We bring the presence of GLBTQ people into the church.
I realize this post is technically 7 of 7 but I already had the 6 part series in my draft folder and making the required corrections would have meant revising the title and permalink on all the previous posts. I’m lazy. This is easier.
Before there was [...]

Posted in Gifted by Otherness, Special Series 2 Comments »

We bring the church a unique perspective as insiders now on the margin.
The denomination I spent the first 40 years of my life in was the Foursquare Church. It use to go by the name the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel but apparently they’re going more streamlined these days. That’s Foursquare as in Jesus [...]

Posted in Gifted by Otherness, Special Series 3 Comments »

We are the face of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer to the church.
I’m passionately crazy about the content of this post so be prepared for a full-fledged rant. Do not attempt to operate heavy equipment immediately after blog consumption.
I went to the local Christian Bookstore on Saturday to pick up a packet of Jesus [...]

Posted in Gifted by Otherness, Special Series 12 Comments »

We Show Forth the Courage to Live Whole Lives Before God and the World.
A human being comes into the world in wholeness with everything a human life can possibly contain all muddled together in one flesh-bound package, and then something happens. Society, religion, loving authority figures, not so loving authority figures and peers show up [...]

Posted in Gifted by Otherness, Special Series 7 Comments »

We Model What it Means to Love No Matter What the Cost
Whenever D and I go out we tend to be touching each other. It might be a hand on the back or an arm around the shoulder or simply holding hands while we wait in line at Starbucks or to receive communion at the [...]

Posted in Gifted by Otherness, Special Series 6 Comments »

We Keep the Church From Getting Too Comfortable.
When we were invisible in the church; leading the choir, teaching Sunday School, serving on committees and boards, preaching behind the pulpit, and all the while keeping part of ourselves hidden and our mouths quiet, the church was fine with us. The illusion that we were all on [...]

Posted in Gifted by Otherness, Special Series 7 Comments »

This is my last unsolicited, no cost endorsement of Gifted by Otherness: Gay and Lesbian Christians in the Church. After today I expect cash in hand from the authors or publishing company before slogging up my bandwidth with yet another book promotion. Just buy the book, that’s all I’m saying. The reason I’m a literary [...]

Posted in Gifted by Otherness, Special Series 1 Comment »

In recent days I’ve posted a half dozen random entries on recognizing and confronting the old messages we’ve taken in over the years on being gay and Christian in the first part of a series on Gifted by Otherness. I’m going to be getting back into the series next week with a second half focusing [...]

Posted in Gifted by Otherness, Special Series 1 Comment »

Sometime between writing the first and last line this post ballooned into some humongous albatross of a blog entry. For those of you with a life beyond this blog, which I suspect to lean heavily toward the majority of you, the first couple paragraphs are the real heart of what I intended to say. [...]

Posted in Gifted by Otherness, Human Sexuality 6 Comments »

It’s not at all surprising one of the recurring messages for GLBTQ Christians is that in being gay we’re creating a problem since something happens nearly everyday that gives that snarly little message another minute of air play.
In our families we hesitate in coming out to the people we love because we don’t want them [...]

Posted in Gifted by Otherness 5 Comments »