(This story comes from a journal given to me by the man involved. He no longer works in ministry.)
I'd been a traveling youth minister for about ten years, now. The thing is, I lost my faith while I was still in seminary. I have no hostility toward any of it, but... I didn't believe anymore. What I discovered, though, was that in the traveling "ministry" business, it was mostly about the show. I was a performer, putting on an act more than anything else. I gave the audience what it wanted, and I was pretty good at it. I spent about half the year on the road with a "praise band" and some other cast and crew who put on a pretty good show for the teens and tweens of conservative-to-evangelical churches throughout the US.
In fairness, I wasn't the only one who wasn't all in on God. One of the sound techs was fairly open about his disbelief, and one of the guitarists had recently failed in his bid to be part of a heavy metal act. He was with us while he tried to find something else.
It was autumn when we brought the youth revival show to a small town in South Carolina, and we'd be there for a week. We'd open at the Sunday morning service, hold events each evening, and then have a wrap-up the next Sunday. That was when I met Jack (all names are changed, of course), a high school boy who was being teased because he wasn't stereotypically male enough. He was called gay, but wasn't sure that he was. To be honest, he wasn't sure that he wasn't, either. He wanted some advice, and imagined that I was the right guy to talk to.
So, I talked to him. We chatted for about an hour, during which I told him that whoever he really was, was what God made him to be. If that meant being an artist and a musician rather than a football player, there was nothing wrong with that. I pointed to Biblical stories about music being valuable, anyway. I then felt like I had a real obligation to let him know that being gay is okay, too, if that's who he is. It was something he'd never heard before from a preacher, but I knew enough of the arguments to show him some things he'd never considered or heard, and let him think on that. I also planted the seed with him that any church that tells him to hate himself, or lets other people hate, is no valid church.
Maybe a little subversive for my cover story, and probably not something I'd say on stage, but I felt it needed saying.
The next day, I had an invitation from Jack's mother to join the family for supper Wednesday night. So, I accepted. It turns out, Jack's mother was divorced, and the two lived alone in their mobile home. Dinner was nice enough, and as we cleaned up, Jack disappeared. Suddenly, everything kind of changed in the house. Anne turned off several lights in the kitchen and around the house, and then led me into the living room.
"Jack told me what you said," she said. "And I want to thank you." She tipped her head. "I also think that, maybe, you aren't exactly the by-the-Book kind of guy you pretend to me, are you?"
I was a little concerned about this at first. If she was about to ruin my gig, I guess she had the right. But then I noticed the look in her eyes. She wasn't threatening me in any way. She was agreeing with me.
"I guess not," I replied.