White. For
decades, he has been
an evangelical pastor.
Before I
was born, he wrote a letter to
my
future wife. He didn’t know what
we
both do now: that I’m gay. When I came
out nearly 16 years
later, it shook his faith
and fractured
his church. But it never
separated
us. I wanted to understand how.
So I read his journals.
Dear Daughter,
Our son Timothy is about to be born — God willing, in less than two months. And as I’ve been praying for him, I’ve started praying for you. So I wanted to write you a letter to give you on your wedding day.
Of course I don’t know you. I don’t know your name, and I don’t know if you have even been born yet. Indeed, I don’t even know if it will ever come to pass that you will be our daughter. But I hope so. As we’ve been praying for our son, we’ve also been praying for his future wife.
I pray that you will come to this earth safely, and that over the years God will be touching your heart and drawing you to Christ. I pray that you will deeply, deeply know that you are precious and loved by God. I pray that you would love Jesus more than you love our son, even though we already love our son more than the whole world.
I’ve prayed a number of times for your family. God will be watching over your family. I pray that somehow through your family you would grow up and have a profound experience of grace — that at the core of your soul you would feel cared for in spite of your blunders, embraced in spite of your weaknesses, cherished in spite of your selfishness.
You are a dear, dear woman to me and to Katy. We love you. We look forward to meeting you. We will be praying for you over the years. And we will be praying that our son will be good to you and that he will love you deeply, will serve you gladly, and will enjoy you immensely.
With great love and affection and many prayers,
Bill
White. For
decades, he has been
an evangelical pastor.
Before I
was born, he wrote a letter to
my
future wife. He didn’t know what
we
both do now: that I’m gay.
Dear Daughter,
Our son Timothy is about to be born — God willing, in less than two months. And as I’ve been praying for him, I’ve started praying for you. So I wanted to write you a letter to give you on your wedding day.
Of course I don’t know you. I don’t know your name, and I don’t know if you have even been born yet. Indeed, I don’t even know if it will ever come to pass that you will be our daughter. But I hope so. As we’ve been praying for our son, we’ve also been praying for his future wife.
I pray that you will come to this earth safely, and that over the years God will be touching your heart and drawing you to Christ. I pray that you will deeply, deeply know that you are precious and loved by God. I pray that you would love Jesus more than you love our son, even though we already love our son more than the whole world.
I’ve prayed a number of times for your family. God will be watching over your family. I pray that somehow through your family you would grow up and have a profound experience of grace — that at the core of your soul you would feel cared for in spite of your blunders, embraced in spite of your weaknesses, cherished in spite of your selfishness.
You are a dear, dear woman to me and to Katy. We love you. We look forward to meeting you. We will be praying for you over the years. And we will be praying that our son will be good to you and that he will love you deeply, will serve you gladly, and will enjoy you immensely.
With great love and affection and many prayers,
Bill
out nearly 16 years
later, it shook his faith
and fractured
his church. But it never
separated
us. I wanted to understand how.
So I read his journals.
How My Dad
Reconciled His God
and His Gay Son
Some of my earliest memories are of my dad praying over me at night. Half asleep, seeing him standing silhouetted in my doorway, I felt a deep sense of comfort that both my earthly dad and the heavenly father were watching over me; my dad’s mumbled prayers for me and who I would become felt like a window into my future. One of those prayers — murmured each night, written out on a note by the door in case he forgot — was for my future wife.
My dad was a self-proclaimed “Jesus freak” of the 1990s who became an evangelical pastor at a church on the modest end of “mega.” He believed homosexuality to be a grave sin and had no idea what to do when his brother came out.
And then I came out to him and my mother, Katy. It upended their lives and the life of our neighborhood church. It sent my father on a winding, high-stakes spiritual, emotional and interpersonal journey that lasted years. Now he’s still a pastor, but also the most impressive advocate for L.G.B.T.Q. inclusion in the church I’ve ever met.
But the process of transformation that my father had been through was a mystery to me. What had allowed him to change his mind so thoroughly about something he once had such strong feelings about, a process that seems to happen so rarely on any subject, let alone one that’s so personal? How had he reconciled his Father and his son without seeming to compromise either relationship?
As it happens, my dad is a prolific journal keeper. I remember him setting aside time every Saturday morning to journal, adding letters, photos and text messages to supplement his words. Recently I got to read through some journals my dad shared with me — and I’m now sharing here — to better understand how he went from where he was to where he is.
What I found in my dad’s journals gave me a deep appreciation for what it takes for people to really change their minds — what it means to confront the limits of their faith, to risk their career, their standing in the community, even to question the foundations of all that they believed to be true.
Chapter 1
Coming Out
From My Father’s Journal
May 25, 2013 Timothy is 13 years old
Wednesday, Timothy mentioned to me that he’d like to take another walk to Starbucks. I figured he had something pretty significant to share if he was initiating. So on Thursday evening at about 8 pm we walked over there chatting along the way. We got our drinks and started to walk back when he brought up a conversation I will remember the rest of my life.
He said that he was noticing how a lot of the guys had friends that they could be buddy-buddy with and mess around and do guy things with. He said his issue was he wanted to explore some things [horseplay and pranks] that he might be able to if he had a group of guy friends. We processed that for a while and talked about how he needed some space to explore things like that, and that it was normal and healthy for a young man his age to do so.
We bypassed our house and continued to walk. It was pretty clear he had more to say but that he wasn’t even sure what it was. I asked if he was wondering if he was attracted to groups of guys. “Maybe a little,” or some such response, is what he gave me. We wandered around a bit and he said, “At one point I wondered if I was gay.” I shared that I had met a man earlier in the week who said that he wondered the same thing at Timothy’s age, and yet it turned out that he was straight and that he ended up marrying, etc.
I don’t know if I’ve ever been part of a sadder conversation. I was honored by Timothy’s trust in me. I was encouraged by his sincerity and maturity. I was aware of your presence with us, empowering me not to react, not to recoil, and not to push, prod or judge. Father, thank you for being with us.
And yet, I’m as sad as I’ve ever been, I think. Somehow the process of Dad dying was a different sadness. There’s the sadness over my own sin and shame. There’s the sadness over things like 9/11. But nothing quite like this.
My heart is devastated. I told Katy last night that it feels like someone crushed my sternum and was pounding on my heart. At times I think it’s an actual physical pain in my chest, it hurts so bad. Perhaps twenty years from now I’ll look back with disdain at these feelings and surely others would if they knew — but I will not disguise to you what is going on in my heart and soul and mind.
I think down deep, I hate homosexuality. I hate it more than just about anything else in the world. I hate it because it seems sometimes to be stronger than you, God. Yes, that’s what I said. It seems that way. I am sure there is plenty of good in the gay community, but my experience tells me otherwise — I see the isolation, the craving, the insecurity. Father, you have to spare Timothy from that. You have to.
Will homosexuality take him over; will it lead him away from you? Or might he repress it long enough to get married and have kids, and then walk out on it all to “find” his “real self” in the gay community?
And, if Timothy’s sexuality continues down the path to homosexuality, how will the Christian community react? Will he experience hatred, betrayal, and insult at the hand of your people? I can imagine few things that can turn a person from faith like your church.
It’s remarkable to me that my dad experienced these moments in May 2013 as so significant — and amazing to me that I’d apparently wondered out loud to him if I was gay. In my memory, I was so repressed that I didn’t begin to understand my sexuality until more than a year and a half later. It was late 2014, lying in my bed in the dark reciting what I remembered of Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane, when he asked God to give him another option than crucifixion — “Father, please take this cup away from me” — that I finally admitted the truth to myself. I felt scared and alone and confused about what my life and faith would look like after coming out.
I can feel my dad’s fears in this entry: that I would experience a life full of pain and rejection, that I might become forever divorced from the church. It’s clear to me now that these fears came in part from a narrow horizon; he couldn’t see the joy and beauty in the gay community that I might come to experience. He’d just never been around enough gay people before.
But some of his fears came from a deeper place, beyond simple stereotypes or concern. He was afraid that something within me might, in his words above, be stronger than God. That it would unmoor him from the evangelical moral foundation upon which he’d spent decades building his life and career. And in some ways, he wouldn’t be wrong.
From My Father’s Journal
March 14, 2015 Timothy is 15 years old
Last Sunday Timothy asked if he could go to Starbucks with me and Katy to talk about something. I knew. I asked Katy if she was prepared for what we were going to hear.
Timothy got a tiramisu frappuccino, and we sat around for a minute, and then he said: “You are probably wondering why I brought you here today. I’ve been thinking a lot lately and prayed about it. There’s been an internal thing going on, and I’m pretty solid on it and I wanted to let you guys know first. I’m pretty sure, I’ve decided I’m gay. Feel free to ask me all the questions you want.” I told him I loved him; he said he’d never doubted that. And then we proceeded to talk for 45 minutes about how he’s doing, what he’s been thinking, how he came to his conclusions and his plan for coming out to family and friends and the world.
That was one of the finest conversations I’ve had in my life. Father, thank you for it. Thank you for Timothy’s courage in speaking to us. We were incredibly honored that he chose to talk with us first before any of his friends.
I was surprised by just how little dread Timothy was experiencing. He shared a couple of times how he’s confident it’s going to work out well and that he’s even excited about it. Wow, that’s just not what I was expecting. He was excited to show the world that you can be a Christian and be gay. He clearly said he wants his identity in God to come first, which was music to my ears.
As I reflect on that conversation, I felt hopeful, really for the first time, that you might be working all things together for good and actually wanting to expand your kingdom through Timothy — he certainly thinks so; and I feel a lot of serenity, trusting that you are at work. I suppose I also feel some real concern — some anxiety for Timothy that he’s going to face judgment and ridicule, both from the right and the left, and that he’ll face a lot of pressure to conform one way or the other.
And I feel real concern for myself. I know that’s selfish, and I don’t want to make any of this about me — in fact, I didn’t even bring up a hint of this in the conversation with him because he deserved to have it be about him. But the heat will be turned up on me in a huge way. When he comes out, everyone is going to want a piece of me. They are going to want me to join their side of the issue; they are going to want to use Timothy and to use me. They are going to seek, perhaps inadvertently but no less potently, to divide our little church. Father, would you help me?
There were many difficult moments in the process of coming out. I’m grateful that telling my parents wasn’t one of them. While I knew there would be significant ramifications for our family and our church once I said those words out loud, I knew despite all that my dad’s immediate response would be “I love you.”
But 2015 was actually not the first time my dad had to confront the experience of a loved one coming out.
In the early ’90s, my uncle came out as gay to my dad and the rest of their family. My dad told my uncle he loved him — but he wasn’t able to square his faith with his brother’s sexuality, and their worlds were so different that they mostly just avoided any conversation on the topic for years.
I don’t know how much my uncle coming out before me shaped what happened after I came out. But I think it meant that even though he’d deliberately avoided thinking about the relationship between his faith and homosexuality, subconsciously he’d been chewing on what he would come to see as the contradictions in church teachings for a long time before he had to deal with me. It also meant that he had someone to turn to for advice.
From My Father’s Journal
May 27, 2015
My brother called last night to talk to me. It was one of the finest conversations I’ve had with him in years. He shared how when he hung up the phone with Timothy he cried because he was so happy not to be the only gay person in the family, that the movement had progressed so far as to have someone like Timothy be able to come out without pain and because it meant a new season of closeness with me. He was so glad that Timothy wasn’t calling for support but rather just to share news. He was shocked at how well Timothy seems to be doing in the process. I shared some of my fears about how folks either to the far right or far left would try to co-opt Timothy’s journey, and he clearly agreed that such a turn of events would be damaging. He mentioned how his friend, when hearing the news about Timothy, said, “Him being gay is probably the one thing that could diminish your brother’s faith in God while simultaneously increasing yours.” Insightful guy.
Chapter 2
Wrestling With God
From My Father’s Journal
May 30, 2015
I feel frustrated with you, Father. The Scriptures just don’t seem all that clear anymore, and this is a big issue with huge stakes. So what are we to do in this case of a big issue with no clarity? I hear one side saying, “As best as we can tell, we’re right, and we feel invigorated by our sacrificial commitment to the Lord — but we’re really lonely, sad and somewhat repressed, and wonder whether we’re missing out on a huge part of the life that Jesus would have for us, not to mention the fact that we seem to be closing the door of the gospel on both L.G.B.T. people and the younger generation.” I hear the other side saying, “As best as we can tell, we’re right, and we feel finally free from all the guilt, loneliness and repression we suffered under — but we still wonder sometimes if we’re being immoral.” Neither side seems completely satisfied or convinced. And neither is completely convincing. And the stakes are so high.
July 4, 2015
I’m sad that I don’t feel like I’ve been a good enough father to prevent Timothy from being gay. Actually, I’m mad about this as well, Father. I’m mad because I did everything right and you didn’t come through on your end of the bargain. I was the exact opposite of the distant father and he still turned out gay — that’s not how this was supposed to work out.
July 25, 2015
I’m realizing that I’m still really sad about Timothy. I don’t like sharing that with a lot of people because it just doesn’t seem safe — if they don’t love me well, I worry that they’ll try to fix me, try to correct me, or that they’ll take it as a confirmation of their own views of sexual morality.
Sept. 5, 2015
My theology is changing, Father. It’s been a deep undercurrent for a couple of years now, but it’s surfacing in new ways and with real potency these days. I think there are two main things that are unnerving for me.
The first is that I no longer know how to read the Scriptures. There’s a tinge of doubt, of wariness, of skepticism when I read. How do I know what’s there is from you? How do I sift out the human contribution? I’m reading Scripture differently, with an edge.
The second area that’s unnerving for me is in regard to morality. If I can get to the point where homosexuality is moral, how much does that change the rest of my morality? Sure, I had the conversation with Timothy that I value purity and that I’d like him to save sex for marriage. It was a bit of an odd conversation, because how do I get to land at the point of “no sexual intercourse before marriage” but then redefine marriage? At what point do my sexual mores change? How about the morality of cussing? Of generosity? Of lying? How situational do things become? How open are the Scriptures to reinterpretation on these things? And how about universalism, heaven and hell?
Jesus, I want to do some real thinking about what it looks like for me to cling to you, to know you, to love you and to build my theology on you and not on the Scriptures.
When I think back to those years, I didn’t know the full extent of my dad’s ongoing internal struggle at the time, but I knew that something was happening.
As an evangelical pastor trained in a conservative religious tradition amid the culture wars of the ’90s, my dad spent decades spreading the good news of Jesus Christ. As kids, my sister and I joked that he never went anywhere without an invitation card to a church service; he was always ready to talk to someone sitting next to him on a plane or in line for the D.M.V. about what was troubling them and how Jesus might offer hope. He didn’t talk much about homosexuality or other hot button social issues, but it was an unavoidable undercurrent: He preached that Jesus offered redemption and grace from the sins of the world, a list that started off with violence, greed and dishonesty but never failed to include sex outside of a “Christ-like” marriage between a man and a woman.
These evangelical teachings were the air he breathed, the water he swam in. So at the time he started asking tough questions about them, even though I wasn’t reading these journal entries, I could feel part of our family’s bedrock foundation shifting. He started talking at the dinner table about how the early church had serious internal disagreements over theology. I remember hearing for the first time about gay people he was meeting with and getting to know — from gay Christians who sat with their romantic partners in church to gay Christians who felt called to celibacy by the tenets of their faith.
From My Father’s Journal
Sept. 8, 2015
I’ve been thinking a lot about Paul and how he turned from the Law to Jesus — he really did an about face. And now he says crazy things like, “The only thing that matters is faith expressing itself through love (Galatians 5:6) and whoever loves others has fulfilled the law (Romans 13:8) and love is the fulfillment of the law (Romans 13:10) and the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: Love your neighbor as yourself (Galatians 5:14).” Paul really does want to move us forward to the core message and to let go of a lot of the other “rules.” Father, how do I do that while still having a sexual ethic, for example?
Some of the stuff I’ve read has talked about “biblicism” or “foundationalism,” which both seem to describe what I’m coming out of. Life and morality and God and religion were a lot clearer then than it is now. And yet the strange thing is that I’ve never felt closer to Jesus — more intimate, more interested, more willing to sacrifice for him, and more free to be a Christian.
It’s actually pretty scary, because people are going to judge me, Christians are going to proclaim that I’ve lost my faith, and I will lose certain privileges that I’ve had in the community. I won’t be asked to do some weddings or speak at certain churches or events, etc., especially as I come out more and more into who I see you leading me to be. The L.G.B.T. issue will continue to be a lightning rod, but it’s the understanding of Scripture and the second half of life issues that are really at work. Father, have mercy on me. Help me be nothing but gracious and believing and loving. I don’t want to have a big agenda for others. I just want to follow you and to help others do the same.
By early 2016, there’s less anguish about me in my dad’s journals: I had come out and he had been loving and supportive the whole time. What remained very unsettled still, though, was the relationship between his theology and homosexuality.
For a pastor, this is not a small thing: It affected not only his own personal faith, but also how he approached his life and livelihood. It had implications for our relationship: If I got married, would he perform my wedding? But it also had implications for the broad community of people who’d found a home in our church.
Around 2013, my father left his job as a pastor at a big evangelical church of a few thousand to found a new church that met in our backyard aimed at fostering more of an authentic, grass-roots community. The church grew from a few families to a couple of hundred people in the local school auditorium.
Up until now, the process of starting to change his mind had been mostly a private one, between his conscience and God; but as my dad had anticipated in his earlier journals, this was never going to remain the case for long. Changing your mind in private is one thing; changing your mind publicly is very different.
Around the time I came out, a few sister churches in our moderately conservative denomination were publicly talking about the possibility of officiating gay weddings and having L.G.B.T.Q.+ people in leadership. These issues were in the air; my own coming out put a face to the issue.
And so our church, on my dad’s initiative, began our official process of openly discussing faith and sexuality and gender by assembling a team of congregational leaders to come together, study and form the church’s policies. The group had a range of theological viewpoints, and they were committed to starting the process without a predetermined conclusion. They set out to learn, not only by reading books on theology alongside biblical texts, but also from each other and the community. My dad — always a reader and a studier — was excited.
From the outside the study team might seem like a small or bureaucratic step. And it didn't move fast, taking almost two years to reach a decision. But for a church rooted in American evangelicalism, publicly committing to seriously consider gay people was momentous: Even announcing the study team caused a stir among the congregation, and my dad started getting angry emails and phone calls.
Chapter 3
A Leap of Faith
From My Father’s Journal
Feb. 6, 2016
This week some members of the congregation sent an email to me and Jason [then a co-pastor of the church] saying they were leaving City Church. Jason said it made him feel sad. For me, well, it made me more angry. I suppose that’s because it’s covering over sadness — it’s just so powerless to be sad, so I prefer the anger. But part of me is glad these particular members are leaving — they’ve withdrawn from me ever since I told them that Timothy was gay. I asked them if they could share more about pulling away from City Church; they responded by saying they hadn’t pulled away. Then to receive an email saying they were leaving — not even having the dignity to tell me to my face.
Father, they must feel very scared and perhaps betrayed to act that way. No doubt they feel hurt by me. Father, I feel powerless to reconcile with them. I feel powerless to make any change in what feels like a monolithic conservative evangelicalism — and I feel like I got run over by it. It’s so much bigger than these members. Father, have mercy on me. Father, I forgive them. Enlarge my heart with love, create in me a greater capacity to suffer and expand my understanding of your grace for me and for others. And I pray for a chance to reconcile with them.
Part of this whole theological journey I’ve been on ties in with the emotional journey of this week — namely, I’m left feeling lonely. Some other church members texted on Monday morning (after I’d reached out to them for the third time) and said that they were declining to meet with me at all — that they were simply leaving and would not speak to me face to face.
March 12, 2016
Three times this week I was asked where I’m at on the L.G.B.T. stuff. The rub is that people know I’m the pastor and even though I’m just a “participant” in the study group, they know I have far more influence than that — so they want to know how I see things. So this is what I said.
I believe sexual attraction can shift and that God is in the business of shifting it. I believe that healthy Christian ministry can and does play a part in shifting orientation. I am currently working with at least one person on the journey of moving away from her attraction to women towards attraction to men, because I’m convinced this is what God is doing in her life, and I want to be a part of it.
I believe God calls people to celibacy. I believe in a costly discipleship. I believe that our sexual orientation is not our primary identity but rather that our core identity is determined by who God says we are and calls us to be. I’m connected to a number of gay folks on the journey of celibacy and I am strongly in the camp of encouraging their struggle to stay celibate, including both a single gay man and a gay man who is married to a woman.
I read in the Bible about God granting Israel a king even though it was in outright rebellion to God that they wanted one — and then God goes and blesses the king, including royal psalms being written and God granting a covenant with David to always have an heir on the throne. God accommodated situations that were not his original ideal and even blessed people in non-ideal stations of life.
I can’t get away from how radically inclusive Jesus was of all people and how freely he extended welcome into the kingdom of God. He consistently affirms and blesses the outsider, the minority and the marginalized. He extended unconditional love to all, and he said that all of the commands in the Scriptures find their fulfillment in love.
That entry was unnerving to read. To think about my dad wrestling with ideas of celibacy and of Christian ministry’s potential to shift sexuality — these ideas echo the underpinnings of conversion therapy.
The entry makes clear, though, how much my dad was going through the difficult process of really figuring out what he believed, not just flipping a theological switch. It also reflects that even while he was working out his theology, with real angst, he remained committed to pastoring his congregation, including those with a variety of experiences with sexuality and faith.
While the entry doesn’t capture where my dad ended up theologically, it shows how he got there — by walking with people on their personal journeys, as he walked his. Even though this entry is difficult for me to read now, the last bullet point perfectly demonstrates how the underpinning of my dad’s faith remained stable: Jesus at the center, extending unconditional love to all and teaching that all of the commands in the Scriptures find their fulfillment in love.
From My Father’s Journal
March 16, 2016
I met with another member tomorrow to bless him on his way out of City Church. Ouch. I’m worried about a few others, who I could see going next. The L.G.B.T.Q. process has been really scary for people, and some are just leaving instead of talking.
Father, I’m sad. I’m giving my heart to this L.G.B.T.Q. process, and it’s been so very painful already and we haven’t even begun. All of these people “out there” are “so proud” of me, but here at home we’re taking hit after hit.
Aug. 10, 2016
In July we’d had our lowest Sunday attendance in two years — averaging 122 people a Sunday. [That month Jason left the church when his family decided to move to Iowa; some who left the congregation at this time did so because of Jason's departure.]
Aug. 21, 2016
We dropped Timothy off at LAX today [for his first year of college]. Lots of tears. Especially when, in that final embrace, I asked, “Who are you?” “Child of honor” was the same response that he’s given ever since he could talk.
Aug. 29, 2016
Our Sunday attendance dropped yesterday to under 100. Father, I don’t know what to do.
June 30, 2017
And, as if to shout in my ear to make sure I don’t miss the point, just today I got a two-sentence card in the mail saying, “Bill — it is with deep sorrow and hurt to tell you, we are no longer friends! Please remove me from your prayer requests and from any future emails.” Wow, that was a punch to the gut.
Sept. 7, 2017
One congregant pointed out that I couldn’t be both the pastor of the L.G.B.T.Q. community and the CCLB community.
Oct. 28, 2017
We had 50 adults in service last Sunday — which was discouraging for me to say the least.
I also got rammed this week by one member who felt like I hadn’t gone far enough. [Bill included a combative text message that called his attempt at a compromise another kind of exclusion and an insult to L.G.B.T.Q. members of the church, and attributed Bill’s approach to his identity as a heterosexual white male.]
By this point, it had been more than a year and a half of what felt like an endless parade of people leaving City Church and questioning my dad’s leadership. Some of these departures were people my dad knew for years, people who had doted on me when I was little, who sat next to me in church, whose kids I grew up with.
The year following the 2016 election was a divisive time in many churches; add that to a stream of contentious departures and a study team deliberating on one of the more controversial issues in contemporary Christianity, and it was all taking a toll on my dad. He has always had boundless energy and optimism, but when he talked about City Church then, I could hear the doubt and weariness creep in.
As I read these journal entries about brutal departures and attendance dwindling, I imagine him thinking: Would the church — and my job as its pastor — even make it through this? What good is a thoughtful, robust process of determining a theological stance if there isn’t a church still standing at the end of it?
It’s frightening to realize you’ve grown or changed and don’t fit into your life in the same way you used to; you’re confronted with the choice to stay put, feeling insincere and out of place, or to speak up to those around you with honesty and risk losing your community. To speak out about how you’ve changed is to make it real, to leap over the edge and forever lose the stable footing you had.
By the end of 2017, as the study team began reaching its conclusions, my dad, with the team’s approval, started leading our church toward inclusion. He even took a stand within the larger organization that governs our church — the “classis” — as you’ll see in this letter, which he included in his journal. What I see in this letter is a person who, after a long journey, now has a firm grasp on his own priorities: He wants to provide a home for people looking to know Jesus. That’s it; he’ll ignore the rest.
From My Father’s Journal
Nov. 18, 2017
Classis Executive Team,
City Church Long Beach has been through a lot of transition of late, and we’re emerging with a clear sense of vision and energy that I’m convinced is from the heart of God — and we need your permission to move forward.
Due to our L.G.B.T.Q. Study Team process, we’re now half the size that we were 18 months ago. The people who are coming are local to our community and are progressive in nature. They want to be part of a church that focuses on Jesus and that is welcoming to all kinds of people, including L.G.B.T.Q. people. Our true conservatives have all fled to other local congregations, and while we have a solid number of moderate conservatives remaining, they are all embracing the reality that God is opening doors for us to minister to those in our community, not those who have left.
The conservatives have plenty of places to go — none of the people who have left our church have gone church-less. But if we ceased to exist, the 70 who remain would have nowhere to go.
The newly minted Reverend Brenna Rubio and I have been working through our strategic planning process, clarifying our vision to be a radically welcoming community on a journey towards Jesus, joining him in the renewal of all things. And people are coming.
The problem is this: non-Christians are asking the L.G.B.T.Q. question before they even enter the door as a litmus test as to whether they will even come in the first place. We can argue about whether that’s fair or not, but we can’t argue about whether that’s reality. They simply will only come to a church that is welcoming of L.G.B.T.Q. people, and not what they call “pretend” welcoming into what they call “second-class citizenship.”
I’ve had conversations with half a dozen different adults in the past week about this very thing — some gay, most straight; some Christians, most not; and they press me — is this church really what you say it is? Is it truly welcoming into all levels of leadership, or does it discriminate on sexual orientation? Does it do gay weddings? These are the pay-to-play questions that non-Christians are asking to determine whether this is a place they can go on their spiritual journey.
Sunday, I had one woman tell me that she and her Jewish husband had just dropped out of the church they occasionally visited because it didn’t truly welcome gays, and that it was either us or the Unitarian Universalist church — so what am I supposed to say to that? “Sure, go to that church that doesn’t teach about Jesus while our denomination tries to figure things out …”
Let me put it very plainly: I don’t think City Church Long Beach will be here in a year if we don’t live into the mission God has called us to. If we turn away the people he is bringing to us, our Sunday service will shrink and die. On top of that, if we can’t live into our convictions, our very souls will shrink and die. We will close our doors and shut down our hearts.
I don’t want to blow up the classis. And I don’t want to fight with anyone anymore about these things. I just want to follow Jesus and to introduce others to the stunning news he brings through the gospel and to the family that bears his name and to the mission he’s calling them towards in this world.
All I’m asking is that City Church Long Beach might not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. I’m willing to do whatever you tell me to, except to put obstacles in the path of those who want the salvation that we have received so freely in Christ.
Please counsel me on how to proceed.
In Christ alone,
Bill
Jan. 28, 2018
Like turning 50, the past few years of conversation around L.G.B.T.Q. questions have surprised me with the gift they have been to me. I find myself so much less afraid, less anxious.
When Timothy came out, I was wracked with insecurities and questions, doubts and fears. But now, I’m just in a different spot. What’s changed for me is that by stepping into the deep waters of hard conversations within the church, I’ve been forced on the inward journey of facing questions about what I believe, about what is wrong and right. What grounds my faith? What will happen to me if I break from the tradition of the church? Will I love those whom God has called me to love — and what if that includes people I disagree with?
It’s as if God wanted to grow me through this process! Sure, questions about embracing L.G.B.T.Q. people in the church are very important. Yet as I reflect on the past few years, I see now what I’ve been tempted to miss — that God’s primary work for me has been his work in me. We try to push discomfort away from us, to think about questions in the abstract, to pretend that we could remain unaffected, to guard ourselves from having to do the uncomfortable work of changing. Yet God is always, relentlessly, after our own hearts.
I entered this journey unwillingly, but as it draws to a close for me I find myself flooded with gratitude. I’m grateful for God loving me along the way, changing me along the way. And although it’s uncomfortable, I am grateful for the call to become radically welcoming — not just of those with whom I agree but welcoming of those with whom I disagree.
Jan. 11, 2019 One year later
I’m including this text. [Bill copied a series of messages into his journal from a friend who said he was “forever grateful” for Bill’s support, but continued with, “friend, you’re leading your son and your church astray” and called Bill “lost.”]
Jan. 13, 2019
The Q Christian Fellowship [an event for L.G.B.T.Q. Christians] conference was a good conference. There’s something about being around queer people that’s just refreshing and encouraging. They’ve spent so much time at the margins — there’s so much more room for Jesus. Some of the stuff was a little far out for me — there was space for polyamory, which I’m not comfortable with; and some of the sexual ethics seemed a bit loose. But Jesus is still welcomed so explicitly.
In 2013, my dad wrote he hated homosexuality “more than just about anything else in the world.” I’m glad, in the end, that he loved me so much that he was willing to re-examine that belief.
When I first read my dad’s letter to my future wife for the first time, all his love and hopes for who I would become flew out of a time capsule and hit me in the chest. I felt the weight of his love, overpowering before I was even born. I also felt the sharp vision he had for my life, how he wanted so deeply for me to have true Christ-like companionship the only way he believed in — with a woman.
And yet, for a letter written to an unborn son’s future wife, it also wasn’t particularly gendered. There were none of the expectations of submission that evangelicalism so often places on women. What stood out to me as I read was that this was framed as a letter to my future wife, but it was really a reflection on treasuring relationships, both between people and with God. This, I think, is at the heart of why my dad could do what he did.
When I started reading his journals, I already knew how much my dad’s life, views and job had changed over the past two decades. But I was also struck by what had remained constant: his commitment to Jesus and his love for me, even when he didn’t know where that would lead theologically or professionally.
At first, he worried that my being gay would not only mean he didn’t have a daughter-in-law, as he’d imagined before I was born, but would also lose much of what made him himself. To some extent, he did: He has a different job, many people left our congregation, and his understanding of Scripture has changed profoundly. But he didn’t lose his God, or his son, as he once feared he might.
To feel the bedrock of your theology shifting might sound abstract, but it’s almost impossible to underestimate the terror it brings for someone who has made this their whole life. It would be much easier to turn away from the types of questions my dad found himself asking. Instead, he faced that terror and confronted his grief that the world didn’t turn out the way it was supposed to, the way he was told it would, the way he had pictured. He took stock of what really mattered to him at his core. And then he reshaped his beliefs, practices and work around that — including recently starting a nonprofit dedicated to helping other pastors and churches think through their own questions around gay and trans inclusion.
My dad recently described going through all this as “being born again, again.” His is unequivocally a religious journey. But I don’t think the qualities that allowed for this renewal are exclusive to faith. We live in dogmatic times; every one of us can learn from what it looks like to go through the process of re-evaluating your entire moral foundation — to do so, with the type of radical honesty my dad did, is to emerge on the other side with a stronger sense of who you are and what you truly value.
From My Father’s Journal
Jan. 26, 2019 Four years after Timothy came out
As Katy prayed last night she thanked you for the remarkable gift of Timothy coming out — and how we thought it was the end, but it was only the beginning of a full, true, vibrant life in Christ. Father, thank you that you created our son gay. Forgive me for how poorly I received that gift.
Bill White has been a pastor for 25 years and a co-pastor of City Church of Long Beach for 12 years. He co-founded and leads the organization Small Church Big Table, which helps faith leaders who are thinking about L.G.B.T.Q.+ questions.
Additional reporting and production by Sarah Gannett. The journal entries have been edited for length and clarity.
