Who is the Real Pre­ston Sprin­kle, Part 1: Does Pre­ston Sprin­kle Endorse Open­ly ‘LGBT’ Affirm­ing Orga­ni­za­tions?

For the relat­ed pod­cast, click here: https://youtu.be/Cl4Aie2oMyM
For part 2, click here

When is some­thing an endorse­ment ver­sus sim­ply an unen­dorsed com­ment from a guest, or when is a guest sim­ply a guest ver­sus being implic­it­ly endorsed? Fol­low­ing that theme, when is an orga­ni­za­tion respon­si­ble for clar­i­fy­ing a guest’s com­ment? I want you to hon­est­ly pon­der those ques­tions as we look at Pre­ston Sprin­kle and his min­istry’s alleged endorse­ment of one high­ly com­pro­mised orga­ni­za­tion in par­tic­u­lar. An orga­ni­za­tion that goes as far as to call God “queer” and “they.” My goal here is to present you with the infor­ma­tion, and allow you to answer those ques­tions for your­self. For ref­er­ence sake, here is the rel­e­vant def­i­n­i­tion of “endorse” from Mer­ri­am-Web­ster:

• A: to approve open­ly
  • espe­cial­ly : to express sup­port or approval of pub­licly and def­i­nite­ly
• B: to rec­om­mend (some­thing, such as a prod­uct or ser­vice) usu­al­ly for finan­cial com­pen­sa­tion

I also want to clar­i­fy why I’m using “LGBT.” Pre­ston and the orga­ni­za­tion we will look at use the term, but more than use it, they inject mas­sive amounts of mean­ing into it. It is being used as a bit of a Tro­jan horse, but that will be cov­ered in a lat­er arti­cle. For now, it’s suf­fi­cient to know that I’m using it to engage with the added mean­ing inject­ed into it, not because I think it is a use­ful or valid term. Hence, putting it in quotes.

The back­sto­ry

Pre­ston Sprin­kle and his min­istries (from here on out, I’m just going to say ‘Pre­ston,’ unless I’m exclu­sive­ly ref­er­enc­ing one of his min­istries) have been fac­ing crit­i­cism over their beliefs and approach to ques­tions of sex­u­al­i­ty. Amidst this crit­i­cism, we sought to dig deep­er into the ques­tion of “who’s the real Pre­ston Sprin­kle.” This brought me to a webi­nar put on by Pre­ston’s Cen­ter for Faith, Sex­u­al­i­ty & Gen­der (the Cen­ter) enti­tled “Should Chris­tians ‘Come Out’ about Same-Sex Attrac­tion or Gen­der Dys­pho­ria?” One of the orga­ni­za­tions that a par­tic­i­pant rec­om­mend­ed caught my atten­tion in par­tic­u­lar. That orga­ni­za­tion is Kalei­do­scope, a min­istry that, as already stat­ed, goes as far as to call God “they” in order for “gen­dered lan­guage” not to be a “stum­bling block for folks.” Now, if it was sim­ply a rec­om­men­da­tion by a guest, that might raise an eye­brow, but the Cen­ter sent out a list of the rec­om­mend­ed resources, with the Cen­ter’s logo, and no qual­i­fi­ca­tion.

Curi­ous, I reached out to the webi­na­r’s host, Greg Coles to get more infor­ma­tion on why Kalei­do­scope was seem­ing­ly endorsed. Greg was gra­cious enough to meet with me, and we con­tin­ued to email back and forth. He did­n’t want to speak for Pre­ston or the Cen­ter, which left many of his answers a bit thin and dis­ap­point­ing, almost to the point of con­fu­sion. To be fair, he did warn me of that. He did offer one offi­cial state­ment about the Cen­ter’s stance on webi­nar guests and their rec­om­men­da­tions.

The Cen­ter invites webi­nar guests to make their own rec­om­men­da­tions in our webi­na­rs, but we tend not to make blan­ket endorse­ments of oth­er orga­ni­za­tions, in large part because there’s no way we can stay up to date on every­one’s events/materials and whether or not those things align with The Cen­ter’s approach. Even if an employ­ee of The Cen­ter does rec­om­mend a book or orga­ni­za­tion, this doesn’t at all mean that The Cen­ter as an orga­ni­za­tion approves of every­thing in the con­tent of that rec­om­mend­ed book or orga­ni­za­tion. (And indeed, there have been occa­sions when webi­nar guests have rec­om­mend­ed books or orga­ni­za­tions we’ve nev­er even heard of.) Resources rec­om­mend­ed by webi­nar guests are what we send out with our post-webi­nar emails to atten­dees.

That state­ment is inad­e­quate, though, and I fear it only cre­ates more con­fu­sion, rather than clar­i­ty. For instance, why does­n’t the Cen­ter both­er to do a few min­utes of vet­ting before send­ing out an email that seems to endorse an orga­ni­za­tion? Greg makes it sound like vet­ting these orga­ni­za­tions would take an impos­si­bly long time, but I was able to uncov­er prob­lem­at­ic details about Kalei­do­scope by sim­ply vis­it­ing their web­site. I do hope to have more con­ver­sa­tions in the future, as there are many ques­tions and details I’d love the chance to dis­cuss. For now, I’m dis­ap­point­ed that an oppor­tu­ni­ty for clar­i­ty, even if it’s clar­i­ty I dis­agreed with, was lost.

I also want­ed to make sure I had an hon­est grasp on what Kalei­do­scope was, and what they believed. Even if the evi­dence seems clear, it is always worth ver­i­fi­ca­tion to ensure one is not suf­fer­ing from con­fir­ma­tion bias. With that goal in mind, I reached out to Kalei­do­scope direct­ly. Among oth­er ques­tions, I summed up what I saw as their stance on sex­u­al­i­ty, in short say­ing they were “accept­ing of, and not requir­ing those active­ly pur­su­ing same-sex rela­tion­ship and trans­gen­der iden­ti­ties to stop pur­su­ing such relationships/identities.”

It sounds like you have a good read on what Kalei­do­scope is and does, which is encour­ag­ing! Our goal is to offer tan­gi­ble expres­sions of Jesus to Queer peo­ple com­ing from dif­fer­ent places. We main­ly seek to serve Queer folks out­side of the Church, and we believe the ‘sides’¹ debate (though some­times impor­tant) is often a mas­sive dis­trac­tion to lov­ing peo­ple well and shar­ing the gospel with folks, which is our mis­sion. We make room for ALL Queer peo­ple to explore faith in Jesus and empow­er LGBTQ+ peo­ple to dis­cern, learn, and seek the Spir­it in their sex­u­al­i­ty and gen­der iden­ti­ty, trust­ing the Holy Spir­it will guide them toward his will and way, not ours or on our time clock! We serve mar­gin­al­ized Queer folks in need and make space for seek­ing or inter­est­ed Queer folks to dis­cov­er Jesus. 

We will dou­ble back to look more at Kalei­do­scope, as well as look at their han­dling of “shar­ing the gospel with folks,” but for now let’s answer some basic ques­tions about the sit­u­a­tion.

“What if Pre­ston and the Cen­ter Don’t Know Much About Kalei­do­scope?”

That is a rea­son­able ques­tion, and one I ini­tial­ly assumed was true, which is why I pro­vid­ed some evi­dence to Greg. He did not direct­ly answer the ques­tion, but did rec­om­mend I watch a pod­cast Pre­ston did with Kalei­do­scope pres­i­dent Eliz­a­beth Black. We’ll look at clips from that pod­cast, but let’s estab­lish some­thing: how well is the Pre­ston con­nect­ed to Kalei­do­scope? Obvi­ous­ly, we can’t know in exact details, but there are enough points of crossover to estab­lish that they are not strangers. Exam­ples found include Greg host­ing a webi­nar for Kalei­do­scope in 2021, mem­bers of both groups speak­ing at Revoice 21, Eliz­a­beth was part of a webi­nar for the Cen­ter on Octo­ber 2, 23, Pre­ston inter­view­ing Eliz­a­beth, Eliz­a­beth con­tribut­ing to the Cen­ter’s “Jour­neys of Faith” course, and Eliz­a­beth men­tion­ing talk­ing, seem­ing­ly casu­al­ly, with Greg. To say that Pre­ston or the Cen­ter are unaware of what Kalei­do­scope is would be a lie.

“But that Does­n’t Mean They’re Endors­ing Kalei­do­scope, or that the Details are Known”

This is the heart of this arti­cle, ask­ing when some­thing becomes an endorse­ment. Since Pre­ston’s inter­view with Eliz­a­beth Black was rec­om­mend­ed to me, let us use that as our cen­tral focus. Though Pre­ston nev­er says the words “I endorse Kalei­do­scope,” he affirmed Eliz­a­beth and/or Kalei­do­scope, direct­ly, three times in the inter­view. He said that Eliz­a­beth “absolute­ly killed it” with her Revoice talk, “I love… what you’re doing,” and “I’m real­ly excit­ed about what you guys are doing, seri­ous­ly.” Back to the def­i­n­i­tion of “endorse,” I’d argue Pre­ston’s words fit into “to approve open­ly, to express sup­port or approval of pub­licly and def­i­nite­ly.” Now, does this con­sti­tute a true and full rec­om­men­da­tion of Kalei­do­scope, or a more lim­it­ed and pas­sive sup­port for his guest and her work? I’ll let you draw the line where and how you will, but keep read­ing so your deci­sion can be well-informed.

What is Kalei­do­scope, and is it Actu­al­ly That Bad?

Kalei­do­scope is a min­istry based in New York City with the mis­sion of “pro­vid­ing LGBTQ+ peo­ple oppor­tu­ni­ties to engage with tan­gi­ble expres­sions of Christ.” They accom­plish this mis­sion by, for exam­ple, run­ning men­tor­ing groups, such as their “aspir­ing allies” group that helps you become a “Chris­t­ian ally” to the “LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty.” They do outreach—with a booth draped with pride flags—at NYC’s pride events. Addi­tion­al­ly, they host a month­ly “beers & queers” event, where they gath­er “LGBTQ+ Folks” at “a local Queer bar for drinks and con­ver­sa­tion.” I strug­gle to find a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for host­ing an event at a gay bar, as that seems in every way unwise.

Yes, we bring light to dark­ness, but we don’t return peo­ple, month­ly, to where their par­tic­u­lar dark­ness is found. Grant­ed, they did tweet out that since God’s Spir­it is every­where, gay clubs are tem­ples, so they may have a dif­fer­ent opin­ion on where dark­ness and light are found.

In her inter­view with Pre­ston, Eliz­a­beth Black said that they do “old school evan­ge­lism” on the streets and engage peo­ple with the gospel. Maybe there is a redeemable qual­i­ty to Kalei­do­scope? Let us look at what this “evan­ge­lism” looks like:

Those added clips were from Kalei­do­scope’s Insta­gram, and there was no evan­ge­lism and gospel. They sim­ply affirmed peo­ple’s iden­ti­ties out­side of Christ. It hurt to hear some of the respons­es, such as “I love spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and all that stuff, so awe­some,” or “Thank you guys, this is so cute.” Those are not peo­ple mov­ing towards sal­va­tion, but peo­ple who feel more jus­ti­fied in their sin. Kalei­do­scope chose to high­light those inter­ac­tions, which, pre­sum­ably means they see those as high-qual­i­ty inter­ac­tions. Also, did they call God “queer” and a “they”?

Can We Call God a “They”?

I asked Kalei­do­scope about using “they” to refer to God, and Eliz­a­beth was kind enough to respond.

To your ques­tion about our zines. We are a high­ly con­tex­tu­al­ized min­istry and mis­sions orga­ni­za­tion, so we want to speak the lan­guage of our peo­ple and com­mu­ni­cate truths about God that will res­onate with our audi­ence. That said, we believe that God is gen­der­less (acknowl­edg­ing that God pri­mar­i­ly uses male pro­nouns in the Bible), and the gen­der­less nature of God is relat­able to Queer peo­ple believ­ing that God can relate to and speak to their lives. We don’t want gen­dered lan­guage to be an unnec­es­sary stum­bling block for folks!   

Eliz­a­beth Black, Kalei­do­scope

While it is true that God is tri­une, and that He is not a human—does not have a sex or gen­der out­side of the phys­i­cal body of Jesus specifically—He chose to reveal Him­self using mas­cu­line pro­nouns. It is aston­ish­ing Kalei­do­scope would admit that, yet active­ly choose to use “they” for Him in order to be rel­e­vant. Kalei­do­scope uses peo­ple’s “pre­ferred pro­nouns” and staff will “offer their pro­nouns in intro­duc­to­ry remarks,” yet won’t even use the pro­nouns God uses for Him­self. This, func­tion­al­ly, places God’s iden­ti­ty low­er than human’s. Sac­ri­fic­ing what the Bible says, in favor of appeal­ing to the world seems to be a trend with Kalei­do­scope, though.

Under­min­ing The Per­son and Word of God

In a Chris­tian­i­ty Today arti­cle, Eliz­a­beth is quot­ed as say­ing:

“Jesus him­self inter­act­ed with­in a cul­tur­al frame­work. I’m sure there were things that he didn’t agree with. How­ev­er, he made him­self a part of the com­mu­ni­ty for the sake of his mes­sage”

Chris­tian­i­ty Today “Should I Offer My Pro­nouns”

To reword what was said, she stat­ed that Jesus did sin­ful things—since if God dis­agrees with some­thing, that thing is by nature sin—to get His mes­sage across. That may seem to be harsh word­ing, but it is the con­se­quence of what was said. It also fits with her pre­vi­ous state­ment to me, where she was will­ing to sac­ri­fice the way God revealed Him­self, in order to advance God’s mes­sage, at least in her mind.

This, how­ev­er, isn’t the only time Eliz­a­beth attacks God’s abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate, as we return to her inter­view with Pre­ston where she attacks the author­i­ty and suf­fi­cien­cy of God’s word:

Eliz­a­beth asserts that since “Paul had a very dis­tinct set­ness or call­ing,” was “writ­ing in a par­tic­u­lar con­text “talk­ing in the con­text that he was,” and homo­sex­u­al behav­iors were dif­fer­ent back then; that “the way and the nature [of] the con­ver­sa­tion can be [dif­fer­ent] today.” Paul and his writ­ings can be defend­ed, but the big­ger issue is that Paul’s not record­ing his opin­ions, but God’s holy scrip­ture. The com­mands giv­en are God’s mes­sage for all peo­ple. Paul may not have known what 2024 would be like, but God knew.

Eliz­a­beth also asserts that it is wrong to say “unless you fol­low this par­tic­u­lar sex­u­al eth­ic, you can’t be part of this com­mu­ni­ty” because she does­n’t “think that’s how Jesus oper­at­ed.” She admits that “there are things with­in the gospel, where we see, you know, the sheep and the wolves being sep­a­rat­ed,” but lim­its those to issues of “sal­va­tion and jus­tice.” The jus­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­vid­ed is the sto­ry of the woman at the well. She describes Jesus as “not call­ing her out on her sin” but rather “invit­ing her to share her sto­ry.” Jesus nev­er invit­ed her to tell her sto­ry, but in her words, “Come, see a Man who told me all things that I ever did,” it’s clear that He was telling her sto­ry.

She fur­ther asserts that Jesus offers liv­ing water (sal­va­tion) with­out the “caveat that you have to leave all those men.” Aka: with­out repen­tance. This con­tra­dicts Jesus’ own descrip­tion of His mes­sage: “Repent, for the king­dom of heav­en is at hand.” Now, Eliz­a­beth does say that “obvi­ous­ly God [did­n’t want her] to live this life of sin and self­ish­ness,” but this is more of a prob­lem than a help for her. Who is Jesus? He is God. She admits that it’s con­trary to God’s will that peo­ple con­tin­ue in sin, which would make God a liar to hide that from the woman.

Pre­ston, upon hear­ing this, jumps in with “woooooooooooo, preach it girl!” Again, make of this what you will, but it seems to con­tin­ue a approv­ing, or endors­ing, trend. Pre­ston takes the sto­ry fur­ther, say­ing she was a “vic­tim of a patri­ar­chal… cul­ture” and that “she was abused.” No longer a sin­ner in need of sav­ing, Pre­ston makes her a vic­tim in need of lib­er­a­tion. This would make Jesus cru­el though, as he offers her liv­ing water—salvation from her sins—instead of lib­er­a­tion from her sup­posed patri­ar­chal oppres­sors.

Affirm­ing, Bib­li­cal, or Unclear?

On a pod­cast Eliz­a­beth cohosts—“Life on Side B,” anoth­er resource rec­om­mend­ed in the “com­ing out” webinar—she states that, “as queer peo­ple, we have been robbed of inti­ma­cy… being told, his­tor­i­cal­ly, that you can’t get mar­ried in same-sex part­ner­ships. That is anoth­er way of rob­bing of inti­ma­cy.” By what stan­dard does not allow­ing un-Bib­li­cal mar­riage, which is some­thing she is sup­pos­ed­ly against as some­one with a “Bib­li­cal sex­u­al eth­ic,” rob peo­ple of inti­ma­cy? It cer­tain­ly isn’t God’s stan­dard that you could get that from, as all good, Bib­li­cal forms of inti­ma­cy are open to all peo­ple as long as they sur­ren­der their desires to Christ. What real­ly mud­dies the waters, though, is Eliz­a­beth’s usage of the pro­noun “we.” She includes her­self as part of this group of peo­ple that Chris­tians have robbed of inti­ma­cy (lis­ten for your­self in the clip below). Many ques­tions can be raised from her state­ment, but for now, I sim­ply want to point out how unclear it makes her view mar­riage and sex­u­al­i­ty.

You may have caught it in the video high­light­ing Kalei­do­scope’s “evan­ge­lism,” but in response to a ques­tion on Face­book ask­ing if they’re non-affirm­ing (ignore the part about celiba­cy) they respond that would be “false.” Aka: they are affirm­ing.

Some infor­ma­tion does con­tra­dict the orga­ni­za­tion being affirm­ing, or so it may seem. It comes down to what terms like “affirm­ing” and “ally” mean. Is Kalei­do­scope “affirm­ing” in the sense that they see homo­sex­u­al­i­ty as a good and accept­able thing, some­thing to be act­ed upon? I don’t feel that would be a com­plete­ly fair descrip­tion.

How­ev­er, they cer­tain­ly are affirm­ing in the sense that they “make space” for all peo­ple, and don’t want ques­tions of sex­u­al­i­ty to be a “stum­bling block” to the gospel. What does that mean in prac­tice? It means affirm­ing peo­ple in their sin, even going as far as to com­pro­mise on one’s own stat­ed beliefs—such as call­ing God “they”—in the hopes that their audi­ence will “dis­cov­er Jesus.” But the authen­tic Jesus is not found in sin or fal­si­ties. Sure, we all come to Him as sin­ners, but He’s call­ing us out of sin. Peo­ple can­not get saved from what they don’t know they need sav­ing from, and the dif­fer­ence between an atti­tude of “gay is okay” and “we want you to come to Christ, so we won’t tell you it’s not okay” is nonex­is­tent for the per­son being “evan­ge­lized.” All they’ll hear is: “Jesus loves me for who I am, so I don’t need to change.”

Is this sim­ply my spec­u­la­tion, a fit­ting togeth­er of infor­ma­tion tak­en out of con­text? Remem­ber, I reached out to Kalei­do­scope, ask­ing direct­ly about their posi­tion, and I was told that my char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of the min­istry was a “good read on what Kalei­do­scope is and does.”

Wrap­ping Things Up

“Is Pre­ston endors­ing orga­ni­za­tions that open­ly defy how he char­ac­ter­izes him­self and his min­istry” may be an easy ques­tion to form an answer on, and that answer will like­ly be col­ored heav­i­ly by your pri­or opin­ion about Pre­ston. I feel it is impor­tant though, to be able to see more clear­ly how Pre­ston oper­ates, both him and his min­istry, and to real­ly dive in and have a sol­id foot­ing for why you may answer one way or anoth­er. For me per­son­al­ly, I start­ed this assum­ing that Pre­ston and the Cen­ter did not know what Kalei­do­scope was, yet in the end, the evi­dence led me to believe they knew. More than just know­ing about Kalei­do­scope, Preston/the Cen­ter even agreed with and applaud Kalei­do­scope. The one dis­sat­is­fy­ing thing to me is not being able to talk with Pre­ston direct­ly. I don’t see a way that could change things, but it would be use­ful for bring­ing the sit­u­a­tion into sharp­er clar­i­ty. I reached out with a draft of this arti­cle months before post­ing it, and no response was giv­en.

What caught me off guard, even as some­one crit­i­cal of Pre­ston, is how much he agreed with Eliz­a­beth, or even took her point and went fur­ther. Take this final clip for exam­ple, where Pre­ston agrees that hold­ing off on teach­ing the Bib­li­cal truth on mar­riage and sex­u­al­i­ty is the right thing to do, since peo­ple need to have a “decon­struct­ed and recon­struct­ed view of who Jesus actu­al­ly is.” That seems fine on the sur­face, since know­ing who Jesus is, is absolute­ly crit­i­cal for the Gospel to be true. Yet, under­stand­ing who Jesus is and what He did, also involves know­ing how we approach Him and what sin is. “You are a sin­ner in need of repen­tance” is not inci­den­tal. Kalei­do­scope and Pre­ston have at best pre­sent­ed a bait-and-switch gospel where you don’t tell peo­ple about the Bible’s stance on a pet sin until after sal­va­tion. That does­n’t seem like an hon­est strat­e­gy that will pro­duce gen­uine results. How can some­one repent and believe if they don’t know what to repent of?

More than that, Pre­ston links the per­ceived abus­es brought upon the “LGBT” com­mu­ni­ty by the church, to the near-anal­o­gy of a Ger­man mis­sion­ary going to Israel in the 50’s. The log­ic here is that we must hide part of God’s word, because of a his­to­ry of a peo­ple group mis­treat­ing anoth­er group. What that seems to say about Bib­li­cal truth, is that we should with­hold it because peo­ple in cer­tain con­texts will see it as offen­sive. Again, what does that say about the gen­uine­ness of some­one’s sal­va­tion, if they see part of God’s word as offen­sive?

This all paints a pic­ture of a view that seems a be a lot clos­er to Kalei­do­scope than to Bib­li­cal truth. This makes Pre­ston’s pod­cast with pas­tor Jared Moore, where he rebuffed many claims that he held unortho­dox views, all the more ques­tion­able, and I’d even say dis­hon­est. I talked about that pod­cast after it was released if you’d like to hear my thoughts on it. I think that’s enough div­ing into Pre­ston’s beliefs, though, and we we cov­er those more in anoth­er part of this series.

For now, I’ll leave you how we began: When is some­thing an endorse­ment ver­sus sim­ply an unen­dorsed com­ment from a guest, or when is a guest appear­ance sim­ply a neu­tral con­ver­sa­tion ver­sus an endorse­ment of that guest? Fol­low­ing that same theme, when is an orga­ni­za­tion respon­si­ble for offer­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tion for a guest’s com­ment? You have the infor­ma­tion to make an informed con­clu­sion, and it’s up to you to decide.

A Ques­tion for Pre­ston

How do you explain this sit­u­a­tion?

For part 2, click here

1. ‘Sides’ refers to “side A” and “side B” Chris­tians, or those active­ly liv­ing a homosexual/transgender lifestyle vs. those iden­ti­fy­ing as homosexual/transgender, yet not pur­su­ing same-sex rela­tion­ships or embrac­ing a dif­fer­ent gen­der iden­ti­ty ↩︎