Less than six months later, I found myself leaving that church — not because I was gay, but because we were publicly drawing attention to our collective lack of love, care, and support for the LGBTQ community. As a spiritual community, we needed to do better.
A few years ago, while working at another church as a youth pastor, I joined AVOL (AIDS Volunteers of Lexington) and served as a caregiver for queer people with HIV and AIDS. At first, the board members asked me if I had an ulterior motive to “save someone’s soul.” I replied that I didn’t. Then they let me through, and that’s how I met Philip.
I did Philip’s laundry, took him to his doctor’s appointments, and attended his very fun birthday party with our 6-month-old daughter. I approached our church about participating in the upcoming annual AIDS Walk as a tangible way to live our message of love, hope, and service. I posted a sign-up form in the church lobby. Unfortunately, as expected, no one from our church came to the event.
Sixteen years later, I was tired of the church’s reluctance and staunch opposition to accepting LGBTQ people into the spiritual community, so I began having conversations, mostly behind closed doors, and eventually I was seen as a sympathizer.
In April 2015 I wrote and published an essay. Caitlyn Jennerencouraging Christians to embrace their transgender brothers and sisters by listening to them, using their pronouns of choice, and loving them in their truest sense. Within 48 hours, I received an email from leadership asking me to retract my public statement, and that was the moment I knew it was time to leave.
Our church hosted 8,000 people every weekend. It was a megachurch. Every weekend, I would stand in front of huge crowds and sing my heart out about God’s love. But I knew if I stayed there, I’d never be able to sing in front of my queer family or feel safe inviting them into that space. I just couldn’t do that anymore.
I wasn’t kicked out. Instead, I was told I was not allowed to publicly say that gay people were welcome. But it was too late. Something had changed in me. I hadn’t kept that promise. So I resigned.
I think the leadership was relieved.
He walked away. He wasn’t fired.
This was the story. This is how we told the story to our congregation. Nothing ugly ever happened during this transition. I never did that, and neither did they. Instead, we each quietly walked away.
Source: BuzzFeed – LGBTQ – www.buzzfeed.com
