Pieter Valk on the Historical Christian Sex Ethic, Demystifying Vocational Singleness & How Pastors Can Serve the LGBT+ Community
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In this episode, we deviate from our typical format of interviewing a pastor, to host a conversation with Pieter Valk from Equip on how the Church can live into loving and serving the LGBT+ community. Through conversations with pastors across Canada and beyond, we know that this topic holds a lot of questions and tensions for the pastor. To speak to that, we invited Chris Price, Teaching Pastor at The Way Church, to wade with Pieter into not just the theology of sexuality, marriage and singleness, but also how pastors can bridge the gap that often exists between the Church and this community. In the conversation they discuss Pieter’s personal story of enduring same-sex attraction, why he landed outside the revisionist sexual ethic, what he wished pastors said to him growing up & much more. We hope this conversation serves to fuel your empathy and consideration for what it might look like for the Church to love a community that’s dear to the Lord’s heart.
Pieter Valk
Pieter Valk is the director of EQUIP, a Nashville-based consulting ministry that partners with churches to become places where LGBT+ people can belong and thrive according to an orthodox Christian sexual ethic. Pieter graduated from Vanderbilt University with Highest Honors in Chemistry in 2013. After graduating, Pieter studied at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary for a year with a focus on Lay Leadership and Culture-making. As a fellow of the Boston Fellows Program, he worked as a ministry development intern and completed a 26-week Pastoral Counseling course on relational and sexual brokenness. In 2016 Pieter graduated from Lipscomb University in Nashville, TN, with his Masters in Clinical Mental Health Counseling.