A Good Bishop

I want to spend some time talking about my ward (that's my local congregation).  I need to start by saying a couple of things.  First, I am incredibly lucky to be in this ward.  Second, I can't accurately describe it, but I'm going to try.  The reason I want to explain it, is just because I feel like there are some really good things going on this ward, and I hope people can learn from it.

My ward has a large number of people who are pretty understanding about homosexuality.  When our bishop was first called to our ward I was the first person to approach him and talk about my sexual identity.  He took it under his wing, and gave me all sorts of counsel that he felt like would help me 'fix' the issue.  Although that bothered me, there was never judgment, just encouragement, and when I decided to stop going to church the entirety of fall semester, he never chased me down, he just gave me my space, and trusted me to make decisions for myself.  I'm thankful for that.  

I think one thing that's helped him figure things out is that there are a total of eleven gay men in my ward.  You read that right, there are eleven of us.  After I went to him, and then dropped off the face of the earth, he got the chance to try to help a parade of gay men following me.  I kind of feel sorry for the guy, but I feel like if anything will change it will come as more of us band together and speak out about homosexuality.  

That wasn't a super deep description of the ward, but I'll probably describe how different people have responded in later blog posts.

In summary, I wanted to make a list of things that my bishop did that helped me personally.  He gave me the chance to talk about the issue, and offered to help in whatever way he could. There was no judgment when I said that I was gay, there was no heavy sigh, no wide-eyed look of shock, he just took it.  I appreciated that.  He asked questions. He wanted to know where I stood, what I believed, why I believed what I believed, and how he could help me.  The fact that he spent time being genuinely interested in me, my mind, and my heart, helped me develop a trust in him as a bishop.

The second major thing that he did was leave me alone.  When I decided to stop coming to church, he didn't show up at my house to talk it out.  He never sent the Elders' Quorum President after me.  I was never a referral that he handed out to the missionaries.  I was never assigned the power combo hometeachers. I was left alone, and I appreciate that, because any push to get me back to church would have pushed me further away from the church.  This needed to be my own journey, and he was smart enough to leave it to me to take that journey alone.