Rev Andy Braunston

My process of becoming a Christian was a slow and gradual one. I was raised as a Roman Catholic but my parents did not attend mass very often so I had no real idea what this meant. I started attending mass, out of curiosity, in my early teens and felt attracted to the worship and the sense of meaning it started to give my life - at the time I was in a difficult place emotionally due to problems at home. One day the priest got to the door before I did and asked if I had made my first Holy Communion or had been confirmed - I said that I hadn't so he rather imperiously, summoned me to go to his house the following day for catechism classes!

Over the next 10 months or so, I went every Monday evening whilst Fr Michael taught me the faith. He taught it to me in a very traditional way, but he taught me to pray, what the Christian faith was all about, what the Church was supposed to be and to listen for Jesus speaking to me every time I received communion. It was very simple, very sincere and is still with me 20 years on! The catechism classes were also very good in that they encouraged me to question and to find answers to my questions. Very soon I was moving from "milk" or easier concepts to "meat" or more difficult concepts. My love of theology started on those Monday evenings all those years ago.

After some months I made my first confession and received Holy Communion for the first time. I was a bit daunted by this business of confession but steeled myself to confess my sins (which can't have been that heinious I was only 13!) However, as the priest read the words of absolution I knew with an absolute and final certainty that God forgave me because Jesus died for me. I came out of the confessional walking on air, knowing that I had been forgiven and made new again. All my guilty little secrets, all my failings seemed to evaporate like the morning dew.

As time went on I grew in the faith and started to feel an awareness that God was calling me to be a priest. However, I had a dawning realisation that I was also attracted to other men. This led my faith journey in an interesting way as I ended up attending, and then joining, an evangelical charismatic Anglican church. I was asked along there by a lad in my form at school whom I fancied. I am sure he never realised the true reason why I started to go along there but I found, aside from my feelings for him, that I enjoyed the more exuberant form of worship at this church. My calling to be a priest continued, but I loved the charismatic style of worship and found something very fulfilling there. The problem was my emerging gay sexuality.

I knew that the Catholic Church saw homosexuals as being "intrinsically morally disordered" and had to be celibate. I knew that the evangelicals thought we could be healed or needed to have demons thrown out of us. For many months I prayed that God would take away my homosexuality and turn me into a heterosexual. On two occassions I started relationships with girlfriends believing that if I "stepped out in faith" I would be healed. Well that didn't work!

I started to realise that I was made to love other men and I realised that it would be difficult, if not impossible to live out my vocation in either the Catholic or Anglican communions. I knew I was not called to celibacy and I believe that Jesus did not see this as a sin, or as something which should be denied. This led to a long period of depression and questioning. I felt that I had to give up one thing or the other - and I knew I could not give up being gay. This struggle got worse when I went to university and I knew I could not continue within an evangelical church so I started attending Mass again, just sitting at the back and being anonymous. In my second year at university I came out and started to explore my gay self. At the same time, and for the first time, I read of gay people who celebrated their faith, who had come to a full understanding of the Scriptural passages used to condemn us. I became very angry that I had never been told there was a debate on these passages and there was another point of view!

In my third year at university I was invited along, by a friend of a friend, to MCC in London. I met the Rev Jean White, their pastor, for the first time and was intrigued by the service and the people. As God would have it, the service was a commemoration of the founding of MCC and the Rev White asked people to share what MCC had meant for them. This was a very powerful "advert" for MCC and I decided to go back again and to study MCC for my final year disertation.

Over the coming weeks and months I got to know MCC very well. I was moved by their boldness in daring to believe that God had raised them up to serve
our community. I became excited as I realise that this is where Jesus was calling me to use my gifts, my talents and my money. I became humbled as I realised it was to this church that I was called to work in as a priest.

Now 16 years on I see that Jesus had been leading me gently through my teenage years and preparing me for ministry within MCC. This is a church where we can worship with evangelical and charismatic exuberance, whilst being grounded by forms of worship found in the wider church. Along the way God arranged for the journeys of myself and my partner to collide and I believe that my relationship with my partner makes me a better person and a better priest. We support each other and our relationship is nurtured and sustained by our faith in God.

In MCC we find that as we follow Jesus we are transformed - often rather slowly - from "glory" into "glory" as Wesley put it. We use our gifts and skills so that more of our people can find the peace, love, freedom from guilt and self hatred that we have found, so that, indeed, they can be saved. This is what MCC is about for me. This is what Jesus has done for me within MCC.

Andy Braunston