Episode 74: Tackling Big Topics: The future of Church, LGBTQ+ and Faith with pastor Bill Towne

In a world with so many unknowns and shades of gray, leadership hard. Everyone has an opinion and leaders are just humans who have said yes to the call. The Living Wholehearted Podcast brings leaders in the home, work, and community honest conversations and practical tools to help with the people issues keeping leaders up at night. After reflecting on a year of living and leading through a global pandemic, the Mattsons wanted to address two important relevant questions:   1) What does the future of the church look like in the months and years ahead? 2) What is the church’s right response to the LGBTQ+ community and those trying to grow in their faith journey?   Our guest, Pastor Bill Towne, helps unravel what’s at the heart of each of these questions. Whether you agree with Bill or not, he shares some incredibly loving and insightful wisdom, so listen in!   After almost forty years in full-time ministry and leading Rolling Hills Community Church (just outside Portland, Oregon), Bill has been engaging these questions with many leading pastors around the world, including colleagues from his alma mater, Western Seminary.   If you want to hear more from Bill, check out episode 17 and 18 where we unpack leadership, marriage, and identity with Bill and his wife, Kathy. You can find more from Bill Towne at www.rollinghills.org or follow at @rhchurch If you want more quality resources on the topics of church, faith, and the LGBTQ+ community, check out Biblical scholar, international speaker and author, Preston Sprinkle @prestonsprinkle with the Center for Faith, Sexuality, and Gender. His books include, People Be Loved, Living in a Gray World, and his most recent on transgender called Embodied.   Follow us @living_wholehearted, @terramattson, and @mycourageousgirls and follow/subscribe to our weekly podcast for more incredible interviews, including Preston Sprinkles coming late 2021. When you sign up for our monthly newsletters on our website, www.livingwholehearted.com, you join the movement to shrink our integrity gaps and you get entered to win a monthly give-away that includes books written by many of our podcast guests. This month we are giving away a copy of The Cure for Groups by Trueface President, Robby Angel (coming soon in Episode #76).