendy Vanderwal-Gritter, Generous Spaciousness: Responding to Gay Christians in the Church

“The Christian witness never benefits when Christian organizations are known more for what they are against than what they are for.”
― Wendy Vanderwal-Gritter, Generous Spaciousness: Responding to Gay Christians in the Church

“One of the hallmarks of evangelicalism, and by extension ex-gay ministry, is the vigilance with which it guards its own internal content as both normative and binding. One could say that a lot of energy is spent on boundary maintenance—discerning who is inside and who is outside of the boundaries of shared commitments. ... Anything that seemed to deviate from the commonly held beliefs and understandings about homosexuality and healing were considered invalid and potential deceptions from the enemy. To investigate or inquire beyond these commonly held assumptions was dangerous territory, where one would be vulnerable to error.”
― Wendy Vanderwal-Gritter, Generous Spaciousness: Responding to Gay Christians in the Church