There are more important things about who you are than how you feel about penises or What I wish I had said to the girl on pride day

I said that in a sermon not to long ago. Yet another reason why I like church planting. I can say the word penis with fear of reprisal.

On Pride Day this year Bridgepointe Church went down to Churchill Square to hand out bottles of water. Now, while I realize the silliness of bottled water and myself am a fan of tap water, bottled water is way more convienient to hand out to revelers on a hot summer day.

Earth Water, an Edmonton company, gives 100% of their profits to the UN for water projects so If you have to drink bottled water go to them. Anyway, we went down to the Pride celebration to hand out bottles of water. We attached to the bottles a card that had our website and a video I did. There were a lot of reasons why we did this, but mostly the driving impetus was that we wanted to be obedient.

There is a huge gulf between the homosexual community and the church for reasons that have been talked about ad nauseum by people more intelligent than me and that gulf isn’t getting smaller. we felt God telling us to so something about this. The best thing we could come up with was to give water to hot and thirsty people. I don’t know if thats the best way to bridge that gulf but it’s a start. We can paralyze ourselves by making sure that we get a message perfectly right, and making sure we offend no one, but at some point we just have to take a step toward the other. We say “Here is a bottle of water. This is either the love of Jesus coming from the Body of Christ, or its just a bottle of water, or it’s something in between that. Whatever it is to you, here you go.”

Back to the penises. Anyway, everyone we met was very positive, and thirsty, so it was a good experience for us. The only hiccup was one young lady who looked at the card and asked if we were a Pro- Gay or Anti-Gay Church. I tried and failed to clever my way out of it by saying “We’re a Pro-Jesus Church.” She, politely, pushed a little bit and I stumbled and mumbled something about not fitting into categories, and she was unsatisfied and reminded me that this was a Pro-Gay event. (Really, I was wondering why all these dudes were wearing buttless chaps. Who knew?) We both moved on. I don’t know if she drank the water.

This is what I wish I had the time and courage to say:

“I’m sorry that you assume that as a person with a Church that I have to fit into one of those two categories. People like me, Christians… we’ve earned your distrust and you have every right to think and say whatever you want about me. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. We’ve sinned against God and against you. We’ve failed to be who we have been called to be.

That said, I can’t fit what we think into a thirty second sound bite… I can honestly say that I don’t fit into either of those categories. I don’t think I even know what gay fully means but I do know this: there are infinitely more important things about you than who you’re attracted to. I reject the idea in our culture that who we are is intrinsically tied to what we do with our genitals, and who we do it with. That is not the defining characteristic of a human being, because long before you or I are gay or straight or whatever labels we accept we are a unique creation of the Living God.

We are also incredibly broken people in an incredibly broken world and the fact that we have to have this conversation is testament to the fact that we have no clue how to live with each other, let alone God, and I believe that Jesus was God, who came here to save us in every way that we need to be saved, and what you do with Jesus is way more important than what you do with anything else. I believe Jesus knew you were worth dying for, and in the light of that, what I think is sort of irrelevant.

But in the midst of our inability to live together well, we want to bring water, and I don’t know if you’re gay or straight, but I know you’re thirsty. It’s a hot day. Pro-gay church, anti-gay church… I don’t know… today we’re an Anti-thirst church.

Just for right now, in this moment, can that be enough?”