Visiting a gay church is not the same thing as visiting a gay bar; or at least it isn’t the same as the notion of the gay bar I have in my head.
One of my hang-ups with homosexuality is that I get the picture of the male same-sex, sex act in my head and find it a big turnoff. I can easily reduce the complexity, creativity, and uniqueness of a person by an imagined action. It’s sad, really. I think people would be missing a whole lot of who I am if they mainly choose to categorize my life based on my sexual preferences. What I enjoy doing with my wife in the privacy of our bedroom isn’t at the forefront of people’s minds when I am grocery shopping, making a business deal, or worshipping next to them in church; the fact that I’ve made this the predominant issue for viewing the LBGT community isn’t very loving.
“But it’s sin!” you counter. It may be—but then so was the adultery that the woman had been caught up with before she was dragged to Jesus. Yet in that story he doesn’t categorize her or judge her. In fact, he responds to the situation in such a way that when he looks up from his ground-based Etch-a-Sketch he has to ask, “Hey naked lady, where are your accusers?” If I’d have asked that question this Sunday morning the Metropolitan congregation would have easily been able to point out their religious accusers. They still deal with rocks being tossed their way.
So I empty my hands of any pebbles that I’m carrying and walk into the LGBT community center where the church meets. My hand is immediately filled with the warm hand of another. There is a smile, there is a greeting, there is an exchange of names and she ushers me into the fellowship hall where the service will take place. She introduces me around. They laugh that they will be able to remember my name since there is just one new person in their midst, but that I will have more trouble because all of them are new to me.
I take stock of the people filling the room. Sex is now the last thing on my mind. These aren’t the good looking characters from the situational comedies on TV. Some are big, some are plain, some are crippled, some are awkward, some are old. Any thoughts I had about this being a place to “hook-up” were erased. These people had a far different agenda all together—they had come to worship God together.
It was a pretty typical service. There were both hymns and contemporary worship songs, an offering, an opportunity to give to the building fund, candle-lighting for specific prayers, communion, two Bible readings, an applicable message from the scripture, and a fellowship time following the benediction with cup cakes. Listening to the prayer time was very revealing- they weren’t praying for “gay” things. They were praying for their kids, for their jobs (or lack of them, in this economy), their parents, their friends having surgeries, their aches and pains, their sufferings in this world. They prayed for patience and understanding—the very things I was praying today for myself.
I went to an MCC, queer, homosexual, LGBT, left-leaning, different, church today. I worshipped God and made friends.
Who are the Churches in your Neighborhood?
