Welcome to a very early special, out of sequence, Blog. Last time I hinted that it might be early this month, and verily, it hath come to pass!😊 Back in September 2021, my friend Don, wrote his story for me to publish on this website. Now, three years on, he wanted to update it in time for the Glasgow Pride event on the 20th July. This is the retelling of his story:
My name is Don, and I’m the Assistant Pastor at the Metropolitan Community Church in Glasgow.
I was raised in the Scottish Highlands in the Free Church of Scotland, which is a very strict Presbyterian denomination. Music in church was unaccompanied Psalms, they observed Sunday as the Sabbath, which meant no work, and although we didn’t observe it, technically no TV either. Women covered their heads in Church and were not allowed to hold leadership positions. As a child I learned to love God, but more than loving God, I learned to fear God. The church used the King James Version of the Bible, with all its archaic language, and prayed in the same way, so I understood that “except ye be converted” I was going to hell. There was only one problem. I had no idea what that meant! I remember asking God to convert me because I was terrified of going to hell. I had no idea what I was asking for, but I knew I needed it. I’m sure if I’d asked someone, they’d have explained it to me, but the leadership wasn’t that approachable, or at least seemed that way to me. I must have been 8 or 9 at the time.
I had somewhat of a difficult childhood in many ways. My dad was an alcoholic, so despite still loving him, my mother had to divorce him when I was 8 years old. Raising me and my sister in that environment would have been very unhealthy – as well as financially impossible. I later learned that Mum lived on tins of beans for ages trying to feed us. So, after a lot of prayer and soul searching, she felt God was saying it was okay to get a divorce. It was the only way she could separate because my dad worked, so she wasn’t entitled to benefits or help. As things were, she was stuck in an emotional and financial black hole. For this “sin” she was excommunicated. The people she needed most had abandoned her at her most vulnerable point. She’s never regularly attended Church since. When I was 11 my dad died after suffering a series of heart attacks. Between my parents separating and his death I only saw him a couple of times.
For a few years I had nothing to do with Church, until I was 14 when some travelling evangelists came to my town. They were so funny and as a result drew large crowds. They made God and the Bible accessible through drama, comedy and personal stories. They presented the Gospel clearly. I realised I needed God in my life, and for the first time, I asked Him into my heart and I got very involved with the Church of Scotland. After mum’s experiences, I couldn’t go back to the Free Church. In time I got involved with their youth work and went on missions and camps. They were still quite conservative but unlike the Free Church they allowed music, used a modern English translation of the Bible – the New International Version, and some Churches had women ministers. Having the Bible in a language I could actually understand was incredible, suddenly the Bible seemed so clear, and I loved it. I still have the NIV Bible I was given the first day I went to the Church of Scotland. But while I was discovering God, something else was happening. I was 14 and like we all do, I was becoming sexually aware, but not in the same way my friends were.
For a time I just felt an attraction to guys, and I eventually realised that I was what the Church called, “a homosexual”. Even although I didn’t understand why, I knew this was a really bad thing to be, this was somehow against God, the Bible and the Church. Over time these feelings got stronger, and no matter how hard I prayed, no matter how hard I tried to fight it, I couldn’t shake these unwanted feelings. This became my dirty secret, I couldn’t tell anyone – I had seen what happened to my Mum, and from what I understood, my sin was much worse. By the time I was 16 I was “fooling around” with one of my friends, and it felt so good. At least it did at the time, the guilt afterwards was awful, until I wanted to do it again.
I lived a double life, my friend and I fooled about a couple of times a month, but I had my faith. I was zealous for God, I loved Jesus. I tried to witness to my Chemistry teacher, and, to my Mum’s horror, invited the Jehovah’s Witnesses into our home every Saturday morning. Despite my Mum making it clear she didn’t like this, and the minister of the Church advising me to stay away from them, I knew the Bible quite well and saw it as my duty. After all, would Jesus shut the door on them?
At 17, I left school and moved to Edinburgh. At the time the Highlands were really not a good place to be gay. I remember struggling with my faith, and knowing I would never be able to come home with a guy and say, “this is my boyfriend”. Culturally and religiously I was trapped, and I wanted out. I applied to a College in Edinburgh and moved. My faith was still really important to me, so I started going to an independent Baptist Church in Edinburgh, Charlotte Baptist Chapel. They had 1,000 people at every service. Charlotte Chapel was not affiliated with the Baptist Union, and they were very conservative. Unlike the Church of Scotland or most Baptist Churches, they wouldn’t allow women pastors. This change in denomination wasn’t something that happened by accident. I had been thinking through some of the things I believed, and as a denomination the Baptist Church fit my beliefs better than the Church of Scotland. The two big issues for me were baptising babies which I saw as unscriptural, and in any case, it seemed to make more sense to allow people to make their own decisions. The other issue was the separation of Church and state which I liked. I was baptised by immersion, and I continued to follow Jesus. But over the next year things came to a head, I was 18 at the time.
By day I was a regular happy guy – the face I wanted people to see. By night I was my real self – lonely, depressed, and I was starting to think about death. Of course, I could never kill myself – that would be a sin. So, I begged God to cure me. For years I had struggled with my sexuality, and I couldn’t go on, I prayed, and I fasted, I cannot tell you how many nights I cried myself to sleep, begging God to “take it away”, but nothing changed for me. Falling asleep on a wet pillow became an almost nightly occurrence for me. I just wanted to wake up and not be “that way” anymore, and if that wasn’t possible, I wanted to die, it was too difficult.
Eventually the clean line I kept between my outward and inner life broke. I wasn’t used to alcohol, but one evening I went out and got drunk. I got home late to find my flatmate had a few friends from the Church round. I am one of those people who can get drunk, but I tend to remember everything – so I still remember the four horrified faces watch me stagger in. There’s nothing more obvious than a drunk person pretending to be sober! I was feeling really emotional that night, so on being caught drunk, I burst into tears, and they asked what was wrong. Before I knew what had happened the words were out of my mouth. “I’m gay”. The awkward silence was palpable. (I still maintain that the best way to get a bunch of conservative Baptists to forget you’re drunk is to tell them you’re gay, it really works!) The three visitors soon made their excuses, I just went to bed. That night I was emotionally dead – I felt like a black curtain had been drawn over my future. I was used to my double life, but now I’d said those words out loud, there was no taking it back. I had no idea what would happen next.
None of them said anything to me about this, though they started distancing themselves – all apart from my flatmate. He did his best to be a friend. He fumbled though it, not understanding what he was dealing with, but he hugged me and made it clear he would always be my friend. He encouraged me to speak to someone, but who?
Finally, I forced myself to confide in one of the pastors at the Church, who I knew and trusted. He was great – he wasn’t shocked. He didn’t treat me any differently, which wasn’t what I’d expected. His kindness was reassuring. He helped me to get counselling because he admitted this wasn’t something he was qualified to help me with, so he set it up and arranged for the Church to pay for it without disclosing my identity to the elders.
The counselling started well; the counsellor believed that homosexuality could be cured. For the first couple of months, I felt a real sense of hope. Through the counsellor I met other gay Christians, but their stories didn’t give me hope, instead my hope turned to despair, and I sank even deeper into depression. One of these gay Christians, who was now married to a woman, openly spoke of “the daily temptation”. Another freely admitted he hated summer, because all the topless guys made it harder to control his thought life. I was horrified. They were far from cured of their homosexuality. Was this my future? The depression and suicidal thoughts came back, far stronger than before. Now I was seriously praying for death. My heartfelt prayer was “kill me or cure me, I can’t go on”. I meant it, and soon it was almost the only thing I prayed for.
During this time, I remember one day I had gone into town to pick up a couple of things. On the way home I stopped at a public toilet – I’d been out all afternoon, and nature was calling. There was another guy in there cruising, he was probably about five years older than me. We ended up back at mine and we had sex. When we’d finished, we lay in bed chatting for what seemed like ages. I remember how lying there, cuddled up with him, I felt safe, happy and content which was rare for me. I felt like I could have stayed in bed with him for days, but eventually he got up and started getting dressed, and then he noticed a book beside my bed. It was a book by Neil Anderson that my counsellor had recommended I read. This guy must have recognised it because he picked it up, turned it over and put it back down far too quickly to have actually read the cover. He sat back down on the bed, put his arm round me and pulled me in. Then, almost with a whisper he said, “you won’t find any answers there, but this”, then he kissed me again and said, “this is who you are, and there’s nothing wrong with that”. I didn’t know what to say, so we chatted about something else while he finished getting dressed and left. I never saw him again, I never even got his name, which is not unusual for gay guys cruising.
At the time I didn’t think much about it, but over the last few years I have been wondering about this event. Throughout the Bible there are stories of God using the unlikeliest of people to get His message across, and now I wonder if maybe (and I stress, maybe) God was using him. This was the first time someone noticed my struggle, treated me with kindness and told me it was okay. If God can use strange situations and people in the Bible, is it really so impossible that He could use a gay guy who was a stranger, a random hookup, to get my attention? I’m not ready to say it definitely was, but the more I think about it I can’t say it definitely wasn’t! What might have happened if I had asked him a follow up question – “have you read that book?”, or “why do you say that?”. What did he know? Did he have faith or was he an atheist? I’ll never know, but maybe that was an opportunity for me to hear a different perspective that might have set me on a better path. In any case I wasn’t ready to hear that there was nothing wrong with me. I do know that for the first time I didn’t feel guilty having sex with a guy, and I never told the counsellor about that incident.
Not long after, the pastor at Church arranged to meet with me, he wanted to check in and see how I was getting on. When I told my pastor what the counsellor was doing, and how I just wanted to die, he was horrified. He apologised, and he told me that he believed that being gay was not a sin – in itself. He had thought I had been getting help to live a celibate life. He was genuinely shocked and promised to remove that counsellor from the list the Church used and assured me no one else would be referred to them. He pulled the funding for counselling and started to meet me weekly himself. We spent a long time in prayer and Bible study. But things didn’t get any easier. The hope for change was long gone, and my future seemed lonely and bleak. Where was God’s love – let alone the possibility of a man to share life with? The way I felt is best expressed by something I read years later by Justin Cannon, a gay Christian, who said, “hell is where you’re always on the run from yourself, and the statement, God is Love, ends with a question mark”. That’s exactly how I felt.
One evening I climbed Arthur’s Seat in the middle of Edinburgh with my best friend at Church (by some miracle she didn’t know!) and I told her all my dirty secrets and fears. The biggest was my fear of being alone all my life. I knew God had designed us to live in pairs, except for those with a calling of celibacy on their lives – but that wasn’t me! I yearned for love and affection (contrary to what many think, it is not about sex).
Over the next few months, I got honest with God, but I felt that all my prayers were just hitting off the ceiling. God seemed so distant. The more I reached out to Him, the farther away He seemed. In time I stopped taking communion because I felt like a hypocrite. Eventually I stopped going to Church and one evening I gave up. I remember my prayer. “For all the good this does I could be talking to the ceiling. If I’m going to hell, at least let me enjoy this life. I’ll stay out of your way; I can’t do this anymore. I’ve had enough.”
I rebelled against God. I moved, changed my phone number, and cut off everyone in the Church. I did everything a good Christian guy isn’t supposed to do. I started smoking, drinking and took up casual sex. I went out “on the pull” every Friday and Saturday, and sometimes went cruising during the week too (meeting strangers for sex). I rarely came home alone. For the first time I felt so alive. But of course, that wasn’t to last. You see, it feels great at first – but in time it drains you. As 1 Corinthians 6: 16 says in The Message (another version of the Bible), “we must not pursue the kind of sex that avoids commitment and intimacy, leaving us more lonely than ever“. As always, God is right, but it would take me a few more years to figure that out!
Finally I met a guy, a staunch agnostic, which at the time helped me get over religion. We got into a serious relationship. We were together for almost 10 years, it really wasn’t a healthy relationship, but it was stable. Then, something happened 6 years into our relationship. It was the one thing I wanted to avoid. I was watching TV one evening, and it was something about Jesus. I don’t remember the details, but the “fact” being reported was something I knew was not true. My blood ran cold as I realised if I could work out what was not true, I could work out what is true. That bugged me and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. And the more I thought about it, the more I started remembering evidence for Christianity. So, I set out to investigate it. Surely it wasn’t true!
I spent just over a year of studying, researching and reading the entire Bible. I read Christian apologists, and atheist equivalents. I researched the Bible, how did we get it, was it reliable? I began to realise that Christianity was true, Jesus was who he claimed to be. The God I was trying to avoid was back in my face again. Eventually, I had to ignore how I felt about it, and bow to the facts. I knelt, and there were no words, just a reluctant change of heart. What could I say, after I’d effectively told God to “get lost”? I accepted God back into my life. For a few months I struggled with the notion that God could love me, yet the Bible says He does. One evening I had the place to myself, and I was reading 1 John 4: 16 in the New Living Translation. It says, “We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love.” That stopped me in my tracks – we know how much God loves us? I didn’t know that for me, so I asked Him if it was true.
What happened next is very hard to describe. I immediately felt the room fill with a sense of peace, and then waves of what I can only describe as energy started pulsing through my body – and I experienced the most intense feeling of love and acceptance. It was almost something physical, like I could reach out and touch it. I didn’t need to ask; I knew it was Jesus. The hurts and pains of the past were literally washed away in seconds. Tears started flowing and I cried, and I cried – and just sat in this amazing love. This time the tears weren’t sadness; it was a healing experience. I don’t know how long it lasted, but by the time it stopped I knew I was loved by God, and I have never doubted His love for me again.
I started out slowly, but my newfound faith caused my relationship to break down. My partner had also had a bad experience of Church, and even although I wasn’t going to Church, I was bringing religion home. If he walked in and I was reading the Bible, he’d comment in disgust, “you’re reading that again”. The tension between us grew. A few months later, I asked him if he saw us together in 5 years, without skipping a beat he said, “no”. It wasn’t just my faith, but it was a big factor. I knew I had to choose: him, or Jesus. I chose to follow Jesus. By this time, I had gone back to university and was commuting to Stirling, I was starting my final year which meant the University guaranteed accommodation if I wanted it. I applied and in September 2009 I moved into a small room, with £200 in my bank account and the contents of two car-loads. For the second time in my life, I walked away from my life to start over. I started going to a local Baptist church, this one was far more down to earth, and more mainstream evangelical, it was part of the Baptist Union, and unlike my last Church it was charismatic, which means they accepted the reality of God being able to supernaturally intervene in our lives in spectacular ways. That helped me make sense of what I’d experienced.
Six-months later I faced the other issue I’d been avoiding – the sexuality and the Bible issue. I knew it had been the death of my faith before and I didn’t want that again, so I had actively ignored it. It had been so painful before; I had no desire to go back there. But I couldn’t ignore it forever, I was still gay with the track record to prove it. I started praying about it, and something – the Holy Spirit – told me it was okay to go there, that this time I would be safe. I can’t describe the peace I felt about revisiting this, it had to be God. For a year I devoured websites, different views and opinions. All the time I was seeking God’s help, and in a strange way I felt like God was holding me as I researched, and at the same time I was becoming scared.
What scared me was that I was seeing those 6 passages in the Bible in a new light. I realised that other Christians had a different interpretation, but it was Justin Lee that blew my mind. He is an openly gay evangelical Christian, who has a high view of Scripture, and he took his evangelical approach to those 6 verses and came to a different conclusion – God blesses two people who love each other, whether they’re a man and a woman, two men or two women. I was stunned. Was it possible?
I was slowly becoming intellectually convinced that the Bible does not condemn gay relationships. That triggered months of panic and denial – what if I was only believing it because I wanted to, not because it really is true? After all, if what I had been taught was right, practicing homosexuals wouldn’t inherit the Kingdom. I would be going to hell if I had sex with a man again. Then one night as I prayed, I asked God – and again I had the most amazing sense of peace about it all. It wasn’t dramatic like the last time, just a deep sense of peace. For the first time I felt like a whole person. God saw me, all of me, and loved me, and I loved Him. And it felt safe.
Throughout this time, I started to make peace with my past with God’s help. I remembered the two people who had stuck by me, my flatmate (back when I was 18) and the friend I’d climbed Arthur’s Seat to spill all my secrets to. I’d cut them off with everyone else, and I suddenly felt guilty. Even though they didn’t understand what I was going through, they had really tried to be good friends. I said an off-the-cuff prayer – more of a prayerful observation or regret, something like, “I wish I could do things differently, I should have kept in touch”. If my encounter with God had been hard to believe, what happened next also took me by complete surprise. I had moved three times and had no contact details for either of them. Within two weeks of that prayer, they both contacted my Mum and asked her for my details. Both had moved, and they were not in touch with each other. I remember being in awe of God and thinking, “wow, you can do this?”.
Just after I had moved into student accommodation, the friend I had climbed Arthur’s Seat with, came to see me. It had been eight years since we met, and I booked her into a local B&B, I’d no idea what she would make of my story, so I didn’t want her to stay with me in case it was awkward. I met her at the station, and after she dropped off her luggage, we got a taxi to a restaurant for dinner, and we made small talk. We ordered, and then there was this awkward silence. I started to talk – but so did she. Being polite I said, “you first”. She launched into a story.
After I had cut everyone off, she had a crisis of faith. Because of me. She’d watched me spiral out of control, lose my faith and walk away from the church because I’m gay. Was this the Gospel? How could this be good news to someone like me, if this was the effect? She moved back to London when she finished university and started attending her local Church of England. The priest was passionate about Jesus, then she found out something that shook her worldview. The priest was gay. The man he lived with was not a lodger – which she’d just assumed – he was his partner, and he too had a strong Christian faith. She quickly realised that this gay priest was being used by God, his ministry bore good fruit, so she realised that the problem wasn’t Jesus, it was her theology. The priest took her through what the Bible said. She wanted me to know it was okay, and opened her backpack and pulled out a bunch of notes to start showing me that God didn’t care if I was gay. I stopped her, and said, “I know”, and told her about my journey.
It took her eight years to get in touch because she had no way to contact me. One evening she opened a book she’d not touched in all that time, and there, on a piece of paper was my Mum’s phone number. Not knowing if it would still work, she phoned my Mum, got my address and wrote to me. I still have her letter. My other friend had a similar story, and though he’s not sure what to make of same-sex relationships we are close. Through him I have reconnected with another friend from back then. God is amazing.
I now believe that God allowed me to walk away from my faith and the Church, and my Christian friends. He gave me space to move on, so that when I started researching, I would be able to see clearly. When the time was right, he stepped back into my life and brought my friends back into my life as only he could do. After dinner that night we laughed, prayed together, and spoke about how our different paths had been used by God to bring us to new places. It was like the 8-year gap never happened, and we’re still friends today. In Joel 2:25, God promised the Israelites, “I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten.” (NIV). God did that for me too.
My friend’s influence on me wasn’t quite done though. Not long after her visit she looked up a Church in Glasgow, which was near where I was living at the time. She phoned me and insisted I should visit. The Church was the Metropolitan Community Church, better known simply as MCC.
MCC is an LGBT+ led Church who have been at the forefront of activism around gay rights since before Stonewall, and, with Churches around the world, you can argue that they are the world’s oldest and largest gay rights organisation. They preach that the Gospel is for everyone, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. Who would have thought that was God’s idea?! But I thought they must be a bunch of crazy liberals. A whole denomination that was affirming? They would just be gay people playing at Church. But my friend wouldn’t let up! The Baptist Church I was attending was great – I had been able to make sense of my past, accept who I am and had even come out to a few people who were fine with it. I was content there. But my friend said as good as that was, I needed to know other gay Christians. I needed to have people in my life who knew what I had been through. To keep her happy, I agreed to go. Once.
On the way I prayed that if this was truly God’s people, that I’d feel the Spirit there. I arrived at MCC and sat right at the back beside the door – with a planned escape route! But to my surprise, there was no orgy on the alter, no funny stuff, no obsession with sexuality. Surprisingly it was “just church”, and the Holy Spirit was there. For a long time, I commuted and went to both the Baptist Church and MCC, but I ended up moving to Glasgow when my contract with the job I got after graduating, was up, and I got a job in Glasgow within weeks. So naturally MCC became my Church and I joined. It was great to be in a Church where I didn’t have to worry about being “found out” – I could just focus on my relationship with God.
That was over 10 years ago. Since then, so much has changed. The first Christmas I was at MCC was a landmark for me. Jane, the pastor at MCC, asked me to preach during Advent. I wasn’t great at public speaking and was really nervous about it, but I did it. To my own surprise I really enjoyed it. Over the next few months, I was given training and ended up regularly being part of services, either preaching or leading services.
The following summer something else happened. MCC always attends Pride, but I had never been. I saw no reason to, why would I parade down the street because of my sexuality? I wasn’t proud of being gay, it’s just part of who I am. I didn’t have plans to go, until our outreach worker asked if I was coming. She strongly encouraged me to come along with the Church, and I half-heartedly agreed to go, and things changed for me again. At Pride I met a man who was in town to meet friends, and they had cancelled on him. He didn’t know Pride was on, and accidentally stumbled on it and got talking to me. His family were fundamentalist Christians, who had ostracised him years earlier when they found out he was gay. He had a niece he’d never met and hadn’t seen his parents in years. He still believed in God, but until he met me, he had never been told God loves him as a gay man. I introduced him to a couple of people from the Church and we prayed with him. Suddenly I was the one telling someone, “It’s okay, there’s nothing wrong with you, God loves you as you are”. I started to see MCC in a whole new light – even though I knew the Church had an outreach to the LGBT+ community, to see it in action, to see people’s lives being reached with the truth that God loves them was amazing to me. The sense of the Holy Spirit’s presence there was powerful. I knew how life changing that truth had been for me, so to be part of helping others made me realise why MCC was so special. I have not missed a Pride Day since!
Over the next couple of years, I was elected to serve on the Church Committee, but eventually I felt God was asking me for a deeper commitment to the Church. What I cared about wasn’t so much Church administration, I want people to really know Jesus, to understand who he is, how much he loves them, and to be closer to God. For me the Bible is central to that, so I arranged to meet with Jane to talk about this. She agreed that my skills were not really being used, so my work in the Church shifted. I stood down from the committee at the next Annual Congregational Meeting and was elected Assistant Pastor. Now I share the preaching on a Sunday at MCC with Jane, I lead services, our midweek Bible Study group, and as appropriate I’m involved with pastoral care.
My faith journey has deepened my love for God and my respect for the Bible. I’ve become more convinced than ever that no matter who you are, God loves you. He wants to be part of our lives, to offer forgiveness and a fresh start. Too many people have believed that their sexual orientation or gender identity means that there is no place for them with God. That is a lie. The reason God didn’t answer my prayers when I was begging him to make me straight is simple. There was nothing wrong for him to fix. The healing I needed, wasn’t being gay, it was my theology that needed healing. I never needed to come out to God, He knew I was gay long before I did, and it was never a problem for Him. (If you want to find out more, I recommend two books – “God and the Gay Christian” by Matthew Vines, and “Unconditional – Rescuing the Gospel from the gays vs Christians debate” by Justin Lee.)
I know the damage that can be done by bad theology, conversion therapy, and by well-meaning Christians who just don’t get it. But I also know God’s love. That dark curtain that was drawn over my future was pulled away – ripped in two like the curtain in the Temple the day Jesus died. I know that if God loves me as a gay man, He loves you whoever you are. It doesn’t matter what your past is, or how broken you are. To Jesus you are precious, to Him you are worth dying for. Those first steps towards Jesus can be scary because of what we have believed or experienced, but I promise you, His love can bring healing to your life.
If any part of my story is familiar to you, please know that all He did for me, He can do for you too. It might not look the same, in fact it probably won’t – but His love and his promises are for you too. Trust Jesus. Let Him into your life, and as you take each step, however small, however painful, one day you will look back and see that all along He was there. He always has, and always will, love you.
“We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are.” (Romans 3:22 New Living Translation)
[If you are curious, and looking to find a friendly and inclusive church, MCC in Glasgow meet at Shawlands URC (on Glasgow’s Southside) on Sundays at 3pm. Also check out the Facebook and Instagram pages. The services are also broadcast live on YouTube.]
The next blog will be at the end of August.
Changing Minds 