Most LGBTQ+ people who left church did not leave over doctrine. That is the finding at the center of a Courageous Conversations lesson from Jude 3 Project, drawn from Andrew Marin’s research. It reports that most left because they did not feel safe, or because they were pushed out. If that holds, reconciliation between the church and the LGBTQ+ community is more possible than it looks, and the main cost to the church is not its convictions. The cost is its habits.
This study asks what those habits are and what changing them would require. You can work through it alone in one sitting or with a group in one long session. Read the Scripture before the research, keep a pen nearby for the two exercises, and save the discussion questions until after the scenario near the end.
Name the story you already believe
Before reading further, write two sentences. In the first, describe what you think most LGBTQ+ people believe about the church. In the second, describe what you think most LGBTQ+ people believe about God. Keep them. You will test them against the evidence.
The lesson names the story it wants to examine. It says the LGBTQ+ community has often been characterized as hostile to conversations about faith and as wanting nothing to do with the church. It grants this may be true of some, and it blames media rhetoric for paralyzing Christians from talking with LGBTQ+ neighbors about their spiritual lives at all.
A story like that feels true because it is repeated, not because anyone checked it. So ask whose experience it describes. It tends to feature the loudest voices on both sides, the activist who rejects faith and the preacher who condemns. It leaves out the person in the middle: someone raised in a congregation, still praying, unsure whether there is a place for them. The research suggests that person is the norm, not the exception.
Scripture before strategy
The lesson grounds everything in the command Jesus calls second only to loving God. Matthew 22:39 reads: “And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” The phrase “like unto it” ties neighbor love to love for God rather than ranking it as an optional extra.
John 13:35 reads: “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” The verse concerns how disciples treat one another, so do not stretch it into a rule about outsiders. Its principle is still public: love is how the watching world recognizes a follower of Jesus.
Romans 5:8 carries the weight of the lesson’s central claim: “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” The Courageous Conversations lesson draws the conclusion directly: “Love that requires agreement as a prerequisite is not biblical love.” God did not wait for agreement before acting in love. A church that withholds love until someone agrees has reversed the order of the gospel.
Then read Luke 15:11-24, slowly, with attention to verse 20: “But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.” This is a parable, a picture of the Father’s welcome rather than a congregational policy. As a picture, it is clear: the father moves first.
What the research reports
The lesson takes its numbers from Marin’s book Us Versus Us: The Untold Story of Religion and the LGBT Community. As the lesson reports them:
- 86 percent of LGBTQ+ people were raised in a faith community from birth to age 18, which Marin defined as taking part in a church service or activity twice a week.
- 54 percent left their religious community after age 18.
- 76 percent are open to returning to their religious community and its practices.
- 80 percent pray regularly, whatever their religious identification.
The finding that matters most concerns why people left. The overwhelming majority, the lesson says, left because they did not feel safe or were kicked out. Then: “Only a small minority left because of their church’s theological stances on same-sex relationships.” And a detail easy to skim past: “Some even reported that the unwillingness of the church to talk about sexuality led to their departure.”
That last line cuts against a common instinct. Many congregations treat silence as the kind option. In this research, silence helped drive people out. Go back to your two sentences and mark anything the numbers contradict.
Read the numbers, then read your own church
These figures come from one researcher, reported secondhand. A survey shows a pattern among the people it reached. It cannot tell you how that pattern looks in your city or tradition, and the lesson does not break the results down by race, region, or denomination. Black congregations differ widely from one another in theology, in how openly they discuss sexuality, and in how they have treated LGBTQ+ members. Do not assume the research describes all of them, or that any single picture does.
Also look at the six factors respondents said would influence a return: feeling loved (12 percent), being given time (9 percent), a change in the faith community’s theology (8 percent), no attempts to change their sexual orientation (6 percent), authenticity (5 percent), and support of family and friends (4 percent). Together these make 44 percent. The lesson does not say what the rest answered, so treat the list as the factors named most often, not a complete account of what people need.
Exercise: compare the lesson with your congregation’s record
Set the lesson’s claims beside what you actually know about one church you have belonged to. Answer from memory and, if possible, from people who were there longer than you.
- In the last several years, when was sexuality addressed from the pulpit or in a class? What was said, and what tone did it take?
- Was there a long stretch of silence? Who would have noticed it most?
- Can you think of anyone who left? Do you actually know why, or are you assuming?
- Has the church’s way of speaking changed over time? What prompted the change?
Then compare your answers with Marin’s finding. Does your church’s record look like the research, or different? Where you do not know, write that down. Not knowing is itself evidence of how rarely the subject has been discussed.
The factor the church will not give
One factor is theological, which is why the lesson’s claim is limited: “The Church can easily deliver five out of six of these factors.” Jude 3 Project holds the historic Christian sexual ethic, that sexual intimacy is reserved for the marriage of one man and one woman, and the lesson presents the non-affirming view as most in line with Scripture. So reconciliation here does not mean the church trading its convictions for welcome. It means asking what welcome looks like when one party will not change its theology.
That question is only honest if you understand the view you disagree with. The lesson summarizes Matthew Vines’s affirming case in two parts. First, he argues the non-affirming view has borne bad fruit, including depression, shame, and suicide, and that bad fruit reveals a bad tree. Second, he argues ancient writers understood same-sex behavior as excess of ordinary desire rather than as an orientation, so the biblical texts condemn excess and promiscuity, not committed monogamous relationships. The non-affirming case, as the lesson presents it, answers that Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 address the act itself without that distinction, that the prohibition carries into the New Testament alongside other moral commands, and that Paul’s letters are received as Scripture, not as one apostle’s opinion.
Exercise: restate both cases
Write one paragraph stating the affirming case and one stating the non-affirming case. The test is strict: someone who holds each view should read your paragraph and say, yes, that is what I believe and why. No loaded words, no weak versions. In a group, have each person read aloud the view they do not hold. If you cannot state the other side fairly, you are not ready to disagree with it in a relationship.
The lesson also separates same-sex attraction from same-sex relationships and intercourse. It does not treat attraction as a choice or promise that it will change, which is why the factor about not trying to change someone’s orientation is one a church can honor without altering its ethic. The lesson is candid about the cost: “To accept and live by the Bible’s teaching could mean a life of celibacy, a life in which they will have to reimagine family.”
A church that asks someone to carry that cost owes them a family. Paul, writing as an unmarried man in 1 Corinthians 7:7-8, wishes others could be as he is and calls singleness a gift from God. Jesus himself never married. Jude 3 holds that singleness is not a lesser state but a full and honored way of following Christ. A congregation that believes this cannot treat single members as people waiting for their real lives to begin.
Test the postures against a hard case
The lesson offers five postures: ask questions instead of assuming, choose dialogue over debate, see people rather than projects, be a safe place, and hold the Great Commission and the Great Commandment together. They sound easy in the abstract. Test them on a scenario.
Imagine a young adult raised in your church, who has been away for two years, tells you they are gay. They still pray. They ask whether they would be welcome back, and whether you think they are going to hell.
Work through each posture. What question would you ask before answering? What would debate look like here, and what would dialogue look like? The lesson observes: “They know you don’t agree! But what they don’t know is that your love is unconditional.” How would you show that, rather than say it? What would treating this person as a project sound like? On safety, the lesson’s definition is specific: “Safety comes from the assurance that we will love them and not leave them relationally when we disagree or they don’t meet our expectations.” What would that assurance require from you over the next year, not just the next conversation?
The direct question about hell is where the last posture gets hard. The lesson insists: “The Great Commission and the Great Commandment should never be in competition with one another.” It also admits: “At times, it will be hard to discern when to speak up and when to be quiet or when to confront and when to let go.” Decide what you would say, and why.
Now face the strongest objection. Vines’s bad-fruit argument implies that a church’s safety cannot be separated from its teaching: if the teaching itself wounds, kindness will not make the room safe. Take that seriously. The lesson’s answer is that much of the harm came from treatment rather than teaching, and its own warning shows it knows the difference: “Don’t bulldoze over people’s feelings in the name of Biblical convictions.” Whether that answer fully holds is something the research cannot settle. Some people will not return to a non-affirming church however kind it is. The church’s question is whether it will still love them.
For whoever leads
Say aloud at the start that this topic may be difficult and that some people in the room may be same-sex attracted. The lesson asks leaders to do this. Never ask anyone to disclose anything about their own sexuality, and make every personal question easy to pass. If talk drifts toward “those people,” steer it back to specific relationships and habits. Some carry real pain here, including depression and thoughts of suicide; if anyone is considering ending their life, the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is available by call or text.
Questions for discussion
- Compare your opening two sentences with the research. Which assumptions did the numbers challenge, and which still stand?
- Why might silence about sexuality feel safe to a congregation and unsafe to the person who needs to talk?
- What did comparing your congregation’s record with the research reveal? What did you discover you did not know?
- When you restated the view you do not hold, what was hardest to say fairly?
- How would someone experience the difference between a church holding a conviction about sexual behavior and a church treating their attraction as a problem to fix?
- If some people will not return to a church because of its ethic, what does that church still owe them?
- If you can think of someone whose trust may have been damaged by how sexuality was discussed around them, what would a first honest step toward them involve?
What the evidence leaves you with
The research does not end the theological disagreement, and this study has not tried to. What it does is relocate the wall. If most people left over how they were treated rather than what was taught, then much of what keeps the church and the LGBTQ+ community apart is within the church’s control. That is both a relief and an indictment. The father in Luke 15 could not make his son come home, but he could make sure the road back led to an embrace. Whether your church’s road leads there is the question this study leaves in your hands.