A person being baptized.

Photo by kaleb tapp on Unsplash

It was a bright Sunday morning in January. I was 8 years old, and the sun seemed to be shining just for me that day. It was baptism day at our little Freewill Baptist Church, and I was the only candidate heading to the waters. The church roared with collective Amens as I came up out of the water and heard that profound blessing spoken over my body, “You are the beloved of God, in whom God is well-pleased.”

Not long after that day, I told my pastor that I was called to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. Sure enough, on a Sunday evening a few weeks later, I stood behind a proper-sized pulpit (the ‘big pulpit’ was too tall for my 8-year-old frame) and preached my very first sermon. I quoted that faithful passage from John 3 to my church family from the old King James Version, “Ye must be born again.” The strange metaphor struck Nicodemus no easier in the dark than it would have in the light of day. “How can these things be?” he wondered.

The second story takes place 13 years after my baptism. As a 21-year-old in my last semester of Bible college, I sought out Jason Crosby, then the Co-Pastor of nearby Crescent Hill Baptist Church in Louisville. After a brief phone call, we met in his office on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. We scheduled our meeting that day for a reason. It was a holiday, and the church offices were closed. Like Nicodemus who approached Jesus at nightfall, I came with my wandering questions in the dark.

After about an hour, we parted ways. I don’t remember exactly what was said that day, but I know for sure that I heard a Baptist pastor telling me about the love of God. I heard once more that old, old story that I had heard so many years times before, but this time the story was different. This time I was included. This time God’s love was actually for me—the real me. As John Wesley once said, “I felt my heart strangely warmed” that day, and like so many formative experiences of my faith journey, it happened at a Baptist church.

A few months later, after many more conversions, and wondering at least a thousand times, “How can these things be?” I finally came out. I affirmed publicly what I had known privately for as long as I could remember. I am a gay, cis-gendered man, with whom God is well pleased.

There are thousands of stories like the two of these, of LGBTQ+ people who have had to learn what it means to be born again. When LGBTQ+ people come out of the closet, we’re walking out of shame, into the light of the ever-creating God. This is a complicated process wrapped in cultural, socioeconomic, and religious layers. Churches have a liberating role to play in untangling those layers, freeing queer folk to be born anew. Before I could start unwrapping my layers, I had to find a church that had come out. I needed to be told that being born again was possible even if it did seem probable. And I needed to hear it from a Baptist preacher.

My coming out story happened because I heard the gospel message from a Baptist pastor and believed. All these years after my baptism, I was finally invited to explore the depth of belovedness in those waters. Is there anything more ‘Baptist’ than that?

When Cooperative Baptist Churches come out, we’re announcing that our churches are places where people are wholly beloved. We’re evangelizing our world with the message Jesus shared with Nicodemus in John 3. This is not to say that coming out does not involve risk. After all, before we’re raised to walk in the newness of life in baptism, we’re reminded that we are “buried with Christ.” Being reborn is messy. Allowing the Spirit to blow us to the water’s edge is risky, but it is worth it. It saves lives.

Coming out is a process in which LGBTQ+ people take a leap of faith, trusting in what we cannot see ahead. It is not a one-time experience. It is a multi-layered process that transforms us over time, freeing us to live into our belovedness. Our baptisms are not a one-time experience either. We spend our lives living into the baptismal blessing of God’s Spirit. Churches that are brave enough to come out will not come out only once. Coming out is the beginning of a journey to belovedness.

I was 21 years old when I came out. Nearly a decade later, Crescent Hill Baptist Church, the delivery room where I was reborn, is now my place of calling. That’s how the Spirit works. Coming out has transformed my life and ministry. New life does that. Coming out, like baptism, calls for cosmic interruption, where water and flesh mingle with something far beyond what meets the eye.

I’m grateful that more churches in the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship are coming out as places of affirmation, welcome, and belonging. If, as our core values state, we truly “affirm the freedom and responsibility of every person to relate directly to God,” then Cooperative Baptists should come out of the closet and say this unequivocally. This is a step Cooperative Baptists have already taken in advocating for women in ministry and naming the sinful structures of white supremacy. Let us, as Cooperative Baptists, finally preach a message of good news to LGBTQ+ people. Let us come out of the closet, and be born again.

Such a message of belonging would not override local church polity. It would, however, be a step towards setting things right between LGBTQ+ Christians and Cooperative Baptists. A step towards coming out followed by another, and another, and another. That’s how coming out can baptize us again, from above.