In honor of today, October 11, being 'National Coming Out Day' ( +National Coming Out Day on Facebook), and because day after tomorrow, October 13, is the 6th anniversary of my publicly coming out, I have a few reflections and observations that I'd like to share...
First of all, I'm amazed at how time flies, and at how much things have changed in my life, in my thinking, and in the world at large concerning what it means to come out.
As of this writing, Ken and I have been together for going on 5 years, and have been legally married for nearly 2 of those years. We are very happy, very much in love, very committed to one another, our kids and grandkids are good, I am still in the ministry, still a Bishop, and for the most part live the life that I at one time only dared to imagine.
The avalanche of hate mail that I once regularly received from the mainstream Christian world after coming out has pretty much completely disintegrated, and has been replaced by a fairly regular stream of supportive correspondence from around the world. Haven't had a death threat in several years now, and most of my loudest detractors in the Christian media have either lost interest in my story or have died off.
My ministry is considerably scaled down now in size from what it was, which is frankly the way I like it, and the majority of the people who attend Metron are those who have been in covenant with me for many years. Most of them are straight, most of them are married, and most of them were a part of Church In The Now. I'm very proud of the megachurch that I started and pastored for 30 years, but I don't miss the stress of maintaining the budget, physical property and staff that was required to keep it going at all. I just do the part of ministry now that I love, and I live a happy, stress-free life because of it.
I have more to say, but I'll put the rest of the post into video form.
Please click on the link for the video...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahcaY0Vc3ZY
