Twenty Years Later

A Speech Delivered at an Event Sponsored by All One Body

On November 8, 2018

 

As I look out on all of you, I find myself thinking, “You are my people.”  Even though I am currently not a member of the Christian Reformed Church, I continue to love the CRC.

So I am grateful to All One Body for organizing this event, I am grateful to Sherman Street Church for hosting us, and I am grateful to all of you for being here.  I feel truly honored.

After I wrote my first draft of this presentation, I realized that I have far more to say than will fit in the allotted time.  So I decided to launch a blog in which I will expand on today’s shortened remarks.  I invite you to follow it at RevJimLucas.com.

I would also like to point out that I will be presenting stories and insights from the past, but I will be doing so with an eye to the future.  I genuinely want my remarks to provide inspiration and ideas for all of us as we work to build a better church and a better world.

So here we go . . .

 

Part 1:  Before Twenty Years Ago

 

I grew up in the suburbs of Grand Rapids—in Wyoming near the border of Grandville—in a healthy, happy, faith-filled home.  Our family was Christian Reformed and had deep roots in the CRC.  In fact, my Lucas ancestors immigrated to West Michigan in the mid-1800’s and became founding members of the first Christian Reformed Church in North America, the Graafschap CRC.  My mom immigrated to Michigan in 1948 with her parents and brothers, and they had been devoted members of the CRC’s counterpart in the Netherlands.

When my parents got married, there was no question about what church they would attend.  Of course, it would be the closest CRC.  I was my parents’ first surviving child, and within 6 years my two sisters and brother were born.  My mom and dad were kind, generous, and self-sacrificing.  They took us to church twice every Sunday and also sent us to Sunday School, catechism, and Christian day schools.  I was a really good kid, excelled in my studies, and graduated second from the top of my class at Calvin Christian High.

My faith was always important too, and during high school I became excited about following Jesus.  I made profession of faith in church when I was 16, I was active in prayer meetings and Bible studies, I was elected president of our church’s high school youth group, and I started thinking about becoming a pastor.  So it seemed natural that soon after starting Calvin College in 1972 I joined the pre-seminary program.

It was early in my time at Calvin College, however, that I started becoming honest with myself about the fact that I felt romantically attracted to other guys.  I experienced this realization as deeply troubling.  I literally thought it was the worst thing that could be true of me because that was the perspective I had learned from the entire culture around me.

What was I going to do?  For years I didn’t dare tell anyone about what I was experiencing for fear of being scorned and rejected.  I felt ashamed and isolated.  All I could do was pray—pray continually that God would heal me of this terrible affliction.  The more I prayed, however, the more I noticed the good looking guys on campus!  This realization sent me into a downward spiral of anxiety and depression.

By my third year at Calvin I was growing concerned about my suicidal thoughts, and so I started taking some steps to reach out to others for support.  I joined a new faith-based community which had a big emphasis on people being open and honest with each other, and it was there that I began to tell people about what I was feeling.  This community eventually formed a church, called Christ’s Community Christian Reformed Church.  Well, the people of Christ’s Community responded to me with love and acceptance, for which I am still deeply grateful.  As far as I could tell, however, they all held the traditional view that gay people are sick, and so I continued to hold this view as well.  The thought never even occurred to me that there might be another way to look at being gay.

Until the fall of 1978.  I had attended Calvin for three years, then took three years off, mostly because I was an emotional wreck and couldn’t make sense out of how I could be gay and be a pastor.  By the end of those three years away from college, I once again became convinced that God was calling me to the ministry, and I believed that God would somehow make it all work out.  So I returned to Calvin for my senior year.

That fall I noticed posters around campus advertising a lecture entitled, “Homosexuality, Homophobia, and Healing.”  I attended and for the first time in my life heard someone—someone who was a Christian professor and author—speak about gay people in ways that were thoughtful and compassionate.  For example, the speaker reported that the psychological profession had taken homosexuality off its list of mental disorders in 1973.  And what was most shocking to me, she reported that there were sincere Christian scholars who were arriving at the conclusion that the church had been interpreting the Bible incorrectly with regard to gay people and that there should be a place in the Christian community for faithful, loving same-sex couples.

This speech shook my world.  I had never heard such things before or even considered them possible.  As the shock subsided I found that I was experiencing a mixture of skepticism and hope.  On the one hand, I had never heard such a message before, and I am by nature very cautious and respectful of the teachings of the church.  On the other hand, I found the message incredibly life-giving.  I felt a tiny, beginning sense of relief from my anxiety and depression as I thought, “Maybe I don’t have to hate myself after all!  Maybe there is a place for me in the church and in the world!”

The next fall, in 1979, I began my studies at Calvin Seminary.  Seminary turned out to be a time of tremendous growth for me both personally and educationally.  By the time I graduated I had come to peace with myself and with God, and I felt ready to begin my career as a pastor.

So what happened in seminary that was so transformative?  First, I continued to be active in the households and church of Christ’s Community, and the church elected me as a deacon and then an elder, with most of the members knowing that I’m gay.  That helped me feel that there really was a place for me in the Christian community.

Second, I started meeting other people who were gay.  I had been afraid to do so because I had learned that gay people were supposedly strange, disgusting, and perverse.  I just thought I was an exception!   But when I actually met others who were gay, I was surprised to discover that they were . . . just normal people.  If anything, the gay people I met were unusually nice.  So this also helped me feel better about myself.

Third, I went to a psychologist for therapy.  Early in seminary I was still really anxious and depressed, and I told my counselor that my goal was just to be happy again.  In my own mind, however, I started therapy thinking that I was feeling miserable because, well, that came with the territory of being gay, and I hoped to find a way out of being gay.

However, my counselor led me through some really in-depth therapy, and what I discovered was that I was miserable not because that was an inherent part of being gay but because I had swallowed the message of our society that gay people are sick and that gay relationships are sinful.  That message, I realized, was like poison to my soul.

So what was I going to do?  Well, what do you do when you discover that you have been inadvertently swallowing poison?  You look for antidotes to the poison you have already swallowed, and you do what you can to stop swallowing the poison.  And that is what my therapist helped me to do.  I learned ways to let go of the message that gay people are sick and gay relationships are sinful.  I came to believe that God loves me just as I am, that I too am created in God’s image, that I too am a beloved child of God, and that God would be pleased for me to have a life partner.  And so over the course of my months and years of therapy I came to peace with myself and God.  The anxiety faded away, and the depression faded away about 90%.  I will tell you about the remaining 10% in a bit.

I sometimes summarize my therapy by saying, “I came to believe that it’s okay simply to be who I am.”  Why did it take so much hard inner work to arrive at something so simple and obvious?  Because I was immersed in a culture that said in a myriad of ways that it was fundamentally not okay to be who I am.

You might be wondering what kept me going through those years of depression and anxiety—and therapy.  Well, my beacon of hope was Jesus’ promise in John 10:10, “I came that they might have life and have it abundantly.”  I knew that I was not experiencing abundant life—I was miserable.  But I held onto the hope that someday Jesus would fulfill for me that promise of abundant life.  It was really that hope, that assurance, of life that kept me going.

And that brings me to a fourth seminary experience that played a crucial role in my transformation.  In seminary I learned the tools for biblical study and theological reflection, and I applied these tools to my exploration of how to make biblical and theological sense out of being gay.  Fortunately, a number of new books and articles were being published on this subject during my time in seminary, and these greatly helped me in my research.  I summarized what I learned in my seminary senior research paper on the pastoral care of gay people in the Christian community.  Here are just a few insights from that paper.

I noted, for example, that when we read and study the Bible we are always interpreting it.  And since we human beings are limited and flawed, we sometimes interpret the Bible poorly.  So we should always be humble and open to the Holy Spirit showing us a better way to interpret the Bible.

I also pointed out that biblical scholars provide us with basic principles of biblical interpretation.  For example, we always need to understand particular passages of the Bible in their context—their context within the Bible and their context in history. With these foundations I studied the Bible as it pertains to those who are gay, and this is what I found.

First, I noted that the particular passages that the church has traditionally used to condemn gay people and gay relationships really are not talking about what we are talking about today.  These passages are not talking about faithful, loving, mutual marriages between two men or two women.  Rather, they are condemning relationships that were exploitative.  So if the Bible is not condemning gay couples as we know them today, then we need to look at overarching biblical principles for relationships, such as love and faithfulness.  Are gay couples capable of love and faithfulness?  Absolutely!  We have countless examples.

Second, we need to look at some wider biblical themes that might provide insight about how to respond to those who are gay.  For example, Jesus taught that we should consider the lived results of particular teachings.  In Matthew 7, in the context of a conversation about how to distinguish true prophets from false prophets, Jesus explains, “By their fruit you will recognize them. . . .  Every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit.”

What might good fruit look like?  I found a story recorded in Luke 6 to be especially helpful because Jesus gives an example of how to interpret Scripture.  When the religious leaders stand ready to accuse Jesus of breaking the Sabbath law by healing someone on the Sabbath, Jesus replies, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save life or destroy it?”  He goes on, of course, to answer his own question by healing the man.

To apply Jesus’ teaching we simply need to ask, “What is most life-giving for gay people, for their families, for the Christian community, and for society as a whole?  What draws us closest to God?  What engenders peace, health, and harmony within ourselves and in relationship to God, other people, and all creation?  What causes people and communities to thrive?  To use a Hebrew word found often in the Bible, what nurtures shalom?

As I considered the experience of gay people in light of Jesus’ teaching, I became convinced that the only way that the church could have effective life-giving ministry with gay people would be to affirm “faithful, loving, committed life partnerships” for those who are gay.  And I spelled out some specific ways to provide ministry with that perspective.  Believe it not, the professor who graded the paper gave me an A.  More significantly, my work on this paper helped me resolve the biblical and theological struggles I had previously had related to being gay.

Well, I finally graduated from Calvin Seminary in May of 1985, was called to be the pastor of Christ’s Community CRC that summer, and was ordained to the CRC ministry there in the fall.  During my four years as pastor of the church, I told many individuals in the congregation about my being gay but never spoke publicly about it.

After the church disbanded in 1989, I had to figure out what I was going to do next.  I found myself becoming depressed again and physically very ill.  So I returned to my therapist.  He helped me see that part of the reason for my returning depression and illness was that in most settings I was still hiding the fact that I’m gay, which for me was a way of agreeing with the assessment of the church and society that I was sick (by virtue of my being gay) and therefore should hide in shame.  I was still swallowing some poison.  My therapist helped me to see that I had one more step to take in my journey toward wholeness.  I needed to stop the hiding completely.

So with my therapist’s gentle guidance, I made a decision—in his presence—that if any church would consider me in the future for a church staff position, I would tell that church up front about my being gay.  It felt like a safe decision in the moment because it had been a few months since any church had expressed interest in interviewing me.  But then two weeks later I got a call from a church search committee inviting to a weekend of interviews and preaching as the church considered me for a new youth pastor position.

In my interview with the two pastors already on staff, I told them about my being gay.  They responded by saying that they would happy to work with me, but they advised me not to tell the search committee when I met with them.  For a number of reasons I decided to follow their advice.

A few days later I received a phone call from the search committee contact person:  “Congratulations, Jim, the search committee has unanimously recommended you for the position.”  However, the pastors later told me that when the committee’s recommendation came to the church council for approval, an elder asked, “Why is this guy 36 and still single?  What’s wrong with him?  Is he gay?”  Once the question was raised, the pastors felt as though they had to reveal what they knew, which in turn led to the council choosing not to call me.  The secretary of the council reported their decision in a long letter with this summary line, “Some of us would love to have seen you come.  Others were sickened by the thought.”

I was still reeling from this letter when letters arrived from two of the church’s elders.  Both elders apologized profusely, and both told me that they thought a majority of the council and a majority of the congregation would have been happy to have me on the church staff.  But the majority was scared off by the threats of the minority to leave the church.

Those letters provided me with an “a-ha” moment.  I realized that if I were going to be honest about my being gay, I would never get a church staff position in a Christian Reformed congregation.  And I knew that I was not going to play the hiding game anymore.  That game had been destroying me.  For the sake of my integrity and my health, I had to be truthful.

This experience provided the catalyst I needed to give up my search for a church staff position and instead follow a call from God to begin a new ministry that would provide support for gay people in the church and education for the church about its own gay members.  When I turned to a number of CRC pastors and lay members for input, they confirmed my own sense of God’s calling and said things like, “Go for it, Jim.  The church has been neglecting this issue for far too long.  You can help us.”

As I had been seeking discernment about my call to a new ministry, I had spoken to some staff members at Calvin College.  One of them later invited me to give a lecture on being gay as part of a sexuality lecture series at Calvin.  I took this opportunity to give my public coming out speech.  That was in February of 1992.

Since I was the first CRC minister to state publicly that he was gay, the news media noticed.  The following week the Calvin Chimes published a front page story about my speech.  Two months later, during the same week, the Banner and Grand Rapids Press each published a story about me.

It wasn’t long before I received many phone calls and letters from gay people and family members who had seen the news about me and who turned to me for support.  In the following months I worked with a group of people to form a new nonprofit organization called As We Are.  Eventually we had enough money for the board to hire me as chaplain to provide individual pastoral care, lead support groups, and provide education and advocacy in the larger community.  I spoke in local colleges, church adult education classes, youth groups, and other venues.  I gave interviews to various media outlets.  Our support group thrived, and in those first few years we met at Eastern Avenue CRC.

Now came the test of the preliminary conclusions I had drawn while preparing my senior research paper in seminary.  I had concluded that for the church to have an effective ministry with gay people it would have to take a new approach that affirmed gay people and gay unions.  But was I right?  I found that I was.  In fact, I found that gay people had suffered in more ways than I had initially realized as a result of the church’s flawed approach.

Over the course of the following months and years of ministry I had the privilege of providing pastoral care for hundreds of gay people.  Many, like me, had experienced a great deal of anxiety and depression, along with suicidal thoughts.  Over the years of my ministry I heard a number of stories of gay people who took their own lives.

I found that the rejection that gay people endured led to various other forms of suffering and destruction, including alienation among family members, alienation from church and God, alcohol and drug abuse, risky sexual behavior, HIV infection and early death by AIDS complications, and marriages of gay people to people of the opposite sex (marriages which usually ended in divorce).

So a large portion of my ministry in those years was one of providing a safe and affirming environment, both in support groups and individual pastoral care sessions, for gay people to talk openly and honestly about the suffering we endured.  Together we also reflected on God’s love for us as we are, and we learned how to believe and embrace God’s love.

And guess what happened?  People got healthy.  Their shame, anxiety, depression, fear, and isolation faded away.  Those who had been engaging in self-destructive behavior found a way out of such behaviors into healthy ways of living.  Those who felt hurt by God started discovering the love and peace of God.  I saw reconciliation within families as gay people came out and parents and families learned how to fully embrace their gay family members.  I also found gay people forming healthy life partnerships and making life commitments to each other.  And I saw a few local pastors and churches begin to genuinely welcome gay people, including gay couples, into their faith communities.

In summary, I found that as long as people continued to believe the church’s traditional teaching, they stayed miserable.  But when they let go of the church’s traditional teaching, they became healthy.

 

Part 2:  Twenty Years Ago

 

Well, what was happening with my relationship to the CRC during these initial years of my LGBT ministry? I was an active member of Eastern Avenue CRC, our As We Are support groups met at the church, and the church even elected me as an elder.  Meanwhile, Classis Grand Rapids East extended my ministerial credentials as I built the LGBT ministry and looked for a church that would officially call me to this ministry.  As many of you know, the way it works in the CRC is that in order to first be ordained and then keep your ordination you need to have a call by a local congregation to a recognized ministry.  To make a long story short, I could not find any church to call me to my LGBT chaplaincy, and the key sticking point was that I believed that God honors faithful, loving life partnerships of gay couples.

So in May of 1998 Classis Grand Rapids East basically said, “Time’s up, Jim.  We’ve been extending your credentials for 9 years, no church has called you, and it’s our job to follow the church order.”  So the classis voted to “release” me from the ordained ministry in the CRC.  I felt as though I was kicked out, and it was exceedingly painful.  Afterwards many people said to me, “Jim, you must have seen it coming.”  I could honestly say I didn’t.  I genuinely believed that the church would do the right thing, and so when it didn’t, I felt deeply betrayed.

 

Part 3: Twenty Years Later

 

And now here we are 20 years later.  What’s happened since 1998, and how am I doing today?

Well, 20 years ago I felt really hurt.  I felt as though my spiritual family sent me into exile.  But you know what? Twenty years later I look back and see that God has been really good to me in this exile.  I have a wonderful life, and I am immensely grateful to God.

First, I am grateful personally.

• I grateful for a loving, supportive family and loving, supportive friends.
• I am grateful for two adorable godsons and their families.
• I am grateful that for the last 11 years I have had a beautiful home in the Newberry Place Cohousing Community, which I often say is like heaven on earth.
• I am grateful for an excellent Christian education and ongoing opportunities to learn, explore, and grow.
• I grateful for being happy, healthy, and active. I am grateful that God has given me the gift of being able to see the world with child-like curiosity and wonder.
• I am grateful for the gift of faith, for the closeness I feel to God. I am grateful that I experience following Jesus as a grand adventure.
• I am grateful that after a time of healing I was welcomed into Plymouth United Church of Christ and eventually received ordained ministerial standing in the UCC.
• And you might be surprised to hear me say that I am grateful for the gift of being gay. I honestly believe that because of being gay, I am closer to God than I would have been, more compassionate toward people experiencing suffering and oppression, and more deeply aware of the expansive, all embracing love of God.
• I often think that I have lived through the most exciting time in history to be gay. I have witnessed and experienced a dramatic transformation in our society from oppression to affirmation, and I have personally benefited from this shift.
• I am particularly grateful for living through the change from marriage equality being unimaginable to it being the law of the land. One of the most thrilling days of my life was Friday, June 26, 2015, when the US Supreme Court announced its decision that marriage for gay couples would be legal across the entire nation.  When I was young I never imagined that I would see such a day.  It was all the more thrilling because the previous Saturday I had led a beautiful wedding for two young men, both of whom were Calvin alumni.  An hour or so after the Supreme Court’s announcement, I got a call from the couple: “Jim, we’re at the courthouse.  We’re the first in line to apply for a marriage license.  We need to say when our legal wedding will be.  Can we have it on Monday?”  I said, “Sure.”  So three days later we held a second wedding for the couple, and this time I got to sign a marriage license for them, which felt stunningly historic.

And that leads me to my second area of gratitude.  I am grateful professionally.

• I am grateful for a meaningful and rewarding career as a pastor, first as a church pastor and then as a chaplain for people who are LGBT and then also as a chaplain for hospital patients and their families. I am grateful that in these ministries I have been able to use the gifts God has given me to be a channel of God’s peace and compassion.
• For example, every day that I work in the hospital, I have the great joy and privilege of reassuring people that God is with them, that God loves them, and that God will take really good care of them, as they face illness, injury, or even death.
• And I’m grateful that I have seen the Spirit of God transforming people’s lives through my LGBT ministry. I often find myself reflecting on Jesus’ inaugural sermon recorded in Luke 4, where he reads from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah,

The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
   to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

• I have not only experienced this work of Jesus freeing me from oppression, but I have also had the privilege of participating in Jesus’ healing, freeing work in other people’s lives.
• In the last few years, as our society has become much more accepting and affirming of those who are gay, I have found that most of the gay people I know are happy and healthy. So now most of my LGBT ministry is advocacy work in colleges and churches and leading weddings for gay couples.
• I’d like to tell you about one of the most memorable weddings I led. The year was 2006, and two young women asked if I would lead a commitment ceremony for them.  Marriage wasn’t legal yet, and so we didn’t use that language.  When we met for pre-commitment counseling, I learned that they met each other and fell in love at Calvin College.  I also learned that both of their dads are CRC ministers.  When we held the ceremony, 7 CRC pastors were present, including 6 family members who were ordained.  Both sets of parents participated in the ceremony, giving greetings and blessings.  During the reception I watched as the various family members, including the 7 ordained ministers, congratulated the couple with genuine warmth and affection.  I thought, “Wow!  This is so beautiful.  I wish everyone could see this—the love, the devotion, the support of family and friends.  This is the way it could be.  This is a glimpse into the future of the church.”  It gave me great hope.

So you might be wondering, if my life is so good and if gay people are doing so well now, why are we even here?  What’s the point?

Well, as you know, gay people may be doing well, but the CRC and many other churches are not doing so well.  And that reality leads me to two closing questions.

First, “When are you going to welcome me home from exile?”  Believe it or not, I still love the CRC.  As I said at the beginning, “You are my people.”  You are my spiritual home.  And there are so many good things about the CRC.  So I want to return home from the exile into which the CRC sent me.  How long is that going to take?

Second, “When will you welcome home all of us who are gay?”

Right now my heart grieves for how the CRC continues to treat its own gay kids—and gay adults for that matter.  In a sense the CRC sends all of its gay members into exile, even if it’s the exile of hiding in plain sight.  Fortunately, there are now many people, churches, and other organizations where gay people can find the unconditional love we all need.  So to be honest I’m not terribly worried about gay people.  I’m really more concerned about the church’s witness in the world.

I have learned that the Christian community’s traditional teaching about gay people does not make any sense to young people today.  The reason is that it does not fit within the larger Christian message of God loving us in Christ and calling us to love others.  So young people are turning away from the CRC and other such churches, and they are saying, “I don’t want to be part of a church that won’t accept my gay family members and friends.”

So in conclusion, “When is the CRC going to welcome home all of us who are gay?  When are you going to welcome us home from exile?”

I pray that it won’t be much longer.  Amen.