As a gay man, I spent most of my adulthood feeling unwelcome in church. I grew up in a congregation that taught me my very identity was sinful. I didn’t question it then. I accepted that if I wanted to be accepted by God and His people, I needed to change. At the time, I truly believed Christians were trying to help me find salvation. And because I wasn’t yet living authentically, I was treated relatively well by my peers and church elders.
Everything changed after I came out in my early twenties. I’ll never forget my first encounter with a Christian after that. I was working at the mall, and during my lunch break, a woman walked up to me, poured hot coffee on my face, and said I was going to hell.
That was the moment I realized there is no love quite like Christian hate.
It was the first of many painful experiences.
Once, while walking to the store with my boyfriend at the time, two men in a truck pulled up beside us, shouted a slur, and threw beer bottles our way. On another occasion, at a fast-food restaurant, I was shoved into a wall and told, “If there’s no place for you in heaven, there’s no place for you here either. Go kill yourself, or I’ll do it for you.”
All of these attacks came from people who identified as Christians.
So what was I supposed to think about Christianity after that? The faith I had known as a child had become something dark and unrecognizable. I began to believe that religion was little more than a mask people used to excuse cruelty in the name of their God.
Still, I kept searching. I wanted to believe there were Christians who truly embodied the love of Christ. Over the years, I visited many churches. I was often greeted with warm smiles at the door, but those smiles tended to fade once I stepped inside. I also attended congregations that were openly LGBTQ+ affirming. While they were loving and accepting, many were not Christ-centered. Some denied the Trinity or the divinity of Christ, and though they welcomed me, they often treated my identity as a trophy for progressive credibility rather than simply seeing me as human. That, too, left me feeling unseen.
Eventually, I stopped trying. No church seemed to want me, and the ones that did seemed to want to use me. I found a temporary home in pagan and alternative spiritual communities. Yet even there, I quietly longed for a Christ-centered perspective. Over time, my resentment toward organized religion grew so deep that it almost became its own belief system. I was anti-religion, anti-Christianity, and anti-God, all while secretly yearning to find Him again.
Then one day, something unexpected happened.
I received a text from Shannon, the pastor of Trinity United Methodist Church of Cartersville. That simple conversation led to a job opportunity, and before I knew it, I was working at a church, something I never thought I’d do again.
At first, I told myself to just enjoy the experience and not overthink it. But that experience became a round-trip journey back to the source, back to faith, back to the God I thought I had lost forever. I wasn’t expecting to find Him again, but I did.
Trinity United Methodist Church of Cartersville is doing something extraordinary. We are creating a space where love and compassion aren’t just preached, but lived. We are doing what every church should be doing, treating people with genuine respect, kindness, and dignity.
The fact that a loving, Christ-centered environment within Christian walls is still considered rare says a lot about the world we live in. But that’s what makes this church so special. Through the compassion, authenticity, and grace of its members, I found a reflection of the God I had been searching for all along.
Trinity didn’t just restore my faith in the people of God, it renewed my belief in God Himself.
I haven’t yet sat down and spoken directly to God in prayer. I’m still on the road to reconciliation. But I’m studying, reading, and learning about Methodist theology, slowly rebuilding what was broken. I know that when I am ready to speak to Him again, it will be with the God of love, not the false image of God that others used to justify hate.
And when that day comes, I will make sure to thank the members of Trinity United Methodist Church for their love, their work, and their reflection of Him. Because through them, I finally found what I had been searching for all along.
Gregory Siegel
