Continuing to Learn & Grow
This year’s MTR Connect theme is As Yourself , because loving our neighbor changes everything.
We’re closing out our 2026 season with two trusted teachers in this space, Kathy Baldock and Colby Martin. Both have spent decades helping Christians dig deeper than the surface-level debates – tracing the historical roots of anti-LGBTQ theology and answering the harder follow-up questions that come once the “clobber passages” have been addressed. Join us as Kathy and Colby reflect on their own ongoing journeys of learning and growing, and what’s next in their work.
Kathy Baldock
Kathy is the founder and Executive Director of CanyonWalker Connections, and a leading expert on LGBT issues in the United States, especially the historical and current discrimination faced from the conservative Christian church and political sector. She’s the author of Walking the Bridgeless Canyon: Repairing the Breach Between the Church and the LGBT Community (2014), and her newest book, Forging a Sacred Weapon: The 1946 Bible Mistranslation Behind Anti-Gay Theology, is the result of a seven-year research project tracing the mistranslation behind decades of anti-gay theology — also featured in the documentary 1946: The Mistranslation that Shifted Culture. Kathy travels across the U.S. and internationally, teaching her “Untangling the Mess” presentations to churches, universities, and organizations seeking to better understand the history behind LGBT persecution in the church.
Colby Martin
Colby has been a pastor for over 20 years with his first decade within the evangelical world of his roots and education and the past 12 years in post-evangelical, progressive Christian churches and spaces. He’s the author of UnClobber: Rethinking Our Misuse of the Bible on Homosexuality and The SHIFT: A Survival Guide for Becoming a Progressive Christian, and a prolific writer at PerspectiveShift.co. Ten years after UnClobber, Colby’s new book, But What About: The Most Asked Questions on Faith, the Bible, and LGBTQ Inclusion (releasing November 17 from St. Martin’s Essentials), tackles the questions that linger even after the clobber passages are addressed: questions like But what about Adam and Eve? But what about two genders? But what about biblical marriage? But what about ex-gay testimonies? – all making the case that full LGBTQ inclusion isn’t a departure from following Jesus, but its truest expression.
Registration Form 12/1/2026
Explore the “As Yourself” Season:
