06/09/2026
I know it’s really long, but I hope you’ll read this.
Because it’s important.
And it’s not about what I did. It’s a call for each of us.
Pride was truly special. And I’m so proud of our church representation. We have so very much work to do.
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Pastor, Pride, and Paprikash
Dressed in my clerical collar, a rainbow tutu, and rainbow earrings nearly as large as my ears, I joyfully marched in Pride in the CLE with a group from my church.
For me, it was more than a parade. It was an act of discipleship.
As Christians, we are called to stand wherever human dignity is threatened and wherever God's beloved children are told they are less than beloved. Every person bears the image of God. Every person carries within them an inherent worth that no rejection, judgment, or exclusion can erase.
The energy of the crowd carried us forward. We handed out beads. We clapped. We danced. We smiled. We wished people a happy Pride. Every so often, I would catch someone's eye and say the words I felt most needed to be spoken:
"You are so loved."
After the march, I wandered through the festival and, realizing I was hungry, settled at a picnic table with a bowl of chicken paprikash.
As I started to eat, I noticed a young person—perhaps in their early twenties—walking toward me. Twice they approached, then turned away. The third time, they finally stopped at my table.
"Are you really a pastor?" they asked.
I introduced myself as a United Methodist pastor and invited them to sit down.
They seemed nervous, but they accepted.
Then they asked a question I will never forget.
"Could you pray for me?"
I told them my name was Lisa and asked theirs. After introductions, they began sharing pieces of their story—a story I have heard far too many times.
A story of fractured relationships.
A story of being pushed away by family.
A story of wondering where they belonged.
A story of trying to reconcile who they are with what they had been told about God.
As they spoke, tears began to form in their eyes.
Then the skies opened.
Rain poured down around us, yet neither of us moved.
For a moment, it felt as though the whole world had disappeared, leaving only two people sitting at a picnic table beneath a gray sky.
Then they looked directly at me for the first time.
Through tears, their voice trembling, they said:
"Even if I don't belong to anyone here... even if nobody I have loved can love me back... I need to know if God could love me. I need you to pray that God could love me."
We sat in silence.
The rain mixed with our tears.
And in that moment, I felt the weight of generations of harm.
The harm inflicted by a culture that too often confuses judgment with righteousness.
The harm inflicted by churches that have sometimes proclaimed conditions where God has proclaimed grace.
The harm inflicted when human beings are told that they must earn what God has already given.
Suddenly, the rainbow tutu and oversized earrings no longer felt silly.
They felt sacred.
Because what mattered in that moment was not my costume. It was my presence.
It was the visible witness of a pastor willing to stand in a place where many have only encountered religion as rejection.
It was the quiet but powerful testimony that there are clergy, churches, and Christians who will not weaponize God's name against God's children.
I looked at them and called them by name.
"You are loved."
I paused.
"You are beloved."
Another pause.
"We don't need to pray for God to love you. God already does."
Their tears continued to fall.
"God's love is not waiting for your perfection. It is not dependent on anyone else's approval. God's love is not something you achieve. It is something you receive."
Then I said the words I most needed them to hear:
"God is love. And you have been created in the image and likeness of that Love."
And so we prayed.
Not for God to begin loving them.
But for them to know it.
To trust it.
To live into it.
To discover, little by little, what has been true from the very beginning.
When I finished, they whispered, "Amen."
And as they walked away, I found myself praying one more prayer, not aloud, but from the deepest place within me…that their "Amen" would become more than a word.
That it would become a way of life.
That they would come to know their true identity.
Not abandoned.
Not rejected.
Not tolerated.
Beloved.
Sometimes ministry happens in sanctuaries beneath stained-glass windows.
Sometimes it happens at hospital bedsides.
Sometimes it happens in quiet offices and coffee shops.
And sometimes it happens at Pride, over a bowl of chicken paprikash, while rain falls from the sky.
Because sometimes the Communion table looks less like a church altar and more like a picnic table.
And sometimes the holiest thing we can offer another human being is the reminder that before they were anything else…before any label, before any judgment, before any wound that they were, are, and always will be a beloved child of God.
