- [Ryan] Jesus was so badass. He was, like, the king of calling out bullshit.
People are like, "Hey, you can't talk to Samaritans." Jesus is like,
"Bullshit."
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I was brought up in the system, evangelical Christianity, where this was
the cardinal sin. You don't do this. "But Jesus, they're categorically unclean,
and our Holy Book tells us so." He's like, "Bullshit. I'm going to go talk to a woman
Samaritan, in broad daylight, at the well." My name is Ryan, from Eastlake
Community Church, and this is the time we changed our mind.
We started in my house. For the first couple of years, things were moving so
fast and we were growing by hundreds of people a week.
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When it came to the conversation around the LGBT community and church policy,
or "What does the Bible say about homosexuality?" I always felt awkward
about it. I didn't want to bring it up.
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I felt like I needed to scare people into believing the right thing because the God
who loves them is going to send most of human history to Hell.
Like, that's the good news? Sounds pretty shitty.
- [Christina] My name's Christina Cobb, and I do music here at Eastlake Church.
Ayla brought up a question of,
"What have you never told anyone?" and I immediately shut down.
What the answer was, for me, was that I've had attractions to the same sex.
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I just couldn't take it anymore. I told Ayla that "I need to tell someone,
I don't know what's going to happen. I might lose my job."
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And I was just really so fearful. I didn't need to be, though,
luckily. Some people, their fears make sense.
- She pulled me aside, was like, "Hey, I need to tell you that I'm dating Ayla." I
was like, "That's amazing. How wonderful, beautiful." But she was crying,
and eventually, I realized she was saying, "Look, I'm assuming this is my last day
working here," and that moment of realizing that I had been a part of a
system who had someone who I loved that much terrified that, relationship aside,
this was a categorical, "You're out." And my heart broke, and I just realized I had
been a coward for too long.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender...
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Frankly, I thought it would kill the church immediately.
Who else get death threats? That's just me? Okay. Lucky me.
I took so many sit down meetings where people, with their open Bible would be
like, "Huh? Huh?" At some points, though, I just had to look at them and go,
"I can tell this is hard on you." Like, "I don't have a problem with anyone in the
LGBT community, and in fact, I think we've all remained perpetually immature."
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Hell is knowing your truth and lacking the courage to live it.
I don't care if the Bible says, "Gay people suck." The Bible is pro-slavery,
both in the Old Testament and the New Testament. It doesn't have a very great
view of women leading and teaching. I have lots of things I disagree with about the
Bible.
If you want to go further on the journey, you have some unloading to do.
And we've decided, it fell from the sky, and now we got to run it like a manual for
how to run the earth, how to legislate morality, and that's not what it is.
If we need to consult an ancient book to know what to do when a human being is in
front of us, I think we're screwed already.
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So, whether Eastlake makes it or we die in four months, it doesn't matter to me,
because the legacy of a faith community that's healthy is changed,
transformed people who are just a little bit further along on their journey,
and I know we've got that.
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