After decades of ecclesial warfare over LGBTQ people, the dust is finally beginning to settle: by and large, mainline Protestant churches are blessing same-gender unions and ordaining LGBTQ people for ministry. Now, many are wondering what difference it will make. How will the decision to affirm LGBTQ people play out in the lives of churches? How will newly-ordained LGBTQ ministers affect the future of the faith? Will things change? Will things stay the same?
Yes.
I am an openly gay man who has served as the solo pastor of a small Presbyterian church in New Jersey since July 2016. So far as I can tell, I am the first openly LGBTQ pastor of any church in the area. With the dust still settling around my feet, I have stepped into a calling that feels much bigger than me, and I have been asking these kinds of questions along the way. It was through preaching the sermons in this collection that I found my way to Yes.
None of these sermons (except for perhaps the first one) are explicitly about being gay or about LGBTQ issues. And yet, my experiences and perspective as an LGBTQ person are infused into every sermon that I write-and, really, into everything that I create. Though the nature of the infusion varies from sermon to sermon and from circumstance to circumstance, I cannot help but carry my queerness into every single day of my calling. The same is true, I believe, for other LGBTQ ministers and LGBTQ people of faith. Our queerness has blessed and will continue to bless both our faith and our world. Sometimes, the blessing will look different from what people are used to. Sometimes, it will stretch, even rattle them. Other times, the blessing will look and feel perfectly familiar-like it has always belonged in our faith.
The organization of these sermons is loosely chronological and loosely thematic. After each set of three sermons, I have included a poem that I wrote in the past year. The inclusion of my poetry bears witness to personal experiences behind the sermon writing. Over the course of that first year, I felt an abundance of support from within my congregation and a sea of opposition and chaos beyond it. Several members of my partner's family disowned him. Three rainbow flags were stolen from establishments in our small town. Donald Trump rose to power, and with him a horde of anti-LGBTQ forces. During this time, I wrote sermons to guide my congregation, and I wrote poems to guide me.
For those of you who are not LGBTQ, I pray that this book helps you to notice and celebrate the myriad ways in which LGBTQ people are blessing our faith and our world. For those of you who are LGBTQ, I pray that this book furthers your assurance that you are free, you are clean, and you are loved. At the end of the day, every day, I'm doing this for you.
