North Point Church Is Sending Children to All-LGBTQ Therapists: We Profile One of The Counselors
For years, North Point Community Church, led by Andy Stanley, has been partnering with and promoting affirming LGBTQ+ organizations when desperate parents come to see them for help with their struggling gay children, all done through their Parent Connect Ministry.
Parent Connect is led by Amy Blakeslee, an openly affirming queer woman, and is overseen by Debbie Causey, a gay-affirming, long-tenured pastor at North Point Community Church and the director of their Care network of ministries. Causey is also a board member at Renovus, a pro-LGBTQ+ activist and advocacy group led by many leaders within North Point church.
During a conversation about her book by gay-affirming North Point leaders Greg and Lynn MacDonald, Causey gets asked about recommendations for “safe” counselors, which is a coded word they use to describe affirming counselors. She recommends an organization called ‘The Christian Closet,’ which she represents as a “great group” that serves children and youth struggling with their identity, and McDonald agrees. (She also recommended struggling parents attend a Queer Parent Summit)
The Christian Closet is a collective of all-LGBTQ+ Christian counselors that offer virtual mental help on topics like depression, coming out, transitioning, starting your first queer relationship, deconstructing, dealing with trauma, and everything in between. It’s an “online therapeutic resource for people who are trying to work out what it means to have an LGBTQI sexual identity, or gender identity within a Christian context.”
This is not to say that some counselors are gay or that a majority are gay, but rather that all of them are gay, with their website reading “all of our clinicians identify somewhere on the LGBTQ+ spectrum and have done the work of reconciling their faith with that.
One of those gay counselors is Matt Nightingale. He is the pro-choice lead co-pastor of The Quest Church and he recently married a man after being married to and divorcing his wife of 23 years. He is a “spiritual director” and “support group facilitator” and has been with the Christian Closet since 2019, where he is “passionate about the intersection of sexuality and spirituality” and creating a “safe, sacred space for people exploring these identities.”
Nightingale is also the director of the Common Sanctuary and recently joined Brian Nietzel’s on his “Making Things Right” project. Nietzel is a gay man ‘married’ to a ‘husband’ that is scheduled to speak at Andy Stanley’s upcoming ‘Embracing the Journey conference,’ bringing everything full circle.
Nightingale seems to like and appreciate Andy Stanley, or at least his book, and Stanley, in turn, has returned the favor with a recent tweet.
Recently, Nightingale had a very strong reaction to a song about LGBTQ folks being saved and then changed by the power of Christ to no longer walk in those identities, raging:
Imagine being a desperate parent from North Point Community Church with a struggling gay teen or even an older child who is confused about their attractions. You build up the courage to talk to a Care ministry worker and get recommended by trusted church pastors to get counseling at a ‘Christian’ group, only to have your loved one end up in the hands of someone who believes that 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, when it says of the idolaters, revilers, sexually immoral and homosexuals “And such WERE some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God,” is “bulls***”?
Andy Stanley’s church, when faced with a family who is in crisis because they think their child might be gay or non-binary, and is looking for some sound, biblical counseling and resources, directs the parents to pro-LBGTQ+ organization Embracing the Journey, and the kids to pagan pro-LBGTQ+ counselors at The Christian Closet.
There is no hope for children struggling with their sexuality if they’re going to these places to get this sort of help. The adults have stacked the deck against them. All the paths to freedom and deliverance have been taken away.
Lord, have mercy.