‘Leap Of Faith’ (2024) Review – Loving Thy Neighbor Is Harder Than It Looks

Twelve Christian pastors walk into a room and are challenged to show love beyond their understanding of their faith. But here, there is no punchline, and this is no joke. This is an experiment brought to you by The Colossian Forum and led by pastor Michael Gulker. This year-long experiment tests faiths, ideologies, political stances, and human connection as these twelve Christian leaders are asked to love – in a way they should be familiar with – as Jesus did.

Part of what makes Leap of Faith challenging for its participants is that they all reflect various teachings of the word of Christ. And some of those differences can be stark. It is a mix of seven men and five women. All different races, different denominations, and different lifestyles. For some, there are denominations that still are hesitant to allow women to be pastors. So, to see five of them in the room is already a culture shock. 

Nicholas Ma, who was also one of the producers behind the highly acclaimed documentary, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, sits behind the camera this time capturing the tense interactions between our pastors. For the most part, they are cordial and civil to each other and find a lot of common ground when speaking to each other, simply because they share the same profession. But it is when the conversations start to shift to more charged subjects that we begin to see the rifts, and they each begin to wonder what faith and faith leaders’ role is around these topics. 

One of the major topics of discussion that keeps getting brought up throughout the film is same-sex marriage and LGBTQ+ rights. It helps that one of the pastors, Joan VanDessel is a lesbian married woman. Having her in the room allows the pastors to put a face and a personality behind their anti-gay stance. For our sake, we never see any of the pastors actually preach anti-gay sentiments behind the pulpit, and no one is outed as a hate preacher, but the resistance is still there. The reason the topic keeps coming up though, is because lead pastor, Michael Gulker is dealing with his own battle with it amongst his family.

It turns out one of his sons is non-binary and LGBTQ+, and he himself is having to wrestle with the clash of what he believes in his faith, and what he sees in his home. The point of the experiment is to see whether a group of people who are supposed to be the most learned of Jesus’s teachings can move away from the discrimination doctrine and into the love doctrine. To love all people as one loves themselves, if not more. And if they can do it, so can we, right?

Whether or not this experiment is a success is up for interpretation. While some of our pastors embrace Joan publicly, it isn’t clear if all of them do, or how many are still against the idea entirely. Then there are others who have decided that these issues don’t belong in the church at all, and while one can be a spiritual adviser to their congregations, it is not their place to demand subservience to their will. And that alone can be seen as progress, or just kicking the can down the road to the next generation. Time will tell.

Coming in under 90 minutes, Leap of Faith doesn’t spend enough time with its subjects on multiple subject matters that could have really cracked open this divide and brought some healing to the world, but it is a necessary start. Somebody’s got to start having these conversations in the church. If the world is trying to tell us something, it may be time for God’s people to start listening. 

Leap of Faith is currently playing in select theaters courtesy of Picturehouse.