“I was a stranger, and you did not welcome Me”
– Matthew 25:43 (ESV)

Passing the Test? – A Real-Time Experiment

I have a friend who began going to a church near me – a congregation that I’d never heard of – and they suggested to me that I might like it and even want to go. And, given how much my friend was being blessed in this church, I thought I might indeed take a look.

Being Autistic, I needed to check them out a little first. Autism, for all its amazing benefits – which I would not be without! – has some downsides too, the main one for me being that I have a perception that I will not fit in because I am so ‘different’; so ‘odd’. This has been the case since my schooldays; fortunately I have spent the majority of my Christian life in congregations where they accepted me exactly as I am^[1]. So I wanted to see if there’s a chance that this one will accept me like that too.

So the first thing I did was to take the sensible approach, and that was to check out their website, with a particular emphasis on their ‘Statement of Faith’ which (usually, anyway) sets out what they believe^[2].

But anyway, sure enough, there it is: it’s an Evangelical church; they believe in Biblical infallibility (that is, the Bible is always right), and in ‘eternal conscious torment’ (i.e. ‘Hell’) for those who do not believe in Jesus. Fair enough.

Nothing in their Statement of Faith presented any particular problem to me; no matter what church I attend, I am mature enough in my faith to be able to spit out the bones and eat the meat – to learn the things of God while internally rejecting those things that don’t sit right with my spirit. It’s a shame more Christians don’t do this! So, things look good so far 😊

But I still needed to do my Litmus Test. I have written on this before; the Litmus Test is where I ask a potentially contentious^[3] question to see how they cope with it: how they answer; and indeed whether they answer!; and what they say in their answer. Using this method, I can make a pretty good guess as to how I would be welcomed despite my ‘differences’ and therefore how ‘safe’ I will feel in their group!

Because my questions have been ignored in the past, when asking other Evangelical groups the Litmus question, this time I’m going to keep track of my questions; the times I sent them, and any replies, so that my attempt at communication works out like a real-time experiment, with me writing down each ‘test’, and its result, in real time. In that way, it will read as a story; it will be productive in that you will be able to learn from what really happened, as it happened; and you will see my methodical approach to the whole thing. And I hope you enjoy it!

And so, to begin, I found their church contact page, and I simply asked them my question, via their online electronic contact form. Here’s the question as asked:

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Hi there

I have been looking with interest at your church website and, in response to the things I have seen there, I wanted to ask a couple of simple questions about your practices.

Here we go:

—

How do you, as a church, cope with people of ‘different’ sexualities (like Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Queer etc. (LGBTQ+))? I have contacted churches with this question in the past, and have not once received a clear reply!

What I mean by my question is, how much do you integrate people of ‘alternative’ sexualities into your church? I’d really love to hear an honest answer from you on this subject.

For example, do you really preach ‘come as you are, don’t worry, we’ll accept you’, or is it instead the sort of thing where it’s really ‘come as you are but we want to change you’?

Or can an LGBTQ+ person come along and be fully accepted just as they are, without any expectation of changing to your pattern, along with any partner they may have?

Are LGBTQ+ people treated in any way differently from other people in the church? Are they fully accepted but with reservations? Would people be in any way judgmental about them?

And can an LGBTQ+ person hold a position of responsibility in your congregation?

In other words, can people feel ‘safe’ in your church?

I know that’s a lot – more than just a ‘couple’ of questions, in fact! – but I am asking all these honest questions in order to ascertain whether or not this is a safe church for all people, or just those deemed ‘normal’.

I look forward to reading your reply!

Thanks for your time

Anthony

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So it’s Sunday 22nd March, and I’ve just sent that question off. Because this is being written in real time, I will now actually stop writing this essay for a few days, giving them until later in the week to respond, at which time I will resend the question if they haven’t already replied.

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Hiding behind the Sofa!

It’s now Thursday, 26th March. Did they pass the test by answering the question? Or are they hiding, terrified, behind the sofa^[4], hoping that the stranger (figuratively) knocking on their door (me!) will just go away?!🤣

Well, I’m sad to say that there was no response. I am still ‘in the dark’; I don’t know if they got my message and decided to ignore it (by hiding behind the sofa!), or whether it never got there, or if they just haven’t had time to read it yet! But I’m not going to just go away. I still don’t know how ‘safe’ I would be at that church, and I would like to know because my friend’s recommendation carries considerable weight for me. So, I’m going to try again a couple of times until either they answer, or it becomes plain that not only are they still hiding behind the sofa, but have possibly even been there for so long that they have died back there and no-one has found the body yet^[5] 😂 .

And so, I am sending them the question again today (26th March):

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Hi there, back on Sunday 22nd, I sent you a question about your church, and I was disappointed that I haven’t received a reply yet. I suspect you might have been on holiday! Anyway, I will re-send the question for you here, rather than have you troll through your inbox to try to find it. Here we go:

[Copied and pasted the original message in, verbatim]

So, again, let’s wait and see! Let’s also hope that the bodies behind the sofa aren’t beginning to smell too badly….

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Monday, 30th March.

There’s been no response from the church yet.

It did occur to me that they may not be monitoring their communications from that contact page; their website is set up in the form of a WordPress blog (like this one) and their last posts were in December 2022, so just over three years ago. Maybe their comms aren’t being looked at, then. Maybe the guy who designed their website and monitors their comms is one of the bodies behind the sofa, and as such is terminally incapacitated 🤣

Or something.

Ok, then, let’s control that part of the experiment by sending them another, more innocuous message that doesn’t contain anything even remotely unusual. And we’ll send it via the contact form again because that’s the system we are testing with this message. I won’t write here the message I sent; suffice it to say that it was a routine sort of enquiry similar to ‘do you take a collection’ sort of thing, and giving a different email address from the one I gave for my previous messages. Who knows, maybe my other address was being blocked for some reason. You never know!

Now, if the message doesn’t get through, then no harm done; no-one will have read it. If, however, it does get through and they reply, then that tells me that they do indeed receive contact requests through their website and they are deliberately ignoring my original messages. The small subterfuge of asking a trivial question in order to try to get a message through is, in my opinion, justified^[6].

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Tuesday 31st March

Well, my innocuous message got a reply from the pastor! This tells me that messages sent via the online contact page are indeed being received; that they are monitoring communications sent via that page. And this leads me to believe that the Litmus Test messages I sent were actually received but were being ignored (back behind the sofa we go!). There are a couple of other possibilities. It could be that they don’t read their contact form messages all that often. That would explain the lack of response so far to my questions, but only if this is in combination with the pastor possibly needing to consult with his leadership team (if they have one; in common with most Evangelical churches, they probably do) with regards to the best line to take when replying to that impertinent LGBTQ+ query! It would need to be a combination of both late reading and working out an answer, because the receipt of the innocuous email shows that their system is working. If it were me in their position, I would have written back and said something like ‘We’ll get back to you on your query; bear with us’, which would be fine. Well, kind of, anyway; if you think about it, anything other than a big, hearty ‘YES!!’ to LGBTQ+ inclusion has to be viewed as showing the strong possibility that actually they don’t accept people with ‘differences’. But let’s cut them some slack. There’s always the chance they might think in depth and come up with a decent policy.

As an aside at this point, let me also tell you something good about this church: they do welcome homeless people. Like I said, I had a friend at that church and they told me that there were all kinds of different people there, from professionals, to everyday blue-collar people, to farmers, to homeless people; you name it. I wonder then if they have any LGBTQ+ people there and, although they welcome them, they believed that my question was some sort of ruse? I mean, it isn’t; it’s a genuine question that will help me determine whether or not it is a ‘safe’ church for someone like me to attend. As I’ve already described, my neurodivergence means that I am someone who is very different from ‘normal’ people. This is why I do the Litmus Test; their attitudes towards LGBTQ+ people will be a good indicator about how they relate to ‘different’ people in general.

So, why the problem with answering contact requests? I still don’t get it.

Well, in order to give them another fair chance at a reply, I then actually emailed using a ‘proper’ email message, as opposed to simply contacting them through their website form. In this way, we bypass the contact form altogether. To check I had their email address right, I actually drove up to their physical premises! and found out their email address from their signboard.

So I emailed them, to that ‘official’ email address, the same message that I sent on 26th March, as above, and I now await their reply. I’ll give it a few days, as per normal, before I call it a day on the experiment, write it all up and publish. I have to say, though, that by now I would be very surprised were I to receive a reply to my questions.

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Right, so now it’s Tuesday 7th April, the Tuesday after Easter this year. I’ve left it so long because I did them the courtesy of not burdening them with my terrifying question over the Easter weekend and thus spoiling it! 🤣 But I still have not heard back from them – good job I didn’t hold my breath; I’d be purple by now! – and so I’m going to write to them again in a slightly different manner; in the form of a gentle appeal. I’m using direct email and writing to the church email address, and also copying in the pastor on his personal email account. Here’s what I’m sending:

Please answer my question

Hi there

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been hoping for a reply from you regarding my question – sent several times and via different pathways – via your church contact page, and via direct email to your church email address which I got from the signboard outside your premises – about to what extent LGBTQ+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and other sexualities) people are integrated into your church. In my contact attempts, I set out clearly my questions, and gave a clear and valid reason why I am asking those questions.

It saddens me greatly that I have not yet received a reply. I do believe that the messages have been getting through to you, so I can see only five possible reasons for the lack of a reply:

1) I was wrong; the messages are not in fact getting through to you;
2) The messages are getting through to you, but you are on holiday or very busy, or both;
3) You suspect that my neutrally-expressed question is from someone who would not want to come to your church if they thought that LGBTQ+ people *were* welcome there;
4) You suspect that LGBTQ+ people would not want to come to your church if they thought they would *not* be welcome there, but you don’t want to put them off by telling them that;
5) You and your leadership team are as yet undecided on your stance on LGBTQ+ issues, or at least on how to respond to my questions. In which case, please acknowledge this with a simple, ‘We’ll get back to you’, unless of course you’re not going to get back to me!

Whatever the reason, I would like to make a final request that you answer my question, please, and, in its shortened form, it’s this:

*To what extent are LGBTQ+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and other sexualities) people integrated into your church?*

I have deliberately done you the courtesy of not burdening you with this over what is likely the busiest weekend in your church’s calendar!

I won’t trouble you with the question again after asking this time. That said, though, this isn’t going to just go away. Even though this is the last time I will ask, someone else will ask you again, sooner or later.

I hope this time to hear back from you.

Thanks

Anthony

Note how I have simplified it down to just ‘to what extent are LGBTQ+ … people integrated into your church?’ I also gave him five reasonable ‘excuses’. I really am trying to be gracious here!

Again, let’s wait and see…

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Well, Saturday 11th April has dawned and still no word. Because they could indeed have gone on holiday after surviving the hectic Easter weekend – which is a realistic possibility – I am going to leave it until Monday 13th April before I publish this. Let’s give them every chance!

But in the meantime, let’s just consider the ‘no-reply’ reasons that I suggested in the email above. We may be able to glean something that might explain why I haven’t heard anything back.

1) I was wrong; the messages are not in fact getting through to you

This is not the reason; I know from the ‘innocuous question’ test that I asked that the mails are getting through to them.

2) The messages are getting through to you, but you are on holiday or very busy, or both

This is possible, which is why I’ve given them so long before publishing. But given that I copied my final email to the pastor’s personal email account as well as the church one, I’d have thought that it would have got through to someone at least. If I do hear back at a later date, and they were/are still on holiday, then I will update this essay to reflect that. Can’t say fairer than that.

3) You suspect that my neutrally-expressed question is from someone who would not want to come to your church if they thought that LGBTQ+ people *were* welcome there

…or (I will lump these two reasons together)

4) You suspect that LGBTQ+ people would would not want to come to your church if they thought they would *not* be welcome there, but you don’t want to put them off by telling them that

In other words, they are worried that I might not like their answer, for either of those reasons or maybe some other reason. In which case, if they’re in any doubt, they should ask for me to clarify the question, and not just ignore the email. Another church I once asked this question of, at least offered to come and have a chat with me, which I graciously declined. Now that’s the way to handle this if they’re in any doubt. But, especially regarding the opinions of other believers as I mentioned in point (3), it is worth mentioning that the fear of man (and man’s opinions) has to do with voluntarily placing the ownership of our lives into the hands of men, whether we realise it or not. We change our behaviour in order to be accepted. Well, there’s no need to do that, not ever. Jesus didn’t do it, and neither should we. It’s not about pleasing men at all, not even other believers who want you to conform. Your life, your reputation, your ministry, and your church belong to God, not to the people who would try to judge you. Proverbs 29:25 (KJV) says that “The fear of man bringeth a snare but whoso putteth his trust in the Lord shall be safe”. It’s worth remembering that.

5) You and your leadership team are as yet undecided on your stance on LGBTQ+ issues, or at least on how to respond to my questions. In which case, please acknowledge this with a simple, ‘We’ll get back to you’, unless of course you’re not going to get back to me!

This would kind-of be fair enough, and, again, if they need to decide on something, then maybe they will contact me later – I will update the essay if they do. But there was also no ‘we’ll get back to you’ note either, so I seriously doubt I’ll hear back unless, as we’ve already considered, holidays.

There’s a sixth reason that I left out of the email because it’s not all that polite; remember I was trying to be reasonable, a) in the hope of getting an answer and also b) to not want to offend a brother in Christ. And that sixth reason is that they just decided to ignore the problem and hope it will go away. It’s very cosy behind that there sofa…. 🤣🤣🛋️ Well, I might go away, but my writing won’t 😂 This is the cowardly approach, to put it bluntly. What would it have cost them to reply to me? And even if the cost was huge, in whatever terms, would it not be worth it in order to rescue a ‘sinner’ from the pit?

There’s also the additional possibility that they think it’s all a joke or a ruse; that I’m just trying to wind them up, provoke them, or something else – maybe they thought I was a militant anti-Christian just using the LGBTQ+ question as a way of starting an argument! – and therefore to reply would be to feed the trolls. Well, in response to that, I’d say that while in this piece I have indeed tried to keep a humourous slant on most of the prose^[7], the question was not asked as a joke, nor as a wind-up or provocation, and nor should it be assumed to be one. It should be standard practice to treat seriously any question from a new/unknown contact, unless and until they know for sure that it was a joke or something worse. As we have seen in my explanations above, the questions were genuine in that I was trying to ascertain how ‘safe’ the church would be for me, and that was clearly expressed in my original messages. That I could write it up, in the same manner as if it were an experiment, is simply my way of trying to make sense of it using the analytical mind that God has given me. So, it’s not a ruse; it is a perfectly valid question, asked for a real and clearly-stated reason.

To sum up all that blather: There’s just no excuse!

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Monday 13th April, in the evening. Ok, still no reply after yet another week. In fact it’s been like three weeks now, just over. I’d say it’s time to stop the experiment, and publish my results.

And I will also send them the reassurance that I will not be bothering them again:

Lessons Learned

Hi [Pastor’s name]

Well, you’ll be pleased to know I won’t be asking you that LGBTQ+ question again. It’s sad that you didn’t feel that you could reply, by hey-ho; I’m sure you had your reasons.

I had hoped for better; [I then shared something personal which I won’t go in to in public, but it’s about me identifying with the pastor as a brother and fellow human].

Anyway, I asked the LGBT question because I was thinking of coming to your church, and I needed to know how safe it is for people who are ‘different’, as I openly said in my initial messages.

I’ll tell you straight off that I am not gay, nor am I of any other ‘alternative’ sexuality. I am actually autistic, and I have several personal disability issues that make it very hard for me to be in a public place, because I am so ‘different’. The LGBTQ+ question is simply a litmus test that I use in order to try to find out whether or not I will feel comfortable attending a church, despite my differences. 

And I had so much to give. I am a recently retired NHS professional and with a classical education; I have a Bible college qualification; and I have formal qualifications in theology. On 12th July this year, I will have been walking in love and power with Jesus for 46 years. I am a highly experienced and talented Charismatic worship leader, having led countless worship meetings varying in size from housegroups up to congregations of hundreds of people. I am a gifted musician, and I have also done much public preaching work. I have had extensive training and experience in ministering in spiritual gifts, with proven proficiency in words of knowledge, in prophetic ministry, and in spoken and written word, doing only what I see my Father doing. I have even ministered on a couple of occasions at Brunel Manor. However, I do not put my good works on show; I do not do things for human approval, so you’ll not have heard of me. I’m just a humble minister of Jesus who practises His work quietly and behind the scenes; I am one who does the will of his Father in Heaven.

Sad to say, then, that the lack of any answer to my question has made me completely sure that I will not attend your church, unless of course the Lord tells me very clearly that He wants me to do so.

I was a stranger, and you would not take me in. You wouldn’t even answer my serious question.

I have written this experience up factually, and have published it on my blog at

[Gave him the link to this article]

I haven’t named anyone, neither church nor individual. Jesus doesn’t work like that, and neither do I.

Grace and Peace to you and, despite your failure to respond to me, I pray every blessing on your ministry; Grace is not dependent on behaviour. We will meet in Glory, but likely not before.

Shalom, shalom

Anthony

I might get a reply; I might not. Probably not, given their previous record. And to be honest I’m not bothered whether I do or I don’t. I simply would not want to be a part of their congregation; I just can’t be doing with rudeness like that. And from fellow brothers in Christ too!

Conclusion:

The bottom line for the experiment, then, is this: They fail the test.

They fail to convince me that they are a church where Jesus would fraternise with ‘tax collectors and sinners’. If this were not so, then they would have proved it to me, simply by replying to my question. Sure, they may have homeless people there. But that’s not the whole story, as well they will know. Had they been an ‘accepting’ church, then they’d have given their questioner the benefit of the doubt, should any doubt exist. It seems to me that, in their church, judgment triumphs over mercy. And by comparing that attitude with their Rulebook, in James 2:13, I’d say they’ve got that back-to-front from how God wants it.

But it answers my question. It’s not a church I could go to, simply because I would not feel safe there. They failed to be up-front about a simple question; there’s no telling what it would be like to actually be in that congregation. So I won’t be going.

Also, the complete lack of any answer to the question, “…to what extent are LGBTQ+ people integrated into your church?”, means that the answer is actually this: They’re not.

And therefore they will also likely have difficulties in accepting people like me, with my ‘differences’. The Litmus Test has done its job and saved me from a world of hurt!

So, to sum up:

I was a stranger^[8] and they would not welcome me. For whatever reason, they will not answer my reasonable question even though their systems are working.

Do they think that Jesus would be pleased with that attitude, given that He said that inasmuch as they didn’t do it for the least of these, they didn’t do it for Him?

I will let you ponder….

Grace and Peace to you all