Welcome to Think Bibbically, Conversations on Faith and Culture, a podcast from Talbot School of Theology at Biola University.

I'm your host Scott Ray, Dean of Faculty and Professor of Christian Ethics.

And I'm your co-host Sean McDowell, professor of apologetics.

We have today as a guest, our good friend, Dr Caleb Kaltenbach. He's been with us on the

podcast several times in dealing with matters of the church and

sexuality and connecting meaningfully with the LGBTQ community. You might be familiar with him from his very popular, very widespread

selling book called Messy Grace, which is a bit of his own personal story about how he got involved in this area.

We want to focus on, we'll hear a little bit about that in just a minute, but we want to focus

on a new book that he has out called Messy Truth, subtitle

How to Foster Community Without Sacrificing Conviction.

So Caleb is a former pastor, he's a Talbot Grad,

now works in consulting and speaking and writing, consulting with churches

and other Christian organizations about how best to navigate this space with the you could be with us? Well, thanks for having me. I love both you guys and love

byola Talbot and what is happening there. So thank you for what you guys do.

So you've been with us on several occasions. You've told the story of your upbringing. You also told

it in your book, Messy Grace. But for our listeners who are new to us and new to you and your

work, tell us a little bit about what kind of family you grew up in and how it impacted you.

Sure, my parents were both the university professors in Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, and they divorced when I was two years old and both of them went into same-sex relationships and that's basically the environment that I was raised in, raised by my mother and her partner until my mother's partner died 22 years later of

cancer and then my dad he was also in same-sex relationships but never a monogamous partner like my mom and my mom and her

partner were activists and I just grew up hating Christians because I believe that

Christians hated gay people and then they joined a Bible study to learn how to disprove the Bible and that worked out real well because I became a Christian and then I ended up coming out to my parents as a Christian and going to Bible College and

seminary and later on at the ages of 6970 my mom and dad actually he

...