Pastors Who Affirm LGBTQ People (but Aren't Public about it)

This topic is deeply personal for me. I used to think one way about it, but now it feels more complicated.

My favorite thing about live events? Responding to people’s questions. Because as often happens, a person’s particular question has a way of illuminating universal questions that we are all asking. This ongoing series, “Audience Questions,” is my way of responding to real questions that have come up in the past. These articles are free for all, however if you’d like to submit a question, that’s only for Paid Subscribers.

---

The following question got asked by an audience member when I was in Iowa doing a presentation of “Not an Oxymoron: Why LGBTQ Affirming Christianity Makes Sense.” I didn’t get a chance to respond to questions that evening, so I’m gonna answer some of them here on Perspective Shift.

AUDIENCE QUESTION

Someone recently asked,

There are pastors who are personally LGBTQ affirming but they’re not open about it to their church.

I assume it’s because they want to please the majority; they fear losing members and money; and they don’t want to face the inevitable conflict that would follow.

My questions are:

1. How do you feel about it?

2. Is this common?

3. Why do pastors do this?

4. How can we make any changes?

MY RESPONSE

This topic is deeply personal for me and for many years I had a relatively straightforward response as a result. Something along the lines of, What an injustice! If you’re affirming, then come out of the theological closet immediately, otherwise I question your integrity!

I’m good at being judgy. 🥴

Over the years, however, I’ve allowed more information, other people’s experiences, as well as further reflection on my own past to impact my perspective.

As a result, how I respond to this question today is not how I would’ve five, ten years ago.

There’s a lot to say about this topic so I’m going to break up my responses in three parts.

This post will respond to question one, “how I feel about this.”

But first, a little backstory on why this question hits so close to home for me.

I Used to be That Guy

Some of you know this part of my story, but back in 2011 I was on staff at an evangelical megachurch just outside Phoenix called The Grove. I’d been a pastor there for five years and during that time in my life I was undergoing significant shifts in my Christian theology.

In short, I was putting more and more distance between my evolving beliefs and the baptist, evangelical roots of my heritage and education.

One of those evolving beliefs had to do with the sinfulness of homosexuality and the sanctity of same sex marriage.

Sometime in 2010, after careful study of the Bible on this topic, I concluded that the church has gotten it wrong. As it turns out, there is no scriptural reason to see homosexuality as a sin, nor is there justification to deny people of the same sex from getting married (and being blessed by God to do so).

This theological shift led to me getting fired from that church after I posted something on Facebook in September of 2011. (I won’t retell that story here, but if you’re curious then you can read all about it in UnClobber.)

I bring this up because as you can see there was a solid year+ of time where I was a pastor on staff at an evangelical church (very non-affirming) all while myself being secretly LGBTQ affirming.

So when people (such as the person who asked this question) talk about the hypothetical secretly affirming pastor, what I’m saying is that this is not hypothetical for me.

I was that pastor.

Therefore I can tell you from my own experience why I stayed in the theological closet, but honestly you could probably guess: I was afraid of losing my job.

This may surprise you, but 14 years ago the topic of homosexuality was a divisive topic in the church, functioning as a kind of litmus test for who was a real Christian and who wasn’t.

(Oh wait… what’s that? It still is? 🤦‍♂️ Woof… do better, church.)

Anyway, I had a pretty good suspicion that should my employer learn of my inclusive beliefs then it would not go well for me. And as the sole provider for our family of five (and eventually six!), it didn’t feel like much of an option for me to risk getting fired.

So yes, part of why I stayed quiet about my beliefs was because of fear over losing my job (which of course, I did), fear over losing money (which we most certainly did), which would lead to things like losing our house (which happened), and having to move (which also happened).

To put it plainly, the risks for a pastor to go public with their affirming beliefs are real.

---

Quick aside...

Can I just stop and say,

What the heck are we doing to our pastors??

If we are creating conditions and cultures that effectively say to our leaders, DO NOT CHANGE or else we’ll get rid of you,

how freaking horrible is that?

What a burden…

what a weight…

to put on pastors.

If you change, then suck it up pal. You better keep it to yourself, or else.

😳

Y’all, that cannot be the way. That is a path toward unhealth, disintegration, burnout, and more.

Okay, back to the topic (although I hope you can see how this aside is clearly related to the question).

---

The Pastor who Fired Me is (Now) Himself Secretly Affirming… or So I’m Told

The other way this question gets deeply personal for me is because I know pastors in real life who operate this way. Who are themselves LGBTQ affirming, but have chose or are currently choosing to keep that information private.

And guess who one of those pastors is?

The pastor who fired me at The Grove 13 years ago. 🤨

Now, to be clear, I don’t know this directly from him—we haven’t spoken in many years. But over the past five or so years I have heard from three different, independent, and reliable sources that all have said to me: “Oh, by the way, Pastor _______ ________ is totally affirming now. He just knows it would tank his church if he came out as such.”

(FTR: I’m not going to name him. While it’s true that recently I did finally pull back the veil on the name of the church—because when I wrote UnClobber nearly ten years ago I kept the names of the pastors and the church anonymous—for whatever reason I still hesitate to outright name this person publicly. I don’t know if this is driven by cowardice, or fear, or sympathy, or some mixture of all of it. But it doesn’t feel right in my gut, so I’m sticking with it for now.)

Six years ago when a friend first told me that my old boss had become affirming I didn’t believe it. He insisted it was true, but I could not wrap my head around how my old boss would’ve fired me for my beliefs on homosexuality, then permit years to go by, have his own change of mind on the matter, and never come back to say anything to me about it!?

But then I heard the same claim a year later from a wildly surprising source. This was a person whom I didn’t know until that day, who came from an entirely different social and professional circle, who themselves is famously not affirming, and who didn’t even know me other than the fact he knew I wrote UnClobber. In the course of our first and only brief conversation he divulged (for reasons I still don’t understand),“Oh yeah, I know Pastor _______, and he’s affirming now… did you know that?”

Uh… no… I very much did NOT know that. But this is now two people who’ve said so.

What the heck do I do with that?

Finally, a couple years ago a close friend of mine made the connection that he actually knew my old pastor/boss at The Grove. In fact, this friend told me that my old boss even flew out to spend a day with him one time to golf and talk about this very thing! To talk about LGBTQ inclusion and how to navigate that as a pastor of a non-affirming church.

I told my friend surely he must be mistaken. I still could not wrap my head around this information. He assured me, yes, it happened.

Wow. Three people. From three totally different walks of life.

All telling me that my old boss, my old pastor, my old friend—the one who terminated me over my beliefs on homosexuality—now himself is LGBTQ affirming?!

Can I just say how annoying that is? Like, I get it, if you’re not going to tell your church, then you probably wouldn’t reach out to someone you fired over a decade ago to tell him, but still… the hypocrisy really bothers me.

And look, nobody’s perfect. Comments about “me being judgy” aside, I actually do work really hard in my life to let people suck. Screw up. To not do or be their best all the time. So I won’t say this has fundamentally changed how I feel about him—I still think he’s an amazing person and I respect him deeply.

But on this?

Yeah… not cool, man.

Not. Cool.

All that to say, in response to the question ‘How do I feel about this,’ I have lots of feels.

I don’t like. But I get it.

I understand it, but it drives me nuts.

I feel bothered by it, and I also I can relate.

I want people to do better, I want churches to do better.

I feel angry for my LGBTQ siblings in the faith that continue to wonder why the church rejects them. Such anger is fueled by the knowledge that there are many pastors who could help do something about this very real, very harmful problem, but they DON’T. It’s depressingly infuriating.

That’s why for many years my answer to this was pretty straightforward: If you’re an affirming pastor, in a non-affirming church, SPEAK UP. This means too much to too many people for you to remain silent and complicit in unjust systems.

And… also…

It just isn’t that simple.

Something I’ll get in to on the next post.

---

What do you think?

I’m curious how you feel about this topic?

Feel free to share publicly (via comments) or privately (via sending me a message).