odd man out.

The idea for this post came from a comment I received a while ago asking about the unique gifts LGBT people have to offer their communities.  That got me thinking about what LGBT people have to offer to their churches, and I came to realize just how much they do have to offer.

It’s not my job to determine how exactly LGBT people are going to fit into your church, whether you will fully affirm same-sex relationships or support celibacy as a lifestyle or leave it to the individuals to decide or do something different.  That decision is the responsibility (I would say “urgent responsibility”) of your church and its processes of theological reflection.

What I can do, though, is try to convince you that your church benefits or would benefit from the participation of openly LGBT members who are committed to the beliefs and teachings your church holds.  I say “openly” here because your church likely already includes LGBT members, regardless of whether they feel safe expressing their sexuality.  Whether your church is small or mega, progressive or traditional, expanding or sustaining, I believe the presence of openly LGBT members is an invaluable asset.

1. LGBT youth need role models

I’ve written before on this blog about how the pain of struggling with sexuality is magnified in a church culture that makes no room for honest discussion.  I have actively participated in three large churches thus far in my life, and each of those churches lacked any sort of role model or authority who was willing to speak from experience about life as a sexual minority.  The result was that I had to decide between finding a role model for my sexuality outside of the church (like Kurt from Glee, although even he wasn’t around when I was a teenager), effectively ignoring my faith, or a role model for my faith within the church, effectively ignoring my sexuality.  LGBT teens shouldn’t have to make that decision.

Fortunately, we’re blessed to live in a time in which there are strong role models across the spectrum for gay Christians at a public level.  If an LGBT teen believes God blesses same-sex relationships, s/he can find great wisdom from someone like Justin Lee.  If an LGBT teen believes God calls LGBT people to celibacy, s/he too can find great wisdom from someone like Wesley Hill and his book Washed and Waiting.

Nevertheless—and at the risk of diminishing the important work those men are doing, which is absolutely the last thing I want to do—I think the majority of us would agree that the most influential role models in our lives are the ones we can talk to and touch, the ones who are present in our lives and, if you grew up Christian, are part of our churches.  What would it mean for an LGBT teen struggling with confusion about sexuality and faith, difficulty in family relationships, and bullying at school to be able to talk openly with an older mentor who understands the feelings because of similar experiences?  What if that mentor could set an example of a new kind of homosexuality, one in which homosexuality becomes a unique avenue through which the individual could glorify God?

“Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ,” Paul tells the church in Corinth (I Corinthians 11:1), and he similarly sets up a system in Crete in which the older members of the congregation are supposed to teach the younger members how to live (Titus 2:1-8).  Our culture constantly inundates us with messages about how we ought to live and what we ought to value and how we ought to define ourselves, and the community of God is the place where we are trained how not to “conform any longer to the pattern of this world” (Romans 12:2).  Whether your church teaches LGBT youth how to live a holy life of singleness or how to honor God through same-sex relationships, those teens should have to look no further than the church in which they participate—certainly not to the media—in order to find strong examples of how to interpret and express sexuality in light of the faith they profess.

2. God’s nontraditional family needs every relative

Somewhere along the way, American Christianity collectively decided that its job was to teach people how to raise perfect nuclear families that exist in relative independence.  The scriptures are certainly rife with wisdom about how people should run their households, and we simply cannot overestimate the profoundly positive impact of a strong, close, loving, God-fearing family on the children who will grow up within it.  God cares about whether you fill your family role to the best of your ability (parent, child, spouse, etc.).

Nevertheless, if one looks to Jesus for advice on how to establish and maintain a healthy household, s/he may go away empty-handed and even frustrated with shocking commands like, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple,” (Luke 14:26) and enigmatic statements like, “Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother” (Matthew 12:50).  What becomes apparent in Jesus’ ministry is that he might be much more concerned with the kingdom he is establishing than with the makeup of the families who will live within it.

Let’s be clear—Jesus understands the deep significance of family relationships.  He just has a big imagination about what forms those relationships may take: “No one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life” (Mark 10:29-30).  When I read this, I think of single mothers who find within the church strong men who invest in the lives of the children to provide them with positive male attention; I think of elderly people who, though they live miles away from their own grandchildren, find within the church children who can receive their wisdom and compassion.  I think of adoption and remarried widowers, of foster care and friends as loyal as siblings.

Unfortunately, many churches’ idolatry of nuclear families leaves little room for nontraditional lifestyles, and those families whose stories follow a different trajectory because of their circumstances often have trouble finding a place.  Regardless of how they fit into your church, LGBT people will help flesh out the broad extended family God is trying to develop in your community, giving healing and love where before was brokenness and pain.  If your church does not condone same-sex relationships, then your celibate LGBT members will play the role of surrogate parents, siblings, and friends along with the other single members of the congregation (and help to legitimize celibacy as a lifestyle within the church).  If your church affirms same-sex relationships, your LGBT members will find deep camaraderie with other couples for whom childbearing presents a unique challenge, and they will empathize closely with other people who face the challenges of living as minorities.

Regardless of the life decisions an LGBT person makes, his/her life simply will not follow the narrative that has stood as the ideal in our culture; God’s family has a place (was especially designed, even) for this and every other kind of nontraditional family unit, and your church should make room as well in order to experience and extend the joy of belonging.

3. The body of Christ needs all of its parts

When one member of the body of Christ is oppressed, the entire body of Christ suffers as a result.  Paul writes in I Corinthians 12:7, “To each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good,” and he goes on to provide a metaphor involving the human body that suggests every single person’s contribution to the work and worship of the body of Christ is essential (that is, non-negotiable) to that body.

I’ve often heard people lament the church’s treatment of LGBT people in terms of what that mistreatment does to the victims; but I rarely hear people lament what that exclusion has meant for the body of Christ, since an essential part of our body is being prevented from participating.  That means the LGBT people are not the only ones suffering; the body is suffering as well, since those individuals are not able to contribute their unique Spirit gifts for the “common good.”

In addition to those LGBT people who may have been expressly prevented from joining particular churches, I’m especially thinking here of those Christians who are unable to come out and be honest about their sexuality with the churches in which they participate.  To make a long story short, I have experienced a radical shift in my ability to minister and function within the body of Christ as I have allowed my sexuality to become involved in my ministry, and I cannot imagine trying to go back and minister from the closet.  I recognize that coming out is not an option for many people now, but I wonder how much more effectively and meaningfully our LGBT members could function in the life of the community if they did not have to dedicate significant resources of energy and time to maintaining some sort of façade within the community.

As with any component of a person’s identity, be it gender, race, family background, socioeconomic status, career, political party, nationality, or even football team, it is spiritually disastrous to allow one’s sexuality to become the core of one’s identity—that place is reserved for Christ (Galatians 2:20).  And I recognize the wide variety of ways people interpret sexuality and incorporate it into their self-definitions (just listen to the very specific language people intentionally use when they describe their experience of sexuality).  Nevertheless, diversity seems to be a central tenet of the kingdom God is establishing: At the same time as we affirm. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female” (Galatians 3:28), we see how Jesus has “purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Revelation 5:9).  The end result is that somehow people who are different cooperate as eyes, ears, hands, and feet to create a cooperative body that is much greater than the sum of its heterogeneous parts, and we ought not to silence that diversity (I Corinthians 12:12-31).  I’m loath to rely on generalizations, but I do believe LGBT people possess unique and significant gifts that are essential to the life of any particular community of faith.

How has your church welcomed LGBT members into your community?  Is any of the stuff I describe above happening right now?