Revisiting “When Ministry Was the Closet”

My story has been told before.

I met Jeff Chu [i]at a microbrewery in Hartford a few years after everything blew up. I was working as a sous chef. Jeff and his husband, Tristan, are close with my sister Molly and my brother-in-law Jed; when Jeff mentioned his book on gay Christians, Molly said, “You should talk to Ben.”

We sat over lunch. The restaurant was quiet on a weekday afternoon. Jeff had taken the train up from New York. He listened. He asked careful questions, followed up, and asked permission to reach out to others to fact-check and add color. He was as much journalist as pastor.

In Jeff’s book, Does Jesus Really Love Me?, my chapter is called “When Ministry Is the Closet.” His telling is accurate, sensitive, and grace-filled. It’s also a snapshot—a single frame from a moving story.

I wince a little when I read it now. That version of me was still raw and wounded. But I also smile: the survivor shows up on the page. You can see the same threads I’m weaving here—what happened at the church, the summer trips to Ohio to sit with J.R. and Bart, the steadying presence of Pastor Nancy, the early “spiritual practice of transparency,” and the blog I called Faith Autopsy.

That snapshot captured a man who had grown and survived but was still clinging to an evangelical identity and vocabulary. I confessed to Jeff that I was “90% sure” on some convictions. It was honest. It was also incomplete.

More than a decade later, the picture looks different. I’m back in ministry, doing work I love with church and kitchens braided together. I don’t feel any need to claim the label “evangelical” (that’s as much about our politics as theology), and my faith has shifted from a transaction with God to a way of life in God. I don’t police who’s “in” or “out.” I trust God with that and keep inviting people into the Way of Jesus because I’ve learned two things: life is simply better with Jesus at the center, and I’d rather walk the Way of Jesus than do anything else. I’ll let God shoulder eternity.

I’m also a happy, openly gay man. I don’t apologize for that, and I no longer think I need to. My queerness has become a gift—it’s made me more empathetic, more human. I date (sometimes awkwardly), I’ve had a few real relationships, and I’m more emotionally and spiritually healthy than I’ve ever been.

Snapshots matter. They prove we were there. But they aren’t the whole movie. If you’re reading this while your snapshot still looks bruised and blurry, keep going. Fruit ripens. Stories unfold. And grace keeps developing the picture.