Tonight I am attending an event featuring Jennifer Knapp which explores music, faith, and sexuality and that’s put on by the Marin Foundation. I thought I would say a few things about why I love the Marin Foundation. The Marin Foundation, founded by Andrew Marin in Chicago, is a nonprofit organization that seeks to build bridges between the LGBT community and the Christian community. Their goal is to promote understanding and reconciliation between two communities which have historically failed to understand one another. The Marin Foundation may not transform convictions, but they hope to transform the discourse toward dignity, love, and respect. So why do I love the Marin Foundation so much?
They Don’t Fear Being Misunderstood
As you can imagine, the Marin Foundation’s work is easily misunderstood by both the LGBT community and the Christian community. There are very few organizations who are doing the kind of work that they do, thus making it difficult for many people to grasp their mission. But what I’ve noticed in following and interacting with the Marin Foundation is that they don’t fear the risk of being misunderstood. They realize and accept that misunderstanding will occur, but they believe in the importance of their work so deeply that they are willing to take those risks. It takes a lot of courage to step into that tension, and I admire them for it.
They Do More with Less
This is a bit more pragmatic, but I believe that a sign of an excellent organization is the ability to do more with less. The Marin Foundation has a very small paid staff running a host of programs and events each year. Yet the organization has won widespread respect in both the LGBT community and the Christian community, here in Chicago and across the globe. I don’t know how they do it, but the Marin Foundation is inspiring a movement for reconciliation. It’s amazing to witness how their mission is resonating across boundaries that normally divide.
They Have a Clear Strategy for Loving Others
One of the most significant reasons that I love the Marin Foundation is that they have a very clear strategy for loving others. Many organizations speak of showing unconditional love to the “other,” but the Marin Foundation has very intentionally defined why and how they express unconditional love. They call it “measurable expressions of unconditional behaviors,” and every activity they do is intended to clarify and expand the measurable expressions of unconditional behaviors between the LGBT community and the Christian community. It is difficult, confusing, and radical work, but it’s the kind of work that Jesus would do - the kind of work he is doing today.
My hope and prayer is that more organizations like the Marin Foundation will be formed in the coming years. Of course each community needs its own organizations for advocacy and awareness. But bridge-building is so rare these days that other groups like the Marin Foundation are desperately needed. If we hope to create cities and communities in which diverse groups of people can flourish with one another despite their differences, we will have to learn how to live in the tension with grace and love. And, speaking for my primary community, that is exactly what Jesus calls Christians to do.
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(Sorry for the long delay, but I’ve finally completed my Master’s program! Time for writing has returned!)
All Scripture is practical because God breathed all of it to form people, both individuals and community. God tells stories to stock our memory with a common moral past that projects his people into the future. God’s word expands our imagination to grasp more of what’s really there and to envision what might be there in the future. The Bible is useful because it opens our eyes, and because it’s highly impractical to walk through life with our eyes closed.
2. 5 Ways to Keep Moving Forward When You Hit a Wall
We usually think of tension as always being a bad thing. It can be. But growth always requires movement. And movement creates tension between where we are and where we’re going. It’s when we hit a wall—or what seems to be a wall—that we can get the wind knocked out of our dreams.
If Christians have any interest in reaching out to the gay community, if we have any hope to speak a message which can touch their hearts as well, we absolutely must be willing to live as their family. Behind his blundering obscenity, behind his facile attempts to explain Scripture away, behind the blatant hypocrisy of his behavior toward those who disagree with him, what Dan Savage means to tell us is, “The church has far too often, and for the most wrong-headed reasons, failed to be family to gay people.”
In a culture like our own, dominated by “family values,” where we have nothing better to command our allegiance to than our own blood relatives, this is one of the good things the church does for many of us. In baptism, we are rescued from our family. Our families, as good as they are, are too narrow, too restricted. So in baptism we are adopted into a family large enough to make our lives more interesting.
5. Andy Stanley, Al Mohler, and Homosexuality
“Truth will all of its painful ramifications, and grace with all of its healing power,” is how Stanley summarized it. It’s about the pursuit of reconciliation in real time, in real life situations. Something Stanley was attempting to model for his congregation amidst the most culturally, theologically and politically divisive topic in contemporary society.
