“I was worried about what people were going to say and if they would still love me,” he said, recalling that some of his family celebrated his coming out.
I’ve seen too much of it,” he said, adding that stress and depression led him to break the news to his family in Philadelphia last Thanksgiving.
But after years of praying, after years of fighting it, and I realized this wasn’t going away, I had to have a conversation with God.”Įvans said he came close to marrying a woman like Pastor Mitchell did, but couldn’t go through with it. “I thought one day that if I prayed long enough, God would heal me from this ailment. “For years, I lived blindly believing that one day God would take this feeling away,” the 30-year-old Miami minister told TheGrio. But he quickly realized that didn’t work when he caught himself eyeing another man shortly after, he said. But it wasn’t easy.Īs a freshman at Florida A&M University, he ran to the altar with hopes of being delivered from homosexuality. “I don’t know where we get the scripture and the understanding that gay people can’t love the Lord or be accepted by the Lord.”īenjamin Evans knows firsthand the struggle these pastors faced.Įvans, who is not part of the show, is also a minister and last year revealed to his friends, family and co-workers that he’s gay. “When you stand courageously, you give people permission to do the same,” Vanzant said.
“And if these men aren’t clean within themselves, with God, there’s no way that they can be guiding and supporting and directing people.”Īfter Pastor Derek’s sermon where he discussed his sexuality, Vanzant said they received about 20 letters from congregants also revealing they were gay or struggling with dealing with their sexuality. “The pastors’ stories touched me because they have an opportunity to touch so many people’s lives, and people to go to church, particularly the black church, seeking a level of solace and guidance and direction,” said Vanzant, who is an ordained New Thought minister. The reason for the three parts, Vanzant said, was to show the steps required for both the person coming out and the people they’re coming out to.