Earlier today, we broke the story that Saddleback Church, formerly led by Rick Warren and now pastored by Andy Wood, had a pastor on staff who would be participating in a pro-LGBTQ conference at North Point Church along with Andy Stanley and others who promote homosexual sex. Upon further investigation, we found that Saddleback had its own pro-LGBTQ ministry in-house that is based on the same resource that Andy Stanley’s church uses to encourage parents to affirm their children’s homosexuality.
That resource is a ministry called “Embracing the Journey” which is led by Greg and Lynn McDonald, a husband and wife team who are both long-term members at North Point, as well as leaders in North Point’s pro-LGBTQ ministry, Parent Connect.
Below is a screenshot, in case Saddleback tries to remove it from their website, showing their support group with the same name, “Embracing the Journey.”
So who are Greg and Lynn McDonald and what is Embracing the Journey? According to their “About” page on their website, “Greg and Lynn McDonald are parents, best friends, authors of Embracing the Journey, and co-founders of the ministry by the same name as an outgrowth of their family’s personal journey associated with having a gay child,” and their mission is to “build bridges between LGBTQ+ individuals, their families, and the church.”
Pictured below is the McDonald family, their homosexual son, and his sodomite lover, all happily affirmed together in one big family as they call themselves “Christians.”
The McDonalds are also part of Matthew Vines Reformation Project, a fully affirming ministry that promotes man-to-man and woman-to-woman homosexual acts and relationships within the Church. According to the Reformation Project, “Greg pursues his passion of helping LGBTQ families become reconciled with each other and move one step closer to Jesus” while “Lynn’s love of people has fueled her work as a bridge-builder between the LGBTQ community, their parents and the Church.”
Greg McDonald is also a board member of another queer-affirming ministry called Renovus along with Cortland Russell. On the Renovus website, McDonald says “It simply breaks my heart when people are told they can’t be a Christian and LGBTQ. The work that Renovus does of helping LGBTQ individuals reclaim and deepen their faith inspires me to make a difference by serving on the Board.”
So who is Cortland Russell, you ask? Russell is an openly gay, practicing homosexual who was baptized at one of Andy Stanley’s Northpoint Church campuses a few years ago and proudly proclaimed being a homosexual “Christian” in his baptism video. Here’s the video of that baptism:
And in this article titled Let Me Be Perfectly Queer, Russell says of himself:
“For me, the Q in LGBTQ+ means queer. I’m attracted to mostly men, some women and some non-binary folks—identities like gay, straight or bisexual just don’t work as well to describe me.
The ambiguity of queer identity is something that I find comforting because my own sexual orientation doesn’t fit into a neat box. But queer can also be used as an umbrella term to describe the entire LGBTQ+ community, and, for some people, the Q in LGBTQ+ means questioning.“
As you can see, this web of pro-homosexuality is pervasive not just in non-SBC churches like Andy Stanley’s, but also in Southern Baptist churches, like Saddleback, First Baptist Orlando, and probably many, many more that are yet to be uncovered. And this “Embracing the Journey” program is clearly designed to remove the stigma of open homosexual behavior
