Volume 2, Issue 6

Surviving a Spiritual Crisis

Cover Stories

Me? In Spiritual Crisis? Never!
By Candace Chellew
I should have known I was in trouble when the topic for this issue came to me so easily. “Surviving a Spiritual Crisis.” It was right there on the tip of my tongue, weeks before it was needed, weeks before I even force myself to think about such things. A bad omen indeed.

7 Lessons on Christianity From Xena: Warrior Princess
By Candace Chellew
I had been rushing head long, avoiding God at every turn, intentionally not listening. My attempts to run from God have led me right to him. Now, I’m backed into a corner, and God is speaking. God’s voice sounds remarkably like … Xena.

Love, Truth and Crisis
By Warren McCarthey
My spiritual crisis began about a year and a half ago, when I fell in love. That in itself is not a crisis, but the person with whom I fell in love, more specifically the gender of the person was the cause of the crisis.

My Story
By Dr. Rembert S. Truluck
During the years from 1952 to 1968, I wrestled quietly with my own homosexual orientation without any counseling or helpful reading material. The present great wealth of books and articles on homosexuality did not yet exist.

God’s Timing
By Grace Janssen
I saw a statement in a church bulletin that really caught my attention. It said, “I can’t number the times I have wished God would hurry up and answer my prayer with a bailout in the middle of my muddle with a fresh sense of God’s working in my life. But there is one well-established principle in the Scriptures, and it is dramatically demonstrated in Jesus’ experience. You can’t rush a resurrection.”

I Am With You Always
By Hayden K. Smith
Jesus is always with us. The crisis comes when we have moved so far in our hearts from Him that we allow so many others things to get in the way. It is also very hard to love when a gay person is told that (s)he is an abomination and that our hearts and souls are an affront to God.

The Spiritual Crisis of Coming Out
By Rich Clark
As Jesus’ “coming out” in Jerusalem launched a crisis in that city, coming out of the closet will inevitably precipitate a crisis in our lives, a crisis that might be social, financial, relational, professional, and even spiritual.

My Crisis of Faith
By Dwane Garmon
It may sound trite and corny to say this but my advice to people going through terrific physical trials is to rest in God, allow him to love you, don’t focus on your pain.

Homospirituality

My Death
By Joe M. C.
The only thing that was real to me was the emptiness I felt inside and the overwhelming need to be “normal” like other boys, a normal that wasn’t normal to me because no matter how I tried to be normal, the messages I heard everywhere I went told me that I wasn’t.

Recovery of a Sense of The Sacred: Thirteen Steps
By Carol Stabel
For me, my sexuality is a part of who I am. And while I believe that ultimately love is no respector of persons, coming home to myself is for me, coming home to she with whom I am most “at home.”

Features

Leveling the Ground at the Foot of the Cross: The Struggles of Three Congregations
By Candace Chellew
Three congregations, Lord of Life Lutheran Church, of Ames, Iowa, First United Methodist Church of Omaha, Nebraska and University Baptist Church in Austin, Texas have been in the national spotlight recently as they struggle with the issue of homosexuality within the larger mainstream church.

The Fecundity of the Barren
By Neil Ellis Orts
Throughout the stories of the Bible we hear again and again the admonition to welcome the stranger, to make a place for the foreigner. As we, the people of God, have failed repeatedly at this directive, I wonder if God isn’t raising up a new challenge for the church. As we continue to raise up walls of race or social status, could God be raising a new sign with all these queer Christian groups?

Book Review: Mom, I Need To Be a Girl
By Phyllis Randolph Frye
Mom, I Need To Be a Girl is written by a the parent of a teenaged son who soon became a teenaged daughter.

Let Us Now Praise Caustic Christians
A Poem By Louie Crew

A Visit to Focus On The Family
By Matthew Freeman
The face Focus shows visitors is in many ways a perfect reflection of the way it communicates in its various broadcasts: the far-right political message is so thoroughly submerged in the “family support” message, that you’d miss it if you weren’t listening closely.

Let Us Give Thanks and Praise!

Letters to the Editor

From the Pulpit

Living Inside Out
By Dr. Larry Bethune
We are exceptionally gifted at deceiving ourselves about our spirituality. You come to church, talk up a storm about what the scripture really means and why so many others are wrong, and then you go home thinking you’ve been religious. But you’re deceiving yourself; you haven’t been religious.

Bible Study and Inspiration

You Shall Be a Blessing: A Commentary on Genesis 12:1-3
By Tiffany S. Lavender-Nakashima
Abraham followed God’s high calling because he knew that his obedience brings a great blessing to the entire world.

Letter From God
By God
Okay, listen up now. I’m your Father AND Mother, and I don’t play favourites among My children. Also, I hate to break it to you, but I don’t write. My longhand is awful, and I’ve always been more of a “doer” anyway. So ALL of your books, including those bible’s, were written by men and women.

Holy Humor

The Golf Game

Pastor Search Committee Report