Where are all the pastors for the trans kids?

Two weeks ago our church hosted Queer Camp. This was the first camp of its kind in Arkansas, or in the South. Ninety LGBTQIA youth in attendance, some traveling in from across the state, staffed by dozens of queer adults and parents of queer youth from Northwest Arkansas.

Before you read the rest of this blog, I encourage you to listen to two NPR installments that introduce the camp in the voice of volunteers and campers. This national spot on Here and Now, and a longer meditative conversation on our local NPR affiliate, KUAF.

Now, in a way I shouldn’t even need to ask the question I’ve posed in the title of this post. Every pastor should ostensibly be a pastor for any trans members of their churches.

And conversely, not all people are seeking pastors or churches. And that’s just fine.

So why frame the question in the way I have? Where are all the pastors for the trans kids?

So let’s jump ahead to the events of this week. Yesterday, I was down in Little Rock attending a federal hearing on the Arkansas legislature’s bigoted ban on health care for trans youth. The short version: the judge blocked it.

The longer version: four families of trans youth all filed the lawsuit with the assistance of the ACLU. So yesterday, on a summer day when they could have been enjoying the cool of the pool, or any number of other typical summer activities, instead they were sitting in a federal courthouse defending their rights simply to access basic health care.

As I sat there and listened to the oral arguments, it wasn’t lost on me that I was the only clergy person in the room.

Where were the other pastors? Or for that matter, where were all the legislators who passed this awful law?

I was there to support the Jennen family from our church. I was also there to learn. Our church is regularly increasing in trans members, and I feel a profound responsibility to understand.

It made me wonder: Do the other youth have the support of their congregation and pastor?

The room did not lack for spiritual gravity. Much of it shone through the love displayed by the families themselves in their row. These are strong, resilient families.

Also, toward the back of the room sat Miss Major, a nationally recognized trans activist who participated in Stonewall in 1969.

The oral arguments themselves sometimes glanced at issues I might consider spiritual, but mostly the plaintiffs made their case, as they must, based on constitutional and case law precedents. During breaks in the proceedings, I would overhear discussions among law clerks, almost all of which focused on the judicial process and how it would play out.

The whole time I was sitting there, I realized my heart and mind were in a completely different place. I just kept thinking, “Doesn’t anyone just want to listen to and then trust the kids themselves?”

Here’s something I’ve learned from Queer Camp. Queer youth collectively have more empathy and wisdom than the average population of youth. I’m not trying to make heroes out of queer youth, but I have come to recognize there are unique levels of care, sympathy, support, that play out when queer youth gather that does not happen in most regular youth spaces I’ve observed, and definitely not among most adults.

We saw this the week of camp, when many youth were highly adaptive to any ways in which their friends or group-mates were neuro-divergent. Friends would sit with friends in the decompression room and just chill. It was the norm to see youth support one another through anxious moments or dysphoria.

Many of these forms of care are the kinds of presence clergy are trained in as part of chaplaincy. Honestly, they’re also the kinds of care all Christians should be trained in because they conform to the way of Christ.

But the average trans person has experienced church as precisely the opposite of this. Not spaces of grace and love, but spaces of judgment and exclusion.

In this sense, I might say that as a pastor I don’t have a right to ask if trans families need or even desire a pastor. They may have very good reasons for staying as far away from the church and clergy as possible.

This territory, this landscape of trauma and rejection has led me to believe quite strongly that the most appropriate way pastors can be there for trans youth is this: simply be present. Hold space.

This sounds simple, but it’s actually complex. A lot of it has to do with creatively staying attentive, and then showing up.

Like showing up for a federal hearing. Like launching a queer camp when the state passes anti-trans laws. Like already being involved in the lives of queer people long before such laws are passed, so you have friends and networks who can teach and guide you along the right path.

As a pastor, if I walk into a space like that federal courthouse, I need to let go of the idea that I have something to give, to bring, some special message that is lacking that those I’m with desperately need.

It’s actually the opposite. When I walk in, many negative expectations ride along with that collar on my neck, and the best I can do as a follower of Jesus is to do as Jesus did: stand as the least among a community that is clearly stronger, more courageous, than I will ever be.

Pastors for trans youth (and here trans youth likely stands in for many other groups of youth of various sexual orientations, gender identities, etc.) have a ton of baggage to unpack. We’re never going to truly be there-for-others if we continue in the pattern of I-have-something-you-lack-here-let-me-share-it-with-you.

The pastors for trans youth first have to unlearn a lot, and then start humbly to learn. Simple things, like it’s good to place menstrual products in ALL the bathrooms regardless of gender.

More complex things, like the importance of using the right pronouns.

Even more complex things, like youth self-organize in social media spaces like Discord and will probably use such platforms to change the world in myriad ways, and if you hang out there and don’t act too crusty they may let you in on a few things.

Or learn from trans leaders. My friend Liz Petray volunteered at Queer Camp and led the theater program. The kids loved her. At the end of the week when we started the Discord channel, Liz took on a kind of big sister or aunt role in the group. The day the federal court decision came down (a decision, I would add, that affected medical access for around 1/3rd of the kids at camp), she wrote this in the channel:

Welcome to the struggle. I wish I could say something more uplifting because celebrating victories is important. But a little nervousness just means you’re paying attention. I hate to get all serious but honestly…between the legislative session that spawned this and now I bet some of y’all are realizing everything thats been happening is your generation taking the banner from mine on leading this big fight we all got dragged into. I really wish we could have had a few more years where it was still folk my age in Sabrina’s place in LR today. But we’ve never really gotten the chance to choose where the battles happen. That said…the fight’s not over but today was a victory. And look at all the good that came out of fighting for it! Queer Camp was after all a response to the nonsense in the legislature. And I don’t think this gets said enough but after a week of seeing what direction y’all are taking the community I’m pretty damn hopeful.

I’d say that’s pretty damn pastoral, by which I mean it’s being a decent and attentive human. Liz teaches me things like this all the time, and I’m thankful for her in my life. She even shows up to make sure I don’t revert back into colonialism, a check I need and welcome.

But are the pastors willing to be vulnerably and humbly in those spaces? Will they go where the kids are, instead of trying to get the kids to come to them?

I tend to think a lot of queer youth would love connecting to pastors and the church. They’ve got a solid sense of the holy, they value things like ritual and theater, and church space done well is a wonderful container for mutual support.

I also tend to think I have to work really hard to undo the manipulative forms of evangelism I was trained in. It’s tempting to want to get people to “join us.”

So I offer just this one tip as an activist pastor who likes to start things and loves kids:

Nobody is going to join you until you’ve put yourself on the line and taken the risks over a long period of time. Start with showing up, and showing up, and showing up. Let go of making showing up a means to an end.

Then all the pastors will be in the right place.