Reconciling Stories

This story was told in November 2004 at Wallingford United Methodist Church at a service celebrating the 20th anniversary of the church becoming a Reconciling Congregation.

The first surprise was our conception of what it meant to have a church that would welcome other gay people to Wallingford. Perhaps a notion of gay people was that single gay men and lesbians from Capitol Hill would go to bars late Saturday night and then early Sunday morning on their way home would stop and have worship with us. [laughter]

The first pleasant surprise was all the gay families that came to raise their kids at Wallingford. Surprise number one.

Surprise number two would be, if you remember busing in the 60s and 70s, there was talk about what number of gay people would make us into a gay church and all the straights would want to leave. I think the pleasant surprise now is that nobody has a number for how many gay members we have here … it never gets tallied, it never really comes up. We’ve never had to deal with “when will all the straight people leave because they feel uncomfortable?” Pleasant surprise number two.

Maybe a third surprise would be, well, when will we know when the first gay person comes to Wallingford? [laughter]

I’ll try not to mention too many names here … a dear heart who was just about the first gay person to walk through the door … had a wonderful magenta swish in his blond hair. We were quite a small congregation at the time and we all knew who we knew walking through the door and who was a stranger. And [this guy] came in several Sundays after we were announced in the Seattle Gay News and came in and sat down next to one of our cuter, hunkier, straight ex-Marine Republicans in the congregation. And he sat through the whole service and, when it came time for the Passing of the Peace, he and [the ex-Marine] hugged each other warmly and they got along famously from that moment on. Surprise number three.

Surprise number four was a discussion we had with a friend who said “I’m really worried about public displays of affection, and those gay people put their arms around each other in church!” Sometimes they would say then, “What are you going to do about that?” I think it can be reported now that Wallingford has a higher ratio of non-gay people who put their arms around each other in church than any other congregation in United Methodism! [laughter] Another pleasant surprise.

Sometimes I am pretty clueless and narrow in my vision. If we were in a discussion I would never have been able to anticipate that one of the many gifts of becoming a Reconciling Congregation was all the non-gay families who would want to bring their kids here, to raise their kids in such a faith community. Another amazing surprise to me.

And I think maybe one of the last points that we have noticed—another richness that we have—is that we are no longer a homogeneous liberal Protestant local church. I think we have noticed as the years have gone by, and we look to either side of us in the pews, we have more and more people who attend Wallingford who come with conservative, who come with traditional, who come with a wide range of theological backgrounds, many of whom have been driven out of their traditional conservative churches because of homophobia, or hatred, or discrimination, and come and still bring very valuable personal images, metaphors, and understandings with them, and we’re the richer for it.

And it pushes us; our essence is not that we’re a liberal congregation, our essence has become clear to more and more people that it’s not being a liberal congregation, it’s being a faith and justice community, and it’s been transforming as well.

Every one of you is a surprising gift for the 20 years that we’ve been a faith and justice community together. Wallingford is a wonderful gift, and it’s a gift that keeps giving. Thank you. [applause]

(this story has been edited for length and to remove names)