Who Cares? A Newsletter for Caring Pastors and Educators was published during and by Claude E. Steen, III. But more and more our eyes are being opened and our hearts are being wrenched by nagging questions about how to act as Jesus would in the face of deep but quiet anguish. Whose anguish? That of members in our pews and students in our schools who deeply identify as Adventists, but who are sure that their other, equally deep, identity as gay or lesbian can never be welcomed by their church.
Briefly, here's my story. This past June I retired after more than 40 years of pastoral ministry, mostly in the NAD Columbia and Southern Unions, with five years in Ethiopia, where I had grown up as an MK. My wife Donna and I are the proud parents of five adult children, all outstanding achievers with solid careers and great families, giving us 11 grandchildren to date! So why would I want to dedicate a portion of my retirement to editing a newsletter about gays?
Because I have come to realize that for most of those wonderful years of marriage and ministry I was blind. Blind to some pressing needs of my parishioners. And blind even to agonizing struggles going on in my own children. First came the news that one of our daughters-in-law an Adventist professional from a good Adventist family, a great mother of two of our wonderful grandchildren was leaving her marriage, having decided she is a lesbian.
Then just over a year ago, another son in medical school, still single at 31, a "son with whom I am well pleased" called to tell his mother and me that he is gay. Obviously all this has raised many urgent questions in my mindβsome deeply personal, others more general and professional. Why couldn't a son struggling for years with his sexual orientation confide in his pastor father or his educator mother? Why in all my years of pastoring Adventist churches was I never aware of even one gay or lesbian member or attendee?
I've come to realize that it wasn't because they weren't there that I didn't see these people, but because I was blind. They didn't make themselves known because my churches, and the attitudes I projected, were not "safe" for such discussions or disclosures.
