MESSY GRACE: HOW a PASTOR with GAY PARENTS LEARNED to LOVE OTHERS WITHOUT SACRIFICING CONVICTION (audiobook) by Caleb Kaltenbach

Be Warned - it changes tone quite abruptly

Published in 2015 by ChristianAudio.com

Read by the author, Caleb Kaltenbach.
Duration: 6 hours, 3 minutes.
Unabridged.

I checked out the audiobook version of Messy Grace from my local library using the Overdrive app. I highly recommend this app, but it does have a small failing - it does not include any sort of reviews of the digital ebooks or audiobooks. It only includes the publisher's description and the publisher's description of this audiobook only tells part of the story. 

As the title says, Kaltenbach did indeed grow up with gay parents. They married young and divorced after a few years. His mother lived life as a married couple with another woman (this was pre-gay marriage) and his father lived as a closeted gay man. His mother hated Christians because of Westboro Baptist Church-type protesters, but to be fair to his mother, there are plenty of people that express the same thoughts that they publicly proclaim in private situations. Kaltenbach does not deny this - in fact he decries it throughout the book.

Kaltenbach spends the first 60% of the book or so telling the story of his life and about his parents. He is very much against the Pharisee-type behavior you see in plenty of churches - the behavior that automatically rejects anyone that doesn't seem church-y enough. Kaltenbach argues you can't reach the "lost" if you don't actually engage with them - something that Jesus said and did over and over again.

As Kaltenbach discusses this point, he begins to sound less like he is making projects out of people rather than reaching out to people because they are friends and family. I didn't have a way to describe this inkling in the back of my mind until Kaltenbach did - he said churches have to be careful of this very thing and he called it "project vs. people". It ends up sounding like, "We're going to save a gay man" instead of "I think my friend Bob would really like to check out my church and my church would really like my friend Bob." 

The problem with turning people into projects is that once the project is done (the project joins the church) you move onto to a new project and drop the old project. But, people aren't projects so you are just dropping this person that you made big investment in because you weren't friends with them - you were busy fixing them.

The author and narrator,
Caleb Kaltenbach

But, the part that really bothered me above all else was the fact that the book pitches itself as a pro-gay inclusion book right up until the moment that it is not. Once it switches gears it hurts every other argument the book made before. It becomes a turn people into projects book. It becomes a "pray the gay away" book of sorts. The celibacy passage was completely horrible. 

My suggestion: read the first half of the book and then stop.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: MESSY GRACE: HOW a PASTOR with GAY PARENTS LEARNED to LOVE OTHERS WITHOUT SACRIFICING CONVICTION by Caleb Kaltenbach.