Equip has entered double digits–we’re officially 10! Thanks to the continued prayers and financial support of people like you, God has worked through Equip over the past decade to train thousands of Christian leaders over hundreds of trainings. We’ve developed industry-first resources for ministering to sexual minority Christian women, discipling trans Christians, and leading kids in age-appropriate conversations about gender and sexuality:
Equip is grateful to have walked alongside pastors and parents across the globe from Canada to California, from South Africa to South Carolina, from the United Kingdom to Utah, from Singapore to Seattle, from Ecuador to Oregon, and from Germany to Tennessee.
We helped churches like Humanity Church in Pomona, California become places where LGBT+ Christians could thrive according to historic sexual ethics. In the words of Pastor Nathan Neighbor:
“One of my closest friends who is like a brother said to me, ‘Nathan, I cannot do another pray-the-gay-away program where things are promised to me that I know are not going to happen.’ And it was in that moment that I knew we needed Equip; we needed a blueprint to know how to reach my brother.”
Listen to Nathan’s full story below.
Equip (then Equip Nashville) was established to equip parents and pastors with the understanding and skills to minister to same-sex attracted Christians according to a biblical sexual ethic. It began in an early supporter’s living room where founder Pieter Valk taught the first training series to a focus group of friends and leaders.
From the beginning, Equip focused on a ministry of multiplication: training leaders to better minister so that, through those leaders, Equip could impact many times more same-sex attracted Christians than possible through direct ministry.
Equip began its first substantial church partnership with Ethos Church in Nashville, Tennessee. Partnership has included training pastors and staff, equipping lay leaders, coaching small group leaders, educating parents, and leading seminars for everyday Christians to learn to better minister to their same-sex attracted friends:
New Equip Partnerships in 2015:
2016 brought a new resource–Equip’s blog. Filled with high-quality content, the Equip blog has helped thousands of pastors, parents, and other Christian leaders better understand and love LGBT+ people.
Equip launched our blog, Equip Insights, early into our work. On March 19th, 2016 we published our first public resource, challenging our churches to become places where sexual minorities could belong according to God’s wisdom.
Since then, our team of writers has penned articles on topics ranging from the Nashville Statement to Boy Erased, from romance idolatry to vocational singleness, from divorce to Christian marriage, from Chick-fil-A to Disney movies, from COVID-19 to the Holy Spirit, from pronouns to trans suicide risk. Here’s three of our all-time most-accessed resources:
Equip began its second major partnership with Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee. We’ve trained 100s of university administrators, professors, campus ministers, and student leaders.
The same year, we also hosted our first major public event: “Coming Out & Gay Pride: A Compassionate Christian Response.” Pastors and parents gathered to learn how to engage empathetically with National Coming Out Day and Gay Pride Month:
New Equip Partnerships in 2017:
Equip launched our Digital Leaders Course to train pastors and lay leaders for LGBT+ ministry. This on-demand video resource includes a 15-video series and handouts for both pastors and parents.
Starting in 2018, Equip has hosted a yearly Christmas Care Package Party to assemble care packages for at-risk/homeless LGBT+ teens/adolescents. We wrote notes of encouragement, prayed over the care packages, and delivered more than 400 care packages since 2018, in the hopes that the gifts would make it a little bit easier for recipients to believe that God is real and that He loves them:
New Equip Partnerships in 2018:
Equip’s Lindsey Snyder began developing our first industry-exclusive resource. To this day, Equip’s “Ministering to LGB Women: God’s Heart for His Daughters” is the only resource developed by a sexual minority Christian woman to train parents and pastors to uniquely minister to sexual minority Christian women according to biblical sexual ethics.
New Equip Partnerships in 2019:
As the pandemic kept people out of in-person spaces, Equip hosted multiple Exclusive Access classes, giving participants a chance to directly ask Equip staff questions about faith and sexuality in a small-group setting.
By spring 2020, coronavirus precautions canceled school and work for many, placing children, teens, and parents in their homes for long periods of time. Equip decided to help parents make the most of a valuable opportunity with our “Disciple at Home” series of blog posts to help parents begin intentional dialogue with kids about sexual stewardship:
New Equip Partnerships in 2020:
Equip Vice President Amber Carroll developed and launched our Parent Course “Christian Parenting in Sex-Obsessed Culture”. The only comprehensive resource of its kind, Equip’s Parent Course helps parents lead their kids in age-appropriate conversation about gender and sexuality, including word-for-word scripts for proactive and reactive conversations, broken down by age-range:
New Equip Partnerships in 2021:
This year, Equip marked training over 20K leaders since our inception. From 2014 to 2022, we led 255 trainings in different 75 Christian communities.
Equip relaunched our website with expanded resources and partnership explainers. Check out some of those below:
New Equip Partnerships 2022:
Equip developed the first-of-its-kind on-demand video course aimed at equipping parents and pastors to minister to trans people according to a biblical gender ethic. Equip’s Gender Incongruence Course trains leaders around both the theology and pastoral care needed for effective discipleship.
We also began working with a small team of translators to get our most-requested resources into the hands of Spanish-speakers across the globe, including as part of a two weeks of equipping and teaching at a Christian school in Ecuador:
New Equip Partnerships in 2023:
At the Banquet, the Equip Team, donors, and key volunteers shared stories about Equip’s impact over the past decade, dreamt about what God has in store for Equip over the next decade, and prayed for God’s wisdom and guidance to be evident to the Team as we move into the new year:
New Equip Partnerships in 2024:
