"I'm gonna pray first, I hope you guys don't mind," said Redmond pastor Ken Hutcherson at the start of a meeting he'd requested with The Stranger staff at our offices on April 22.

"Lord," Hutcherson said, "thank you for the opportunity to express ideas and get answers."

Hutch, as he's known to most people, had a lot of ideas to express. Ideas about masturbation, evolution, journalism, Matthew Shepard's "irritating" behavior, and, most important to Hutch on this day, proper sexual conduct for students at Seattle Pacific University. He felt he had to "come face-to-face" with The Stranger in order to share those ideas, and he also wanted to learn more about an article I published on March 30 titled "The Secret Sex Lives of SPU Students."

Hutch didn't believe I'd been fair to SPU; he thinks the majority of the school's students are just as chaste as he—or, in Hutch's telling, He—demands. But Hutch also expressed alarm at a possible lack of leadership at SPU that could be leading to unholy student sex ("The leadership needs to take more responsibility"), and he had a message for students at SPU who, as they recounted in their own words in "The Secret Sex Lives of SPU Students," have been having a lot of premarital sex in direct violation of school rules.

Hutch's message: Be more like Hutch.

"I was a renegade when it came to sex," Hutch said of his youth. "I was the guy on campus who thought I should conquer every woman who walked by... Until I met Christ, and [then] that attitude had to change."

The meeting with Christ happened when he was 16, Hutch said, and as soon as it occurred, he stopped having sex. Full stop. Did Hutch even allow himself to masturbate? "Thank you very much, I did not," he said. "Can you masturbate without lusting?"

His sexless life went on for 17 years, Hutch recounted, until he was married at age 33.

"The issue was obedience," Hutch said. "There are certain things I'm going to do and not do as a Christian, regardless of how strong my body acts. Because I have said I believe in Bible."

What else does Hutch believe?

According to Hutch, dinosaurs and humans lived together on this planet at the same time.

"Absolutely," Hutch said. "Pretty difficult for dinosaurs to get on the ark with Noah and not both be on the earth."

He continued: "The earth is probably, biblically, six thousand, seven thousand years old, a young earth. And during that time, even Noah, even Adam, if you look at the Bible and the years that they lived—at the end of the antediluvian period, early antediluvian period, uh, antiquity, early antiquity—there's man and animal. Both walked together. All the way back. Because they was created at the same time in seven days. Absolutely, baby. Isn't it sweet?"

Uh. Okay. But back to sex: What does Hutch say about SPU students who aren't being Hutch-like with their young bodies? Simple: "They're sinners."

Also a sinner in Hutch's brain: Matthew Shepard.

"Matthew was a person who irritated a lot of people," Hutch said, dismissing parallels between the deadly violence Shepard experienced and the violence other marginalized Americans have experienced, sometimes with the tacit approval of bigoted religious leaders.

Hutch continued with his sinner list: gay students at SPU, Stranger staffers (duh), and certain members of his own Antioch Bible Church. "Do you believe that everyone at Antioch, my church, is following all the biblical rules?" Hutch asked at one point. "No! We have to discipline people almost every year and kick 'em out when they don't repent. Should I change the rules?"

His answer was quick and merciless: no.

While Hutch was on the subject of gay SPU students, he made clear to us that he's unhappy with a decision made earlier this year by SPU officials to relax their own rules and allow a gay student group, Haven, to use campus meeting rooms. "If I was president, it wouldn't have happened," Hutch said.

Stephen Michael Newby, an associate professor of music at SPU and director of the school's Center for Worship, joined Hutch partway through the meeting with The Stranger.

Asked about life at SPU since the publication of the article, Newby said things like "It is the community's responsibility to be concerned for the concerns that are on the table, and that is my concern." On Hutch's worry that SPU leaders may be failing their students: "Perhaps we should explore having a dialogue on that." On next steps: "I would really like to consider inviting Eli, in a room, where we can sit you down where we can have our camera and our crew around you." Newby hoped Hutch would be there, too. After all, Newby said, Hutch is a good role model for SPU students and "a friend of the university."

Video on the right, you can also watch the video HERE.