Last Monday night was just totally amazing. We hosted a viewing of the Lifetime Movie Prayers for Bobby. It was a month in the works, partnering with the Office of LGBT Resources at the University of Illinois. We did promotions the usual way: Facebook Event, fliers in coffeeshops, personal invites, the Illini InQueeri newsletter.
As expected, people got emotional during the movie. It is a very real depiction on what many LGBT teens face when coming out to family members and amidst religious circles. Prayers for Bobby probably opened some old wounds or touched people’s buttons bringing on a variety or emotions. A couple people even broke down during very powerful or moving scenes in the movie.
When the movied ended, I went up to the front to set the tone for discussion. I expressed the need for us to be willing to connect and talk, not focusing so much on our differences, but our commonalities. Our desire was not to have a debate but to give an opportunity for folks to respond to the movie. It was a moment we wanted for us as evangelicals to shut our mouths and for LGBT people to speak. We offered 4 possible questions to direct the response time:
*What about the movie touched you personally?
*What is one thing you would want to communicate to Christians?
*Where can we go from here?
*Where does God fit in your life? What led you to this point?
What happened over the next hour was amazing to say the least. People began to share their own coming out experiences or knew people who had similar experiences as Bobby Griffin. Others expressed genuine concerns regarding the Church’s approach, not just on homosexuality but sexuality in general.
I decided to shut down dialogue at 9:30pm because I wanted people to interact vs. sitting in a lecture type atmosphere. I finally walked through my front door at 11:45pm because people hung out so long. Our folks had brought so much food so we had to sent students home with bags of food. But it was a thoroughly enjoyable time as we all made new friends that evening. Our students began adding each other on Facebook, creating quite a bit of traffic on my newsfeed. Several went out to Murphy’s afterwards. Others expressed the desire to meet later in the week and continue the dialogue.
So, while the event is over, we are hopeful for yet another new beginning. Looking forward to any feedback from those who were present that evening.
Thank you’s:
*Leslie – for giving us a chance and trusting us with your kids. I echo your email. Looking forward to many more collaborations.
*Chris, Bryce, Nate, and Jimmy (the highly educated bunch in the front) for behaving. 
*Tom and Debbie – for being surrogate parents to so many people.
*Thanks to the folks from Stone Creek Church and Excel Campus Ministry for all of the food.
*To everyone for making it a memorable moment, for stepping into No Man’s Land and for willing to connect.
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I must admit that the evening exceeded my wildest expectations. Something about the atmosphere invited dialogue, rather than debate. That is difficult-to-impossible to achieve in most sessions that have an interface between the gay and Christian communities!
I want to thank you for helping to organize the event and reach out a hand to Leslie at the LGBT office.
And I thoroughly enjoyed meeting Tom and Debbie (they really were great surrogate parents), other Stone Creek members, and even some new LGBT and PFLAG faces. I and others, as you stated, are planning to meet up sometime in the future to discuss issues related to the Church and LGBT people.
By: Topher on April 15, 2009
at 4:52 am