A Journey of Inclusivity by Rev. Bill Chadwick

A Journey of Inclusivity       Oak Grove Presbyterian Church     Bloomington, MN

Written by Bill Chadwick, Pastor 2009-2019

Oak Grove in the mid-20th century was a thriving, typical middle-class Presbyterian congregation, neither overly conservative nor especially liberal in its theology and politics.

I am aware that each senior pastor, starting in the 1970s, preached at least one sermon sometime during his tenure, supporting the inclusion of homosexual people in the life of the church.  So that’s one sermon every seven to ten years. I am not aware that anyone left the church over those sermons.

This one sermon per pastorate did not exactly put Oak Grove on the cutting edge of this issue, even within the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area.  For example, Presbyterian Church of the Apostles in Burnsville, Cherokee Park United Church in St. Paul, and St. Luke Presbyterian in Minnetonka were all official “More Light” congregations by around 1990 or even earlier.  

During the 1990s at Oak Grove a few adult education sessions on the issue of LGBT inclusivity were offered.  Around the year 2000, the congregation elected an openly gay deacon. Most people were fine with that, but some were not and chose to leave the congregation.

In 2009 I was contacted by the Pastor Nominating Committee seeking a new head of staff for Oak Grove.  That PNC was very clear during the phone interview that they were only interested in candidates that fully supported the inclusion of LGBT folks.  I was also very clear that I was only going to consider a congregation that was fully inclusive. I was called as pastor in spring of 2009.

In 2010 I led another series of adult education programs regarding Homosexuality and the Church.  In late 2010 I brought to the session two proposals. The first was for Oak Grove to become an official “More Light” congregation.  This passed unanimously. The second was a motion to support full marriage equality. This passed with one abstention.

There were a few congregation members who were not supportive of either of these, but those who strongly opposed inclusion had already left the church and we did not lose any more members.  

I believe it was 2011 when the Rainbow Flag was placed on the church property.  It’s a very heavily trafficked corner. I expected that the flag would probably be stolen or defaced, and that our building would be vandalized.  Neither of those things happened. We received two or three emails about the flag over the years from neighbors.

We advertised our inclusiveness on our website and in other venues and we shared a tent with other More Light churches at the annual Gay Pride Festival in June each summer in Minneapolis.  We regularly had gay visitors join us for worship, but no one stuck around more than a few Sundays for the first few years. I presume this was because they didn’t see anyone else they could identify as gay.  This was very frustrating, because if they had all stayed for three years there would have been a critical mass.  

Finally, about 2015 a young gay man joined the church and the choir and was very open about who he was.  Soon other gay folks visited and stayed. A Rainbow Fellowship of LGBTQA+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer or Questioning, Allies, and anybody else) folks began meeting monthly to plan fellowship and educational events.  This continues.

After a bit we realized that the Rainbow Flag was perhaps our best church growth tool, in that when we asked people in the new member class what first attracted them to Oak Grove, about 40% or more said they saw the flag out front.  A typical comment was: “We’re not gay, nor do we have any gay family members, but we knew this was going to be the kind of church we would like to be a part of.”

In about 2017 an openly transgender man joined the congregation.  He presented several adult education events. In 2018 we added a Trans flag in addition to the Rainbow Flag out front.

On Easter Sunday, 2019, two young men with giant anti-gay banners picketed out front of our building.  They also shouted at some of our members, including children, that they were going to go to hell for going to this church.  I went out and tried calmly to engage the two in conversation, but they weren’t much for listening. One of our wiser and more loving members took rolls and coffee out to them.

Since much of the Christian Church has been and continues to be in the forefront of persecution of LGBT folks, to me it seems only right that nowadays the followers of Jesus do all in their power to be welcoming.