gay church should be role model for others

By Deb Price (The Detroit News)

October 31, 2005: In 1963, Nancy Wilson, a smart Methodist teen grappling with loneliness and a beginning awareness of her homosexuality, was shaken by a profound religious experience:

"I was sitting on the bed, and I heard a voice. It said, 'I am your friend. Someday you will have other friends. But for now, I am all you need,'" Wilson recalls.

"I knew it was God's voice. I knew I was going to be all right," she adds.

What Wilson didn't know was that moment in Long Island, N.Y., marked the start of an unusual spiritual journey:

During the next four decades, she became one of the chief engineers who constructed the Metropolitan Community Church denomination, affectionately known as "the gay church."

She served as pastor at infant churches in Boston and Detroit, and later at the mother church in Los Angeles. Along the way, she completed her masters of divinity degree at SS. Cyril and Methodius Seminary, Michigan's historic Polish Catholic seminary.

On Oct. 29, Wilson was installed as the new leader of MCC, following the retirement of Rev. Troy Perry, who started MCC in 1968. "MCC and the (gay) movement were the friends God had promised me. I strongly feel that we at MCC have only just begun," says Wilson, who aptly titled her first sermon as moderator "Unfinished World, Unfinished Calling."

One critical task ahead for MCC is serving as a role model to other Christian denominations mired in debates over who can lead and who is welcome in the pews.
MCC has easy answers: Anyone.

"We don't all come out of the same cookie-cutter. And at MCC we celebrate that," says Rev. David Pelletier of the MCC in Cathedral City, Calif. "Nancy's election as moderator is a great testimony to MCC's ability to see beyond things like gender."

Today, MCC has 250 churches worldwide, offering a message of God's unconditional love to gay, straight, bisexual, transgender Christians. More than half of its clergy are women, 40 percent of members were raised Catholic and 15 percent are heterosexual, and its churches perform 6,000 holy unions each year.

"It's exciting for folks to know that as gays or lesbians they can be fully embraced in our church. When they experience that, they come back and bring friends," says Rev. Jim Mulcahy of MCC in Rochester, NY.

MCC's new missions include "Focus on the Human Family," which will devote even more energy and resources to AIDS and natural disasters.

Meanwhile, MCC shares with mainline denominations the challenge of attracting more folks to its pews.

MCC Detroit succeeded in several experiments: A signer attracted deaf parishioners. Adding drums and spirituals to the music program has brought in more African Americans.

The Detroit church's "Beyond Our Doors" rapid-response fundraising program has been especially popular with members, who've donated $15,000 for medicine for children in Iraq, and victims of the tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, breast cancer and AIDS, says Rev. Mark Bidwell.

In its brief years, Metropolitan Community Church has healed and empowered outcasts. Now it must find ways to share its strength and wisdom with people and religious institutions around the globe.

You can reach Deb Price at (202) 662-8736 or dprice@detnews.com.