When I was a pastor I used to talk about helping people. it was easy for a church to help people who were looking to be helped. Churches brag about what they are doing in the community for single moms, or families with problems. But try to talk about helping certain groups of people and everyone’s sphincter starts to pucker.

How do you help out homosexuals, or shemales, or transgendered individuals or transvestites or hookers?

Truth is, churches don’t help out those kind of people because they can’t handle those kind of people. What if 20 drag queens showed up in your middle class church and wanted to teach Sunday school? What if a transvestite wants to be on your board?

All week I’ve been thinking about some new friends. I have started a relationship with a gay couple in mission. They are amazing guys and I love hanging around with them. This week I sat across the table from one of them as he described for me going to church as a child. He said he quit because he got tired of being told he was going to hell every week. He got tired of being thought of as a dirty pervert.He knows I’m a Christian. In many ways, I’m the enemy - but he told me anyway. I was profoundly moved that he chose to trust me enough to be that honest. The problem is I’m basically conservative by nature. I come from generations of gay-bashing military people who used to talk about "beating up fags". And as I sat there I could just feel the pain, the incredible pain. And I told myself I would figure out a way to talk to someone like my friend, and the thousands of people like him, about love without all the hoops and the strings attached… and the condemnation.

It’s complicated. Christians are supposed to love them but not accept their lifestyle. This is what I have been taught for years. I was told that homosexuality is a sin. When people become Christians they are supposed to give up that lifestyle, like any other sin, and become happily heterosexual. It may be difficult but it is absolutely non-negotiable. Some may choose to live celibate, but no same sex love ever again. I imagine sitting across from my friend – a brilliant, articulate and caring man in a monogamous marriage, and telling him that he has to divorce his husband to become a Christian. He must further give up any hope of sexual fulfillment and force himself to transition into a heterosexual way of life. As a conservative Christian I have been conditioned to believe this.

I remember 12 years ago when a few of us looked at the Indian Friendship Center and wondered why churches weren’t doing anything for the poor. Sure lots of churches talked about helping the poor but no one was doing anything. So we started trying to help. Then about 50 of them showed up for our Sunday morning service and ate all the snacks and turned our entrance into a smoking area and scared away some of our friends. One of my techie buddies told me that he was quitting the church because it made him uncomfortable to see all the ‘dirty’ people. It was nothing personal of course… In those days that was the ragged edge of relevance.

These days you can’t punt a kitten without hitting someone who is giving free stuff to homeless people in Mission, including us. Every day you can eat up to four times for free. Churches are finally lining up to help and the result is, they don’t need my help anymore. In my area the homeless/church relationship is starting to work and as a result Christians are celebrating that they have finally found a way to relate to the community at large. Or have they?

So anyway I’m talking to my new friend on Thursday and it hits me – this is the last great challenge for the church in Canada. Gay and lesbian people are genuinely interested in spiritual matters but it is virtually impossible for the evangelical church to speak into their lives on any meaningful level. And to be frank, there is little or no hope that this is going to change anytime soon. Gay people are not interested in adopting our heterosexual lifestyle and they are not needy. They have strong opinions and feelings about their choices and will not bend in order to join your church. For the church to have any credibility with the homosexual community it is going to have to get messy, very messy. It is going to have to re-examine it’s theology and practice. It is going to have to give on some foundational issues and look beyond their sexual choices. Churches have not traditionally done this very well.

I am not sure if the conservative church is ever going to be willing to do what it will take to open a dialogue and a relationship with this growing and active group of dynamic and worthwhile people. I believe it will only start when both sides put down their weapons and see past the revulsion and the differences long enough to realize we are all in need of grace. I for one am finding that I genuinely like my new friends and really could care less who they go home with at night. I am not interested in "converting" them to anything; I just think they are amazing people. I am more concerned that they don’t write me off just because of my lifestyle choices… it’s kind of ironic actually.

Matthew 25: 45 'I'm telling the solemn truth: Whenever you failed to look out for someone who was being overlooked or ignored, that was me—you failed to do it to me.'
that verse haunts me...