John Paulk will never forget the 1986 Gay Pride Parade in downtown Columbus, Ohio. As a well-known female impersonator, he was riding in the back of an elegant red Mustang convertible, dressed in a white linen suit with pleated skirt and matching white blazer. His long blond hair caught wisps of a light breeze as hundreds of people cheered him from the sidewalks.
"Candi, we love you," a man yelled. "You're the most gorgeous drag queen in Columbus." John smiled, waved and threw another handful of Starlight peppermints into the applauding bystanders.
Suddenly, John heard chanting and screaming up ahead and spotted a small crowd of people waving Bibles over their heads. Some held signs with messages like, "God hates fags" and "Turn or burn."
Why don't you hateful people leave us alone? We're not hurting you, John thought, as an eerie sickness gripped his stomach. Then another thought struck him: Who would ever want to follow a God like the one they're displaying?
Six months later, a local pastor who had befriended John at the print shop where he worked invited himself over to John's apartment. Although he suspected the minister was coming to talk about God, John consented. That night, they prayed together as John committed his life to Christ, and soon left homosexual involvement as he became deeply involved in the church. Today, John and his wife, Anne (a former lesbian), live in Colorado where John works for Focus on the Family.
Thousands of other men and women, all of them previously involved in homosexuality, have experienced similar changes in their lives. And almost all of them say the same thing: it was a group of Christians, demonstrating genuine love and concern, who made the difference.
When Wayne Andre and his lover, Thomas Whitney, decided on a whim to visit the Metropolitan Church of God in Birmingham, Ala., Andre was horrified when Whitney confessed his homosexual involvement to the college-and-career Sunday School class.
"At any moment," Andre recalls, "I expected someone to jump up, find an usher and call the police." Instead, as Whitney began weeping, the college students gathered around him and prayed that Jesus would show His love and mercy to the young man. Soon Andre was also crying. Both men wept through the Sunday morning service that followed. Afterward, the pastor told them, "Be sure to come back. We'll always be glad to see you."
Soon, members of the congregation were phoning them and sending "I'm-thinking-of- you" cards. At the same time, their new church friends began gently confronting the two men about God's perspective on their sexual relationship. Soon Andre and Whitney had renounced their homosexual involvement and joined the church. Today, six years later, Andre is married and directs a counseling ministry to homosexuals in Birmingham. Whitney, a single businessman, has also remained free of homosexual behavior. The two men still keep in touch periodically, their friendship now centered on their common faith in Christ.
Half the Gospel
Homosexuality is tearing apart many churches across the country. A growing number of conservative denominations have pro-gay groups which attempt to promote a theology which affirms their homosexual activities. Even conservative members are faltering in their traditional beliefs as they discover homosexuality among family members and church friends.
"Homosexuality is the divisive issue of the '90s," says Joe Dallas, director of Genesis Counseling Services in Orange, Calif. And, he believes, many churches are presenting only a "partial gospel" to men and women involved in gay relationships.
"Homosexual behavior is pronounced unbiblical, but no one offers a solution," Dallas says. "We cannot preach against a particular sin without offering an alternative." Dallas contrasts this situation with the pro-life movement, whose leaders have discovered the effectiveness of offering practical help, such as crisis counseling and emergency housing for pregnant women in addition to saying, "Don't kill your unborn child."
Some Christians battle the issue through politics, seeking to stem a growing international gay rights movement which began 30 years ago next month, when a small group of patrons resisted arrest outside the gay Stonewall Bar in New York City. Mary Heathman has felt the tension over politics due to the state-wide battle over Amendment 2, a gay-rights ordinance passed by voters and now being contested in the courts. As director of Where Grace Abounds, a redemptive ministry to homosexuals in Denver, Heathman has heard angry remarks from both church members and pro-gay leaders as they tangle over this issue.
Many Christian leaders are angry and ready to fight with whatever tactics will win, Heathman says. "Church people get into politics for various reasons. Some are very loving and don't lose sight of the individual, but others are fighting the battle with the world's mindset, rather than remembering the spiritual warfare involved."
Heathman says one of the biggest problems with gay-rights legislation is that it isolates one particular sin. "If we're going to be balanced, we need to be talking about sexual sin in general, not just homosexuality. If I can attack someone else's sin, I don't have to look at my own."
Joe Dallas remembers how the fight looked from the other side of the fence. Ten years ago, Dallas was a gay-rights activist and student minister at a pro-gay Metropolitan Community Church in southern California. "The gay churches are full of men and women who know better," he says. "But they feel they have nowhere else to go. And nobody has ever shown them convincingly that there is a way out of this particular sin." Few evangelical Christians, Dallas adds, are willing to "stop and listen for a moment to a homosexual's pain." The pro-gay church movement, which offers loving acceptance of both the gay person and his behavior, is an attractive alternative to the evangelical church, which is widely perceived among homosexuals as judgmental and "homophobic."
Dallas says too few conservative churches acknowledge the high price paid by many homosexuals who become evangelical believers. Suddenly these men and women are confronted with the reality of leaving close friends, long-term lovers, a supportive community, even a gay-related job or career in order to follow Christ. And, too often, they get no sympathy from church friends who think they should "just repent and be done with it."
Jeff Konrad still remembers the anguish of leaving his homosexual partner almost ten years ago: "I ached physically from all the emotional turmoil. But several Christian men made themselves available any time of the day or night. I'm alive today because those guys loved me." After receiving Christ, a homosexual desperately needs church support to stay free from sin.
Breaking the Sound Barrier
Church leaders can provide a supportive atmosphere by being willing to "break the sound barrier" of silence which surrounds this issue in many evangelical congregations. When Ken Korver, associate pastor of Emmanuel Reformed Church in Paramount, Calif., realized that several men in his singles' group were dealing with homosexuality, he confronted the issue head-on from the pulpit.
Korver preached a sermon on 1 Cor. 6:9-11, the passage where the Apostle Paul identifies homosexuality behavior as sin, but a sin that can be redeemed. "This church is a place where broken people are welcome," Korver told his congregation. "But we are not to remain in brokenness; we must move forward into God's design." Then he requested anyone fighting homosexual temptations to talk to one of the pastoral staff.
"We let people know we'd walk with them through the process of healing," Korver recalls. Soon a group of ex-gay men were meeting weekly.
Then Korver took the healing process a step further: He set up a mentoring program in the church, holding three-hour training sessions for straight men who wanted to learn about homosexuality. The names of fifty "graduates" of these sessions were made available to the former homosexuals, who could request an accountability partner to befriend them. "Forming this kind of mentoring relationship is essential to getting beyond an `ex-gay' mind-set," Korver explains. "When the men overcoming homosexuality are accepted by other men in the church, a huge amount of healing occurs."
Other churches around the country have had similar success in ministering to gays and lesbians. Over the past two decades, Church of the Open Door in San Rafael, Calif., has earned a widespread reputation as "the church where homosexuals find healing." This fellowship of 200 adults located 20 miles north of San Francisco is spiritual home base for Love In Action, one of the oldest ex-gay ministries (founded in 1973). LIA runs a two-year discipleship program that attracts participants from around the world, and many of them become permanent members of Open Door, having left churches where they felt no support for resolving their sexual identity issues.
One recent program graduate, a former bank vice-president from Virginia, stood in front of the congregation to extend his thanks for their support. "This is a church where you don't have to whisper the word homosexual," he said. "I know my life will never be the same because of the love I've experienced here."
At the beginning of each program, members are introduced to the congregation in a special evening service. Afterward, church members are encouraged to come forward and commit to pray for one or more ex-gays. Prayer cards are distributed, giving specific suggestions for offering support: send the program member a birthday card, invite him to your house for dinner, phone him periodically to offer encouragement, include him on a family outing, have him bring a potluck item to your house for a holiday meal. Program leaders recognize that many church members want to offer support, but they don't know how.
Unwanted Harvest
"We need to be trained in compassion," says Mona Riley, wife of Open Door's senior pastor, who sees "a hardness in the heart of the American church" toward people who have been involved in homosexual behavior. "We have judged this particular sin to be worse than every other, but I don't see that in the Scriptures."
Riley says there is potentially a great spiritual harvest in the gay community, but "it's an unwanted harvest. We don't want to reap it. Christians aren't sure if they want to spend eternity with these people." Revival has to happen in the church first, she says, "before it's going to happen in the gay community."
Leaders of ex-gay ministries around the country recognize the hidden barriers that prevent churches embracing those struggling with homosexuality. The top fear centers around AIDS, says Chuck Therrien, director of ReCreation Ministries in Manchester, N.H. Church members fear contracting the disease by casual contact, such as touching an infected individual or sharing restroom facilities. Despite no instances of such transmission and assurances from top health experts that such contamination is impossible, these irrational fears persist.
Therrien says church members also fear that former homosexuals will molest their children or seduce young boys into the gay lifestyle. "But why would they recruit someone into a lifestyle they despise and are desperately trying to overcome?" Therrien also points out that most adult homosexuals are sexually drawn to other adults, not children.
Church leaders who have taken the risk of venturing into this type of ministry have seen their whole churches impacted in a positive way. "Our people are proud that we are a church that is true to the Bible, but living it out in progressive ways," says Ken Korver. "We are not compromising truth, but the congregation is thrilled that we are also living out grace."
There is also widespread support at Church of the Open Door for the Love In Action program. "Our people are excited to be on the cutting edge of this issue," says senior pastor Michael Riley.
The staff of these churches and specialized ministries to homosexuals insist they are not doing anything different or unusual from the ordinary Christian discipleship offered in any evangelical church body. "All you need to know is how to love and speak the truth," Joe Dallas says, "and you've got all the tools necessary for ministry to these people."
John Paulk, the former drag queen from Columbus, agrees. After becoming a Christian, John moved to California to become part of Love In Action. He attended Church of the Open Door, and found unconditional support, especially from other men in the church. "Heterosexual men befriended me, prayed for me, and invited me into their homes for fellowship. They treated me with genuine respect and affection.
"It's really that simple. They loved me into wholeness."
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