The Worship Leader: Marginalized because I was gay #TheDechurched

[Photo from @dankadanka]

#StoriesFromTheDechurched is a series with no end date in mind collecting stories from those who have left the church, are considering leaving the church, or are staying in the church but have deep frustrations with their church. [If you or anyone else has a story you’d like to share feel free to email it over to me at andy@www.patheos.com/blogs/andygill]

I loved my worship team family. We had dinners together, hung out outside church, babysat each other’s kids, celebrated birthdays, smoked pipes, and had a beer or two. We deeply cared for one another. One family went without work for months, and we donated money and food to support them. Prayer was central to our relationships. Our worship leader emphasized the importance of leading “our people” in “spirit and in truth,” that when we lead them into the presence of God, we took up our swords against the powers of darkness. This prayer culture allowed us to be vulnerable, and we loved each other despite our deepest shames.

In fall of that same year, I participated in a fast—cut meat from my diet, woke up at six to read the Minor Prophets and the psalms, and to pray. Around this time, feelings I had difficulty accepting took the forefront of my thoughts. I began to panic. They kept stirring faster and faster like a whirlpool, and I was forced to confront these feelings I shrugged off for years.

I was gay.

I always knew it. I knew in middle school. I knew in high school when I would check out the basketball player in the blue shorts after he walked by. I knew in college when I visited my old friend in his dorm room, and when my coworker and I watched a movie at his house.

I tried to fight the gay because I believed that’s what God wanted and that’s what the church wanted. It’s what they expected. Every day I came home from school and cried in my room, sometimes in my roommate’s girlfriend’s hugs, because I could not shake off or pray the gay away no matter how desperately I wanted to remain a part of the church.

But, a few weeks later, I went on a date with a friend’s friend. He was tall, lean, striking, kind, determined, creative, and intelligent. I felt feelings I’ve read in books and seen in television. I felt refreshed grabbing dinner with him and seeing each other around school and sharing this secret I couldn’t share with anyone else—someone like me and maybe someone who could like me. He was bitter toward the church and Christians for the way things exploded with his family—threats of exorcisms and ex-gay camp. I sympathized with him, but his experience confirmed my fears of facing the church.

I played the keys the next Sunday and connected more fluidly than I had the past few weeks. Though dread still dawdled in the back of my mind, I felt more myself and honest about who I was, but only a touch. Even through all of this happiness and reassurance, anxieties surfaced about what it all meant for me and church and my worship team family.

So I showed up at my worship leader’s door at ten p.m. and told him I went on a date.

“Andrew!” he gasped. He sat me down. “Tell me everything.” So I did and regretted it immediately. “Listen, you have the power to conquer this. People think they can be compromise the two, but what happens is our hearts get harder to the Spirit of God.” He spoke at me for an hour, and I didn’t understand most of anything he said because I wasn’t there, whether it was a choice or deep shame that shut me down, I’m not sure.

We didn’t speak at all until four days later when he texted me and said if I choose to pursue this “lifestyle” then I have to step off of the worship team. This ultimatum, to me, expressed that I was no longer welcome with my “baggage,” despite everyone else’s. I have been removed from the family of God.

“We can still be friends though, right?” he asked. I wasn’t sure. We were getting a divorce and he got to keep the child. I left with nothing, which is how I believed God saw me. “You could serve on the hospitality team,” he offered. I declined. There is no hierarchy of service. If God saw all sin as equal, I thought all service and good must be equal too.

He made a general announcement to the worship team that I was “stepping down” and if they wanted to know more, they could ask me.

No one spoke to me. Not even when they saw me at school. And I felt ugly and unlovable, and even when I tried to be a regular church-goer and passively sit through the service, I felt alone. So I stopped going altogether and decided to toil over where I stood without help from the church. The people who were supposed to love me didn’t, so I relied on the love of friends and tried to wiggle my way back into God’s arms. Slowly.

[If you’d like to share your story you can submit your post here]