During the meeting and in a follow-up email to WORLD, Johnson referred to the Compassionate and Faithful materials as a “learning experience,” not a curriculum. Since most staff had completed the training, Johnson told me it made sense to incorporate future training on sexuality and gender issues into Cru’s Institute of Biblical Studies for incoming staff and interns. The Compassionate and Faithful materials were designed to “provide clarity” and “align all our staff to a historic Biblical understanding of sexuality,” Johnson said. But for some staff, the ministry’s mandatory rollout of the curriculum did the opposite.

One of the nation’s leading evangelical ministries is discontinuing its controversial staff training on sexuality and gender less than two years after launching it. Cru employees will no longer have access to the Compassionate and Faithful curriculum by the end of this year, according to a leaked recording of a Sept. 26 meeting for U.S.-based staff.

“Our plan going forward is to integrate our LGBT+ equipping into existing developmental venues,” Keith Johnson, Cru’s director of theological education and development, told staff during the meeting leaked on a podcast last week. “Going forward, we think it’s increasingly important for us to speak in our own theological voice.” That means Cru will rely less on “external communicators,” Johnson said.

Cru, formerly known as Campus Crusade for Christ, faced criticism over the curriculum from current and former staffers and from prominent evangelical authors, speakers, and commentators including Rosaria Butterfield, Christopher Yuan, and Allie Beth Stuckey. They claimed it departed from Biblical teachings on sexuality, gender, and God’s design for men and women by allowing Christians to use preferred pronouns for transgender people and to adopt LGBTQ identity labels, among other concerns.

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