46 | Pieter Valk: Singleness - Curse or Calling?

The Bible presents many topics that elicit passionate and polarizing opinions. One of these is how unmarried Christians should evaluate their calling and purpose as it relates to marriage.

Our guest, PIETER VALK, has a lot to say on the subject. As a Christian who for most of his life has experienced same-sex attraction and a commitment to honor a traditional Biblical sexual ethic, Pieter has embraced a life of vocational singleness. But he doesn't think it's something only gay or same-sex attracted people should consider.

Pieter believes the calling to remain single has deep, meaningful purpose for those who would embrace it. He believes single people have a responsibility to own their lives and to pursue deep relationships outside of marriage, AND he believes the Church has a responsibility to provide real family to those who remain unmarried.

Pieter is the founder and executive director of Equip, a premier consulting and training solution for churches aspiring to be places where LGBT+ people are embraced and thrive according to historic sexual ethics. Since their inception in 2014 they have trained over 35,000 individuals on how to better love and care for LGBT+ people in their churches and communities. 

• EQUIP's web site
• Pieter on Instagram
• Some of Pieter's writings
• Pieter's article on vocational singleness

#pietervalk #equip #equipyourcommunity #vocationalsingleness #christiansingleness #lgbt #gaychristian #pornaddiction #sexaddiction #healing #recovery #grace #gospel #transformation

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

I was never okay with God calling me to celibacy by default because I was gay. You know, I was never okay with the idea that, well, celibacy is really the lesser calling. Tough noogies, you've got same sex attraction. You here's your consolation prize. I was never okay with that. You know, I was never okay with a god who set it up that way or allowed it to be that way. And then what I read in the scriptures was talking positively about a calling of singleness that was just as good.

Announcer 0:28

Welcome to What We Really Want. Conversations about connection. Settle in and get ready for a great conversation. Let's talk about what we really want.

Greg 0:40

Hey everybody, welcome back to What We Really Want. This is Greg. Today is episode 46. Our guest is Peter Valk, and it's called Singleness, Curse or Calling? And guys, that title is really an acknowledgement of a reality many single people go through every day. I mean, is their singleness a bad thing or a good thing? Is it a curse or could it actually be a calling from God? And if it is a calling, how can single people find the relational connection that all of us need? So jumping into something this heavy to help us navigate through it, I reached out to my friend Peter Vaughn. Peter's the executive director of Equip, an organization that describes itself as a premier consulting and training solution for churches, aspiring to be places where LGBT plus people are embraced and thrive according to historical sexual ethics. Peter believes that same-sex attracted people need to be loved and welcomed in our churches, and he believes it's possible for churches to extend this kind of love and welcome without compromising their beliefs or teachings on traditional biblical sexual ethics. Now, right off the bat, some of you may hear what I just said about the work Peter does and ask, well, what does this have to do with singleness? I also realize that people who listen may have some opinions and feelings about the work that Peter does. On the one hand, there are people who believe there's no such thing as a gay or same-sex attracted Christian. They believe those two terms are mutually exclusive. On the other hand, there's people who are gay or experience same-sex attraction, and they have been deeply wounded by people in the church who have not even shown them the respect and dignity that all of us deserve as image-bearers of God. What you're going to hear is a much more nuanced discussion, and I believe also a very biblically faithful one. And wherever you find yourself on that spectrum of faith and sexuality, what I hope you'll hear in our conversation is a man who, to use a line from the serenity prayer, accepts the things he cannot change, namely his sexual attractions, but he also lives a life that's committed to biblical obedience as he understands it. And that led him to begin working through the concept of vocational singleness for himself. And when I say vocational singleness, that's a way to describe someone who has a calling from God to live life as an unmarried person. Here's what I want you to really get, though. While a lot of Peter's work revolves around the LGBT plus community, he clearly believes that vocational singleness is a lot more than a consolation prize for gay people. He deeply believes it's a calling that not only was embraced by the church for hundreds of years, but really it's one that more Christians today, same-sex attracted or straight, ought to consider. So whether you're married or single, same-sex or opposite sex attracted, Christian or not, I hope that you'll listen to my conversation with a man who deeply loves Jesus. He loves people and is putting his money where his mouth is, really, living out his beliefs, even when it's been difficult. I think you'll really like getting to know Peter. The episode is called Singleness, Curse or Calling. And the conversation starts right now. Peter Valk, thanks for being on What We Really Want. Hello.

SPEAKER_03 4:04

Glad to be here.

Greg 4:05

And we're taking it on the road. We're actually sitting at your dining room table here in Nashville, Tennessee. So yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:12

Yeah, no, I'm grateful. And we're we're in the room where it happens because this is where the guys who I'm in an intentional Christian community with, this is where we, you know, have our meals and near where we pray together. And so, yeah, I mean, we'll get into some of that later in the conversation, but it's it's appropriate. I can't wait.

Greg 4:26

I mean, when you talk about intentional Christian community, that's a part of healthy connection that I think a lot of Christians hear about and aren't really sure how to envision that in their minds. So I'm really excited about us talking about that later. But before we do that, what do you really want overall out of our conversation today?

SPEAKER_03 4:44

Yeah. No, I recently got two DMs on Instagram from two different Christian guys who are gay and who are trying to live out celibacy. And it just struck me because in some ways I feel like they represent the kinds of messages I get all the time, over and over again on repeat. And I think they highlight what like the challenge, the problem really is, you know, where people are getting stuck and like what's lacking. And so one guy reached out wondering whether he would go to hell if he married a man and die without specifically repenting of any gay sex they engaged in. Wow. You know, he was kind of asking of how far is too far, what what rules can I break or bend? What's what what can I get away with? Can I have my cake and eat it too? Kind of where's the line kind of questions. What are really the consequences going to be, kind of questions? Okay. Um, then the other person uh who DM'd me had recently emerged from kind of like a sex and lust bender. He's in the closet where he lives, and no one at his at his church knows his story, and he's really afraid of being rejected if he shared his story. And he's been trying to be faithful, but it's all on his own, you know, and he is very lonely because of that, very vulnerable to temptation. But his message was asking, you know, why isn't God helping me resist? Does God not want me to be faithful? You know, has God abandoned me? Has God cursed me? Is God testing me? You know, so he's got all these elements that I would argue the real reason why he's struggling to be faithful, but the only thing he can think of is, well, I'm supposed to be able to be faithful regardless of my circumstances, all on my own, if God wanted me to be faithful, and I'm not. So does that mean either God doesn't love me or maybe God isn't real? That phrase all on my own felt pretty heavy as you said it. Yeah. Yeah, because he is. I mean, I I'm so spoiled that it's been like years and years since I've been making sense of my attractions and my challenges all by myself. So it's like I'm so far removed from it that I can't even remember what it felt like to have a part of my story that I wasn't sharing with my whole community. But these messages, like they they take me back, you know. I mean, I I hear it in like their messages, the pain, and it reminds me, oh, I used to be in that much pain too. And that's no way to live. I couldn't live that way for five more years, you know. So yeah, I guess I hope we talk about those guys. Um, because I think there's a lot of people that are kind of where those guys are at in one way or another, or kind of at the same time. And and I and I actually also don't think that it has much to do with either of them being gay. I think it has to do with the fact that our churches don't know what to do with anyone who is walking out lifetime singleness, regardless of sexual orientation. So yeah, that's what I'm thinking. That's what I'm coming into.

Greg 7:37

You know, when you say lifetime singleness, and this is what I told you ahead of time, I kind of wanted to be the bulk of our conversation. Yeah. Because lifetime singleness, when you put those two words together, most people who are single and at least not in a season where that's by choice, would hear those and think that's a terrible thing. Yeah. How quickly can I get out of that as the the prognosis of my life? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:02

Because they assume lifetime single means lifetime lonely.

Greg 8:05

Exactly. Exactly. And I know that we're going to talk about the the intersection of vocational singleness and the loneliness epidemic later. I'd I'd love to get your take on it. Well, I love when we come in hot right off the bat. Now really good to it. Some people say what I really want is, oh, just have a fun conversation. And you you brought something very different and I love it. Help us get to know you a little bit. Sure. Because people around Nashville, I know are gonna have more awareness of who Peter is, what who what a quip is and what they do, but help us get to know you as a man, as a person, and then just with what you do. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:40

So I get to write and speak about vocational singleness and discernment and LGBT plus topics according to uh historic Christian sexual ethic, and have written for places like Christianity Today and Mirror Orthodoxy. And then I'm the executive director of Equip, which is a nonprofit that does coaching and training with church leaders and parents, really to equip them to make their families and their and their churches into places where LGBT plus Christians can belong and thrive according to a historic Christian sexual ethic. And we we last year celebrated our 10-year anniversary and have gotten to train over 35,000 Christian leaders in that time. And so super grateful to be a part of that work. And then I'm one of two founding brothers of the Nashville Family of Brothers, which is kind of the home, the house where we're recording this podcast from. Yeah, exactly. And we are well, we're an intentional Christian community, is the simplest way to say it. But uh we are kind of like a modern monastery, ecumenically Christian, where for men to find a lifelong family who feel called to vocational singleness, who feel called to be single for the sake of kingdom work, for the sake of caring for the poor and the needy in our world. Uh denominationally, I'm I'm an Anglican, um, and I'm in the process of kind of ordination. I'm discerning ordination, I'm aspiring the uh the diaconate. Uh, and I get to talk and speak in those kind of spaces around vocational singleness and sexuality as well. Um, and maybe last but not least, I am uh a licensed professional counselor and primarily meet with LGBT plus clients who are usually also believers and want want to find out how to steward that according to their convictions, but are looking for some support, some help because they're not finding it elsewhere.

Greg 10:25

Are they trying to make two realities in their life that seem to not go together go together?

SPEAKER_03 10:32

Yeah, I think for at least what I hear from a lot of them is that they have talked to pastors or mentors in their life who always seem to know less than them about what they're struggling with. Who in the process like they have to almost like teach their pastor how to minister to them. In the process, their pastor hurts them more. And even then, their pastor is still mediocrely equipped to minister to them. And at some point they realize, well, maybe I should just figure this out by myself, or maybe I should find someone who has even more expertise than me. And I'm not trying to say I am like the expert, you know, but like I've spent many years as a client in counseling myself. And I mean and I do have the expertise of a licensed professional counselor. And, you know, a lot of my clients actually end up, I think, guests finding me first on social media and hearing how I'm speaking to these things with a kind of insight that makes them think, gosh, my pastor didn't get it, but I bet this guy will get it.

Greg 11:28

And you're speaking to the very things that maybe they've never thought that they would be able to find anybody to speak to.

SPEAKER_03 11:34

Yeah.

Greg 11:34

Yeah. I hope so.

SPEAKER_03 11:35

That's gotta be huge. What I'm getting to offer people.

Greg 11:38

Well, you said at the beginning, you know, there's a part of your life that you for years didn't feel like there was any place where you could share it. Yeah. And when the first time you have a sense of maybe I could, that's gotta just be one of the most pleasantly surprising experiences a person can have.

SPEAKER_03 11:57

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's been a long journey for me. You know, I realized I experienced same-sex attraction when I was going through puberty in middle school. I grew up a Christian, you know, had accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior, you know, in third grade. And can I share with my parents actually uh my freshman year of high school? But I would say my first, like really, I don't know, delightful experience of sharing my story and then feeling embraced and cared for around that was when I was in a Christian fraternity at Vanderbilt, and there was kind of some stuff, some current events on campus that kind of highlighted that there were some guys in the Christian fraternity that I was a part of that didn't know how to like care for people like me and talk about they they assumed there was no one like me around them listening to what they were saying. So I kind of shared my testimony with our entire Christian fraternity, and it was terrifying. But also the number of those guys that lined up afterwards to give me a hug and pulled out their phones and said, Hey, can we get coffee? I want to hear more of your story, and who continued to like make that space a space where myself and others and the next generation of guys who joined our fraternity could share our story was an amazing gift, you know. And then a big part of it was because I was willing to share my story in a little bit of a scary way. There were then like 10 or 15 guys over the next six months in our fraternity of like a hundred who one at a time reached out to me and said, Hey, that's my story too. I'm a Christian, I experienced same-sex attraction, I want to follow God's teachings, I'm alone. For the most part, they none of them had ever talked to anyone about it, and they were afraid that they would be alone for the rest of their life if they followed God's wisdom. But they thought maybe, maybe, maybe if we do this together, you know, something can get better.

Greg 13:41

So when when these guys came to you and said, me too, yeah, was that a surprise to you, or would you have expected, like, even though I don't know who they are, I'm sure there are more people in my fraternity that have an experience like mine?

SPEAKER_03 13:58

I thought there would be some. And I was hopeful that one of the things that might come out of me sharing my story was that I could finally have Christian fellowship with other people who had the same struggle. But I was very surprised at the number, I was surprised at the who, you know, I don't know. It's if you have the stereotype of like a Christian summer camp counselor, bubbly personality, very smiley and sweet guy. That was like every person in our fraternity. And so in some ways, it's like, well, any one of these guys could be gay, but also maybe none of them are gay. And so, like, I don't know, you know what I'm saying? It's just uh so I was surprised, but definitely grateful because I those ended up being the men that I kind of did life with over the next two or three years as we all tried to figure out okay, what does it look like to be faithful to God in this season, but also after college, and many of those guys ended up being are still friends today, you know? And that's in some ways kind of my intentional Christian community journey, like kind of started then because I starting sophomore year, always live with other guys in my fraternity, and we always lived in intentional ways when it came to accountability and when it came to I mean, we we were in a college, of course, we ended up doing lots of meals together and doing lots of homework together, but it's I mean, it's the rhythms of a of a monastery. I mean, yeah, your universities are based on monasteries, you know. It's uh and so we were living intentional Christian community, and then after college, there were some of us who, you know, found ourselves in the same city and we knew, well, we need those same things. We need to live with people who get our struggle and our experience. We need consistency, we need meals, we need prayer. So, I mean, I have lived essentially in an intentional Christian community with some, if not all, guys who experience same-sex attraction since 2010, you know, for 15 years. And so again, it's like I just I'm so spoiled. I take for granted like what's been a part of my journey because most of the people I connect with, counseling clients or people who reach out over Instagram, they cannot even imagine having 15 years of living with other believers who share their struggle and are supporting them in their journey, having that under their belt. They can't even imagine like if I had that resource, oh my gosh, like that sounds like a miracle, you know?

Greg 16:13

Yeah. So yeah, I'm super grateful. So before we shift gears and start talking about the topic of vocational singleness, which I know is really a passion subject of yours. Sure. Yeah, yeah. I want to ask a little bit more about equip.

SPEAKER_03 16:27

Yeah, yeah, sure.

Greg 16:28

And I the question I have really deals with pushback because I can imagine that any ministry that uses language, number one, gay Christians, number two, gay Christians who want to be biblically faithful to the teachings of scripture, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're gonna potentially get pushback from across the spectrum. Because I know that in a historical evangelical context, there would be many people who would say there's no such thing as a gay Christian. Sure, sure. And then among gay communities, to say, hey, you you just need to realize these are clobber passages, what you think is faithful biblical teaching, you don't need to worry about that. Yeah. And and and everything in between. So where if it does consistently come, where does your pushback come from the most? And has that been surprising to you? Yeah. What's the level of acceptance been? Has that been surprising to you? I'd just love for you to talk about that for a minute.

SPEAKER_03 17:24

Yeah. So I think you kind of name the challenge, which is that no matter what terminology or vocab we choose to use, it's gonna put off some demographic. It's gonna make ministry to some group more difficult. And so you essentially have to choose, well, which group would I am I willing to be less effective with so that I can be more effective with the other space.

Greg 17:49

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 17:49

And, you know, at least for for for me and for the work of a quip, a lot of our public-facing stuff is is meant to be in some ways kind of uh apologetics and and compelling for Christian young adults and and Christian teens and and and and non-Christian young adults, and and also kind of modeling for parents and pastors how they can appeal to that demographic. That demographic, if if I kind of refuse to use kind of the vocabulary that they use in common conversation, you know, a historic sexual ethic is already barrier enough, you know, to them thinking that I'm a our organization, what we're offering is weird and outdated. Or is it some new brand of conversion therapy? Right, right. Yeah. So if I add on to that an additional barriers of not even being willing to use the vocab that they're already using in their spaces, it builds up even more walls. So, you know, so we tend to use the words gay, LGBT plus, whatnot, just because those are the words our audience is using. And then we do clarify, you know, according to a historic Christian sexual ethic, and we define like what that means. But yeah, that means that like there's some more culturally conservative parents and pastors who they are put off by that. And I guess what I'm saying is like we know we know we someone's gonna be put off. Either non-Christians are gonna be put off or conservative, culturally conservative Christians are gonna be put off. I think any mythological organization, even the evangelical organization, should choose to prioritize the non-Christian with our language over the conserved culturally conservative Christian, you know. If we're if we're gonna kind of accommodate or kind of handicap our ministry in one direction. Um, but yeah, that means that like I think understandably there is like skepticism from parents and pastors who are more culturally conservative. And I think that skepticism makes sense, you know. I think that the whole uh self-invention movement that like started with the sexual revolution and contraception has come full circle in the past decade when it comes to everything in the LGBT plus rights movement. I think maybe I don't put as much power into some words. I I guess I don't I personally don't feel like the word gay or LGBT plus, I don't know. For me, they're just they're just words. Yeah, they're just letters in a string, you know, and I can give them as much power as I want to or not. And I choose to give them very little power in my life. But maybe other people don't have that ability to choose how much power they give to it, and it just takes power from them. I don't, I don't experience that. I'll never experience those words to have that power over me. I don't know.

Greg 20:15

So where those words may have power that comes across as negative for traditional evangelicals, using words like traditional biblical sexual ethic are going to be pretty powerful in a negative received circuit in the LGBT community. Yeah. So how do you what do you receive in those conversations? I mean, do you get a lot of heat like, yeah, man, you you you say that you're for us, and yet you say this too. I mean, what what is what does that pushback look like?

SPEAKER_03 20:43

It it's something to the effect of, well, don't you know these beliefs cause suicide? Don't you know people who are born gay? How could you believe, even believe in a God who is the God of the Bible? That God is patriarchal and racist and XYZ. The Bible doesn't say anything about gay people. Jesus didn't say anything about gay marriage. There's all the like very predictable in some ways. And I think there are reasonable responses, compassionate responses to each of those. And I think the historic Christian sexual ethics stands up to each of those questions. But I think the reason why it feels like some of those objections have weight is because there are ways that like we as Christians have failed to embody God's wisdom in a way that is actually life-giving for people who experience sexuality. And to embody his love. Yeah, exactly. And so there's like there's half-truths to a lot of the objections from people who are more progressive, you know? There are ways that that ex-gay theology that kind of popped up in the 80s and flourished for a couple of decades and then thankfully seems to have died last decade. Did so much harm. Yeah, led to a lot of loss of faith and a lot of suicide. Yeah. That it's that's those practices weren't biblical and they weren't scientific, they were just destructive. And it's not what you do. Yeah, yeah. But like a lot of people blame Jesus for that. And it makes sense. We as Christians. Christians claim his name. And we did all those things.

SPEAKER_02 22:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:03

So there's there's some repairing work to do there of repenting for the mistakes we made as the church in the name of Jesus. We've once once again, you know, dirtied his image and made it harder for people to see what's truly dazzling about Jesus. And so we've got some work to do.

Greg 22:21

You know, in our last episode, I was talking to Drew Boa from the Husband Material Community, and he's got a book that just came out. And part of what he talks about is the damage, the impact, the connection between purity culture and people's unwanted sexual behavior. And we had the very same conversation. You know, people who were in who were supposed to represent the character of Jesus. And let's even, you know, in giving the benefit of the doubt, maybe that's what they're trying to do, but not doing it consistently. Yeah. You know, being a lot more informed by a very specific slice of tradition than by the person of Jesus that we see in the Bible.

SPEAKER_03 23:00

Yeah. So I maybe you hear me having like more sympathy for the culturally progressive non-Christian than the culturally conservative Christian. And I know that doesn't that not everyone fits into those two buckets, but I mean, the Bible says for us to have more empathy and compassion and patience for a non-Christian than a Christian. The Bible says to hold fellow Christians to a very high standard and to expect people who don't know Jesus to make lots of mistakes and misunderstand us. That's what this, that's what Jesus says.

Greg 23:30

Well, I want to shift over to something that's not disconnected from what you do, very connected, but also goes beyond the specific work of Equip. Yeah. Um back in 2020, you wrote an article that was published in Christianity Today called The Case for Vocational Singleness. And right towards the start, I think it was in the second paragraph, this is what you wrote. Every Christ follower is invited to serve their neighbor, but God calls a small and mighty band of Christians to permanently leverage their singleness for kingdom work. For the first 1,500 years of the church, many Christians prayerfully asked the Lord whether he was calling them to Christian marriage or to vocational singleness for the sake of the kingdom. What if Christians today once again discern this question with God? And what if some or even many of them accepted a call to committed singleness and lived that calling to help heal their communities with undivided attention? I mean, those are some big questions. Sure. Yeah. And I'm just I'm curious as to what led you to feel so strongly and passionately that this is a message that needed to get to more people. And then I'm also curious as to since you started publicly writing and speaking about this, what have you noticed?

SPEAKER_03 24:48

Yeah. So I think as at least for me, I'm a fairly uh self-interested creature. A lot of this became uh started from my own journey, my own problems, my own challenges, my own needs. You know, I was never okay with God calling me to celibacy by default because I was gay. You know, I was never okay with the idea that, well, celibacy is really the lesser calling. Tough noogies, you've got same-sex attraction. You here's your consolation prize. I was never okay with that. You know, I was never okay with a God who set it up that way or allowed it to be that way. And then what I read in the scriptures was talking positively about a calling of singleness that was just as good. Yeah. That was not a lesser-than thing, at least in theory, you know. And we read in the history of the church different seasons and ways that this kind of intentional singleness for the sake of the kingdom has been a beautiful thing, has been a blessing to the church, has been honored. Yet that did not fit the church I grew up in. It didn't fit most kind of evangelical Christian churches in America that I've, you know, visited, that I've been around. So there seemed like in theory, God had this plan for like Christian marriage and vocational singleness to both be these beautiful, robust, life-giving, community-filled vocations. But in practice, that's not what we see in our local churches. I wrestled with that. Like, okay, does that does the theory not matter at all? Does God's design and hope for these vocations and calling on the church, is it irrelevant because the church is not just doing it well? Or does God have the solution, which was his design for these vocations, his plan for the church to embrace his design for these things and to live them out?

Greg 26:27

Because biblically you can't say something's changed. Right. But culturally, something's very much changed. Yeah, we've missed something. Programming in most Christian churches really is geared towards the nuclear family, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 26:40

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and we can have a whole conversation about the the why there. Um, but I think very long story short, I saw, at least in the scriptures, it seemed like God had these two positive vocations, Christian marriage or vocational singleness. You know, I've shared in other spaces that while I generally experience same-sex attraction and don't generally experience opposite sex attraction, I was transparent about my story, but also took girls to date events in the Christian fraternity that I was a part of and had girls that I dated, not because I was trying to pass this straight, but just because I had a genuinely good time with them and was open to something happening, if it happened genuinely, you know, and fell in love with two of those women and almost got engaged to one of those women. We broke up for reasons unrelated to my sexuality, but I knew that Christian marriage with someone of the opposite sex could work for me if God called me to that too. And so I just came to this point where I realized, okay, we've got two positive callings, Christian marriage or vocational singleness, both of which are possible for me, both of which I have some resistance to, if I'm gonna be honest. Yeah, both of which I'm excited about for different reasons. And I just got this sense from what I read in the scriptures that I wasn't supposed to just go take the one I preferred. I mean, okay, at the moment, honestly, the one I preferred was Christian marriage, you know, to get into what maybe some people call like a mixed orientation marriage, an opposite sex Christian marriage where at least one of those people experiences same-sex attractions. That's what I preferred. But through a period of like discernment, I mean, intentionally bringing this question to the Lord and to mentors and to friends, I got clarity from the Lord that He wanted me to give me the gift of vocational singleness. He wanted to call me to that, call me to step out of the kind of common singleness we're all born into as believers, and step into the specific vocation of singleness, not because I experienced same-sex attraction. Like I'm convinced that regardless of my sexual orientation, God was going to call me positively to vocational singleness. Okay, so in theory, this all sounded great, but like we're still we we still have the issue of the church doesn't know how to teach about this, doesn't know how to support this. So I expect it in some ways to be under-supported by this. And in and in some ways, what I think I heard from God, and what I actually ended up hearing, which was very helpful for me from my pastor, was you're right, this is good in theory, and right now this sucks in practice in the church. What if you say yes to it? And part of what you're saying yes to is to try to teach, push the church to do this better. And in the meantime, try to piece together what you need. And so that's what I said yes to, I guess. You know, and that's and that's why I wrote this article and and the response to it, you know, I think has been uh encouraging in some ways and discouraging in other ways. You know, I have not seen like a revolution of churches interested in teaching robustly about this and inviting everyone to discern and setting up intentional Christian communities so the vocational singleness is livable. Um, but I've heard from a lot of people that just assuming marriage had a lot of negative impacts, even if they ended up getting married, but particularly if they didn't end up getting married. Right. And we've got a lot of people, many of them in involuntarily, but still a lot of people walking out long-term singleness in our churches. Our churches need to do better when it comes to supporting those in long-term singleness, whether it's committed intentionally for positive reasons like it is for me, or whether it's kind of involuntary and feels forced, maybe for some others. Our churches need to do a better job with that. And that probably starts with at least taking seriously what God's positive design is in the scriptures for this, yeah, and living that in our churches and and then extending the benefits of that to maybe those who are in in singleness for different reasons long term. Okay. So many questions.

SPEAKER_02 30:32

Yeah.

Greg 30:33

This is so important to talk about. I here's here's the first question I want to ask you. Whether it is the work you've been doing for 10, 11 years with a quip, or whether it is turning the lights on to the fact that vocational singleness is for many a calling. Yeah. Like not your plan B, your plan A from God, this is a calling. Yeah. Do you ever get tired of being the standard bearer? Sure. The advocate. Like, I mean, because when somebody has been willing to go there first and be the voice and be the trumpet for that, kind of like the guys in your fraternity. It's a lot easier to say me too than to be the first one to put it out there and really spend some time with it. Does it get exhausting sometimes being the voice, the advocate, the standard bearer for topics like this?

SPEAKER_03 31:26

Yeah, definitely. I don't know. I jokingly maybe uh, you know, God made me to be a narcissist for the sake of the kingdom. So I don't mind, I don't mind all of the attention. No, it does get exhausting. I think I just um, yeah, a combination of a like it's what God made me for, a combination of willingness to say yes, a combination of like stubbornness. I think some of it like it's that it's that refusal to just settle for a consolation prize, a refusal to believe that that's the kind of God God is, a stubbornness that there is something better in the scriptures than that. God's already offering it. So I don't need to demand it from God, but I will demand it from the church. And I may never get it, yeah, but I don't have to make peace if it's never gonna be offered to me in full. I don't ever have to make peace with that. God's not asking me to make peace with that. And I don't know, that gives me life, you know? It's like if I'm not gonna receive what God intends for the church to give to me, I'm at least gonna make meaning out of that lack by fighting for it. And at least for me, it like, I don't know, maybe I'll burn out in five years or ten years of that. You know, maybe I'll, I'll, I'll uh tells me probably no. I don't know. Maybe I'll get tired of it and I'll um I won't change my convictions, but I'll recede into obscurity and won't talk about these things publicly anymore. But at least for now, like I'm I really believe in it, both because I need more, even from my local church, and I and there's so many people I'm connected to across the US, outside of the US, that I care about who I mean at the end of the day, this is like this is all about the gospel for me. Not because I think people's beliefs or practices when it comes to sexuality determines whether or not they go to heaven, but because I just know so many Christian friends who tried to follow God's wisdom and were gay and essentially burnt out because they were trying to do it alone and they no longer believe in Jesus. And the thought that many of them will spend eternity away from me and away from God, it tortures me.

Greg 33:30

And so in a scenario where we could have done differently in order to help them through that. Exactly. Help them navigate it. Yeah. Several minutes ago, you talked about these two potential futures for yourself of Christian marriage or vocational singleness. And you said that for both of them, you felt some resistance and you felt some excitement. Yeah. My guess would be that for the majority of sing young single Christians or middle-aged or older single Christians who desire marriage, there would be a lot more resistance than excitement. Yeah. At first, at first blush, when you start talking about vocational singleness.

SPEAKER_03 34:11

Yeah.

Greg 34:12

But somebody who's listening to this is starting to entertain, okay, what if this is not just me missing out? Yeah. Yeah. What if this is God's plan A for my life? Yeah. Where do they start to become open to a shift in what I've assumed is how it needs to be? Like where does a person who wants to be open to vocational singleness start?

SPEAKER_03 34:36

Yeah, because I think sometimes, sometimes I'll share this part of the story and people respond with, well, yeah, the only reason you really considered this was because you experienced same-sex attraction, because there was some reasons why some complexity around both opposite sex marriage and same-sex marriage for you. And and and God kind of twisted your arm into considering both vocational singleness and Christian marriage. But the that was a an artificial leveling of the playing field that was that's a problem, you know. And honestly, when I reflect back and I think, and I talk to many of my married friends today who are straight, and ask them about how they thought about singleness versus marriage before they got married and how they think about it now, 10 years down the road. I think most of them would say they're the ones who had a wacky perception of their options. And they feel like my perception of seeing these a little bit more evenly keeled, having kind of sober expectations about both, beauty, but also strong hesitation. They're like, you actually were seeing them accurately. Because what I hear from my straight married friends is they said, we were only thinking about Disney Channel romance. You find the one, and then it's easy to be faithful for each other and fulfill each other for a lifetime. We did not realize how hard, beautiful but difficult marriage was gonna be. Yeah, we did not realize that like we were gonna have a strong desire to raise kids, but that the desire to raise kids for the sake of the kingdom is the hardest job we will ever do. And it is beautiful and it sucks the life out of me. And we did not realize how many things in the lives of our celibate friends, particularly our celibate friends who are not dying of loneliness, but living in community, we do not realize how jealous we would become of the things that they have.

Greg 36:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:25

And and how little margin I, you know, I as a parent feel like I have to do anything to care for the poor and the needy in my city because I'm caring for this, this, this, this kid in my house, and I'm jealous of my celibate friends who are thriving in community who get to do it and do this cool kingdom work because they have all this extra margin. Like, I think the problem is not that like my arm was twisted and considering both options. I think the problem is so many straight Christians in our churches have a false view of both Christian marriage and vocational singleness. Yeah. You know, they have an overly rosy view of Christian marriage that in some ways sets them with unrealistically high expectations for Christian marriage that sets them up for divorce because they they expect way more from it than can ever provide. And then they have kind of an artificially low view of vocational singleness. At least, you know. So anyway, that's it.

Greg 37:14

Well, and if it was only that, if it was only the lack of good teaching or the presence of ineffective or bad teaching on this, that would be enough. But I don't think it's just that. Sure. Because of what we do through Awaken in working with people who have had, in many cases, unwanted sexual behavior that started when they were exposed to porn at seven years old. Sure. Oh, yeah. Their sexuality was hijacked before they even had much of a say in it. Oh, yeah. There's the intersection between singleness and loneliness. Yeah. And I've got a theory, I'd love to hear your take on it. You know, people who, as a single young adult, would feel difficult emotions, whether that's anger, sadness, but particularly loneliness, because we're living more and more in an isolated state of being. Yeah. All kinds of reasons, technology, you name it, just trends. And a young single person is going to come home lonely and they're going to look at porn and they're going to masturbate.

SPEAKER_03 38:15

Yeah.

Greg 38:15

And they're going to temporarily feel comforted by that. They're going to, they're going to get, albeit a counterfeit or a short-term benefit, it's a benefit. Sure, sure. Yeah. And so there's conditioning that takes place when you do that same thing over and over again. Sure. And your brain and your body start to learn whenever I feel lonely, I'm going to have a sexual release. Yeah, yeah. And so that gets hardwired. And sometimes when we don't even have the words for it. And so the theory is this some of us have a presumed path to marriage as quickly as possible so that I won't be lonely. I'll have somebody to go home to, but instead of masturbating to porn, I'm going to have sex with my spouse. Sure. Sure. And we would never willfully compare those two or say we're doing the same thing. Right. But I think sometimes we are doing the same thing. Yeah. We think that togetherness means having a sex partner.

unknown 39:07

Yeah.

Greg 39:07

You know, having someone to be intimate with in that way. Yeah. Well, if I'm a Christian who's trying to be biblically faithful to what the Bible teaches about sex, and I'm accepting a call to vocational singleness, then I know something that I'm accepting that's not going to be a part of my life. And so I guess this is where we kind of get into the overlap between this calling and the epidemic of loneliness. Do you think there's anything to that theory? And if so, I'd love to hear you speak to it a little bit. Oh, for sure.

SPEAKER_03 39:36

For sure. Yeah. I mean, I think, right, particularly like more Reformed Calvinist spaces have been talking about marriage as a remedy for weakness for centuries. That's not new. I don't think it's a very accurate interpretation of 1 Corinthians 7, 9, better to marry than to burn, but it is a common among some denominational spaces. And so that's been in the water for a long time. But then you supercharge that with the fear or expectation of loneliness if you don't get married.

SPEAKER_02 40:06

Right.

SPEAKER_03 40:06

So you've got, yeah, you've got guys who have been essentially sexually addicted to pornography and masturbation since they were 12. And other behaviors too. Yeah. And who have been basically told for their entire teenage life, well, you'll get to age 22, 24, 26, and you'll finally have the solution, which is marriage. You'll have the solution to your porn problem that you've been dealing with for a decade, and it's marriage.

Greg 40:33

And the problem hold it together until then.

SPEAKER_03 40:35

Right. Or even don't hold it together.

Greg 40:37

It'll be wonderful.

SPEAKER_03 40:38

You know, but many of them don't hold it. They're still sex, they're still addicted to pornography that whole decade. Right. They think, but they think like, oh, there's no way to actually defeat pornography except for sex with my wife. And then I'll get that and then I'll fix it. It's gonna flip a switch. And the problem is they just bring sexual addiction into a marriage and hurt more people with it. Yeah. So it's not, you know, yes, it's not a solution. The loneliness epidemic only increases kind of the use of marriage as a remedy for weakness.

Greg 41:03

Okay. In one podcast episode, we can't solve the problem of the loneliness epidemic. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you've been living your life in such a way as to consistently daily address it and walk that out.

SPEAKER_03 41:16

Yeah. Trying.

Greg 41:18

You live in a home with other men who've accepted this calling.

SPEAKER_03 41:22

Yeah.

Greg 41:22

So what have you found? What have you personally experienced that has been a remedy or a balm, a way of getting your relational needs met without a spouse?

SPEAKER_03 41:35

Yeah. So I think some of it was through trial and error and then going back to the scriptures and realizing God had the answer all along, that we are made for community that has proximity and longevity. We're made for that. There's just no replacement. If you have a virtual relationship with people, or you change friends every three years, or you change spouses every three years, you're just gonna be lonely. We are made for it to be embodied, you know, and not a 15-minute drive away. No, like a five ten-foot walk away. And for we're made to do life with I mean, we're made for doing life with the same people for our entire life. Really, and in a way, I mean, we think about how for a vast majority of human history, people lived in not just the same country or the same city or the same neighborhood, but even like the same building for their entire life. And that's not a bad thing. Yeah. You know? So I had to admit that like just because that I'm not a uh just because we've discovered technologies and social and economic mod mobility to move cities and move apartments and change friends kind of at our whim over the past 100 years, does not mean that like what God made us for fundamentally has changed at all. So that's all to say I had to accept that I need to settle down into a place and with a people in that place, and that that was going to be the solution. There's a great book about this stuff, not specifically about celibacy, but generally about this idea of like us needing proximity and longevity. And it's by a book by Daniel Groth or Grothy, I always forget how to pronounce his name, but it's called uh The Power of Place. And he quotes a lot of Windleberry and Saint Benedict of Nurcia, the guy who started the Benedictine monasteries. Anyway, they talk about how we're all just made for community and we're made for kind of community in the same place long term, and that there's this loneliness epidemic this these days. And his diagnosis for why there's a loneliness epidemic is we keep moving. We keep on basically uprooting, like like some kind of plant that if like every six months you uprooted this plant and moved it to a different place in your yard, and then you're like, why isn't it growing? Yeah, because you're you're because you're cutting its roots off and moving it. Give it over. Of course, it's not going to grow. Like, why this is not. Surprise. Like, of course, we are lonely. If we are moving cities, moving friends, moving churches, exchanging spouses. Even if your spouse stays the same, you're changing friend group every five or ten years. And so, of course, we're lonely. And married people are lonely more these days as well. I do not want to pretend like this is only a thing that single people are struggling with, you know.

Greg 44:21

Sure, because you can't get all of your relational needs met by any one person.

SPEAKER_03 44:25

Yeah.

Greg 44:26

No matter how good a relationship you have with your spouse.

SPEAKER_03 44:28

Yeah, for sure.

Greg 44:29

There's a lot of pressure.

SPEAKER_03 44:30

Yes, yes, yes, yes. Well, and that can be part of the, yeah, that can be part of the challenge on marriages, is because we're getting because we're not getting that from the other spaces we ought to be, we start expecting too much from our spouse. Right. That can be a pressure that breaks a marriage, you know. Okay, so that's the problem. So then what's the solution? So I need to find some people to live with in the same house and find some way to get us to commit to living in the same house together long term. Uh, easier said than done. It's it was not uncommon historically in the church among believers, but it's like really uncommon today. So but what that looks like for me is about seven or eight years ago, myself and another guy who thought he might also be called to vocational singleness, we just started reaching out to a bunch of the guy friends in our life who were single at the time and said, Hey, we think God might be calling us to start an intentional Christian community. You know, at first we'll just make short-term commitments, but maybe eventually we'll make long-term commitments to living in this home together. Because if we're gonna be single long term for the sake of the kingdom, we're gonna need community in order to be not only faithful to our like commitment to celibacy, but to like have margin so that we can actually do our kingdom work, you know, so we're not running on an empty board. Actually, we have like fullness that we're that we we're overflowing and can bless our community with kind of our availability and singleness. And, you know, it was it was a very, you know, winding path, but but eventually, you know, we get to where we are today, seven or eight years later, where there are four of us living in a house together and we pray together every morning before work, and we have three or four dinners together a week, and we do vacations and holidays together. And like every year we alternate whether we do Thanksgiving or Christmas with our community here or with our biological family. So this year we, you know, we know we're all gonna do Thanksgiving together here in this home. So now for a lot of people listening, that may seem like a very impractical solution for them to say, oh, go start a monastery. Simple, you know? What why are you lonely? You could just go start a monastery. That is not what I'm suggesting. I know it's not that easy.

Greg 46:30

Thinking of that old that Matt Damon movie, we bought a zoo. It's like we started a monastery. Exactly, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 46:35

No, but I think there are, I think for single people out there, there are some much more accessible solutions. I think one is like you can just if you're if you're still living in the same city as some biological family as you, stay. The kind of family that my biological family can offer me. It's really special. There is no shame in being deeply rooted with your biological family and in the city where your extended family lives and doing life with them. So you can do that. You can live with an uh a nuclear family in your church that you're not related to, but be attached to their system, you know? And that doesn't have to be weird. That can be beautiful. Or you can start some kind of intentional Christian community, but you don't have to, it doesn't have to be as extreme as like a mod a monastery. You know, it could be as simple as find two or three single Christian friends of yours who think they might be single at least for the next year, and say, hey, what if we all moved into the same apartment complex together? And what if just for this next year we committed to praying together each other in the morning before work? And what if we committed to we're gonna do two dinners together a week? You know, not flexible. If you have to miss, you have to miss, you know, but we're gonna like, you know, these two nights a week, there's built-in people for you to have dinner with. And what if we like did some community service in the neighborhood where our apartment complex is together once a month? And what if, like, uh whether it's Thanksgiving or New Year's Eve or one of the big holidays this next year, what if we committed to doing that holiday in our home together on the real holiday day? You know, not a Friendsgiving a week before or a week after, but like on the day. And what if we went on a vacation together once during that year, the four of us, you know? And then let's just see what that does with our lives. And let's check in after a year of doing that and see if we want to do it again for another year. It can be that simple, you know. But I know like it's like that's not the same as having a spouse, but I think most Christian, most single people who are listening to this, when they think about what they had over the past year with the roommates they had or living alone, that's a lot more than you probably have right now.

Greg 48:33

Well, and another thing that it has a lot of is agency. Yeah. How many single people that I talk to, when I listen to how they're describing their lives, it just feels like a victimization. Sure. Yeah. Like I am suffering the victimization of having to live this way. And you're talking about a very empowered way of living, yeah, which would be new, a new way of looking at it for a lot of people. Yeah. But I also heard you talk about one of the options of go live with a traditional nuclear family. Yeah. And that's kind of maybe one of, as we're getting ready to wrap up, one of the things I want to say yes and also, because I hear you calling single people with this call on their lives to take ownership of it. Yeah. Right. To not see it as a plan B, to say, what, God, what do you want to do in and through my life through this? Yeah. So they have some responsibility, but the church also has responsibility to single people, to vocationally single people who answer that call.

SPEAKER_02 49:31

Yeah.

Greg 49:31

Tell me a little bit about how people who are not single in the church can do better and can love better than people who are. Sure.

SPEAKER_03 49:40

Yeah. And I think about particularly if they're I know that the married parents in our churches, um, or single parents in our churches are really heavily burdened and also feel like they're really spread thin. And so I I wouldn't, I wouldn't kind of go and ask even more of that. But I think particularly maybe if people like me in their 50s. Sure, yeah, yeah. So if there's empty nesters, if there's yeah, I think people who are married and don't have kids but feel called not to have kids for some ministry reason, or people who are empty nesters. I think there's a real opportunity. I mean, I know of a lot of empty nesters who say, gosh, I would love for a single person in my church to live in my house and like bring some like life and energy to our home again again. Like why not? So I think that's a huge opportunity there because I mean, we're all made to be generative. We're all made to invest in the next generation. And I know of a lot of parents hopeful for grandkids, but they're not there yet. And they feel like there's there's an opportunity to invest in the next generation that's missing from their life. And this could be it for them for a season to have a single person from their church live in their house with them. So yeah, I think it's a it's a neat opportunity. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, nothing wrong with that. Everybody wins. Yeah, exactly.

Greg 50:50

It's such an attractive way to think about relating to our family and the church. Yeah, you know, and I you you hear people like Rosario Butterfield talking about the gospel comes with a housekeeping. Yeah, yeah. And and just how hospitality changed her life and how she seeks to have it change the lives of the people around her. And it just seems so beautiful, but it's not free. I mean, it's gonna cost you something, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 51:14

Yeah, I I I think maybe the the the challenge, but also the comfort I would want to want to offer around all of this is that the person who feels like they might be called to vocational singleness is not supposed to have to invent this for themselves, piece this together for themselves. And the the average empty nester couple in our churches is not supposed to be deputized to fill all the gaps. You know, what we see in Acts chapter six is that the early church, one of the first responsibilities that the church accepted was the responsibility as church leadership to resource and to organize homes for celibate women to live in and find family. It's one of the first things that the early church said yes to. And I know a few churches that have said yes to it today. It's not supposed to be the responsibility of single people to build this for themselves, it's not supposed to be the responsibility of the average couple in our churches to stand in the gap. It's our church's job. And so if there are single people or there are couples who feel burdened and tired and are saying, This is not supposed to be me, I feel like a victim in some ways, you're right. And we should call on the church to do more. And I would say, particularly for the single person, if you don't expect a revolution in your church anytime soon, you can either throw your hands up and say, Let me get washed into the gutter, or you can choose to take responsibility for your thriving and you can go build what you need. You know, I it's not fair. But the only person that like you playing the victim card and then refusing to do more, the only person it hurts is you. And I know it because I've lived it. It's not fair, you know. But I'm so grateful that I said it's hard right now, and the church should be helping me do this, but I need something better for me. And if no one else is gonna do something, I'm gonna do something. It's been hard, but do you ever regret the hard work? No, it's been so worth it. Yeah, no, not a moment of it. Yeah, no.

Greg 53:10

Peter, I can't believe how fast an hour and five minutes flies by, but it's been so good to see you again. Same. I know we kind of keep in touch, but I don't think I've seen you in three or four years. Yeah, it's been a while. It's great to see you. Thank you for having me into your home. Yeah, uh, into your monastery. Yep. It it's been it's been cool to catch up, and I just can't wait for people to hear this conversation. I think it's going to be real encouraging and challenging in some good ways to people. So thanks so much for making time.

SPEAKER_03 53:37

Thank you.