Leigh Finke - Welcoming and Affirming: A Guide to Supporting and Working with LGBTQ+ Christian Youth

Isaac Archuleta has a master of arts in clinical mental health counseling, and has established a nationally recognized counseling practice devoted to helping the LGBTQ+ community thrive.

Carla Barnhill brings more than three decades of working with teenagers to this project. They are among her favorite people. Carla edits and writes and tries to make the world a little better from her home in Minneapolis.

Rev. Ashley DeTar Birt is the Pastoral Fellow for Youth and Families at Rutgers Presbyterian Church in New York City. She also serves on the board of More Light Presbyterians, an LGBTQIA+ organization within the PC(USA). Her ministry focuses on children, families, and racial and social justice.

K. Amanda Meisenheimer is a minister and former public-school teacher. She specializes in communication and advocacy for children. She and her two children make their home in Manhattan.

Deacon Ross Murray is the founding director of The Naming Project, a Christian ministry for LGBTQ+ youth, as well as the senior director of the GLAAD Media Institute. He is a deacon in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, with a calling to LGBTQ+ advocacy and ministry between the LGBTQ+ and faith communities.

Germono Toussaint is a multiaward-winning playwright, composer, and producer, and an African American, same-gender-loving, ordained minister. He is the founding artistic director of A Mile In My Shoes Inc., and one of the founding playwrights of the Obie Awardwinning The Fire This Time Festival. Due to his upbringing in the often-contradictory world of basement parties and the black church, his work focuses on how people navigate the sacred and the profane, the flesh and the spirit, or the natural and the supernatural.

Bishop Kevin L. Strickland,
Bishop of the Southeastern SynodELCA

The book of Esther has one of my favorite lines of Scripture: for just such a time as this (Esther 4:14). As I read Welcoming and Affirming, these words rang loudly for me. For such a time as this, we in the church can be benefactors of this book. In many ways, I wish my pastors when I was a youth would have had such a resource, and even I, when serving as a parish pastor, would have benefited from such a treasure of riches.

One might ask, Why the need for such a book? Even more so, why, when so many churches have signs reading All are welcome? It is one thing to say all are welcome and a completely different thing to do the work of making a safe and affirming faith community for people who identify as LGBTQ+.

Welcoming and Affirming is a book for such a time as this. It will educate congregations as they support and work with LGBTQ+ youth. It is a necessary and life-saving book. A 2017 GLAAD/Harris poll found that as many as 20 percent of eighteen- to thirty-four-year-old persons identify as LGBTQ+, compared to 12 percent of thirty-five to fifty-one-year-olds. Todays teens are expected to continue that trend.

That means one in five kids (if not more) in Americas churches identifies as LGBTQ+.

Research also shows that LGBTQ+ youth who say religion is very important to them are 38 percent more likely to attempt suicide than those who say religion is less important.

What these numbers tell me is that weall of us in Americas churcheshave an opportunity to save lives. This book can show us how to do that. We have an opportunity to learn how to ask questions. To learn what questions to ask. To learn how to listen to the stories of our LGBTQ+ siblings in Christ. To learn how better to welcome them fully into a safe place. To tear down stereotypes around sexual orientation and gender identity that so often get in the way of us seeing each person as a beloved child of God.

One of the greatest lessons I ever learned is that you will never look into the face of someone God does not love. That extravagant, expansive, and nonbinary love of God, who created each of us in Gods own image. That image which doesnt fit into any box of human construction or binary limitations.

As a Lutheran, I believe in justification. If that is the case, I believe that we are justified by Gods grace and not by our own doing. We live daily in that grace.

This expansive grace can be made ever more visible, but not with a church sign reading All are welcome. Rather, it is by the intentional work we do as the church to truly show all people what inclusive grace looks and feels like. This book does just that. It will support LGBTQ+ teenagers in their journey to know who and whose they are, while congregations learn more about this beloved part of the body of Christ.

John Bell, in his hymn text Will You Come and Follow Me, gives us these words:

Will you love the you you hide if I but call your name?

Will you quell the fear inside and never be the same?

Will you use the faith youve found to reshape the world around, through my sight and touch and sound in and you and you in me?

As a married, gay man who is currently serving as a bishop in the ELCA church (Wow! I never thought I would be able to say any of those three things!), I was haunted for years by Bells words before I was able to come out. I grew up in this church and never questioned Gods love for me. But I did question Gods peoples love, acceptance, and welcome for me. I wasnt ready for my own questions, much less questions from others.

For such a time as this, I give thanks to God that a book like Welcoming and Affirming now exists. I pray that it provides the knowledge that we have all been created, called, and welcomed by Gods abundant grace. That it quells the fear we have within and guides us to further use our faith to reshape the world. I pray that those who use this resource as pastors, teachers, church professionals, youth leaders, and more will see what a tool for ministry this can be. This book asks us to learn, listen, and walk together. Its exactly what we need in this church and our world. It literally can save lives and nurture souls.

For such a time as this, God has called each of us, in our fullness, to be our full selves and to live abundantly in life-changing grace. May it be so for all!