The Chapters

PART 1

Growing up and out in the black church: the seeds of sickness

1/Roots, running deep

2/Sanctified Sanctimony

3/Deliverance: Swept,garnished and sealed

4/Wounds from a friend

5/A summer of 20 years

PART 2

Life inside the tomb: making my bed with the wicked

6/A church boy in the gay life

7/Our brave new world

8/Closets and Clubs

9/Hustling on Empty

10/Homosexual? Not me!

11/Can I tell it? (Praise Break)

12/The game of love

13/Brother to brother

14/An indecent proposal

PART 3

Coming out alive, shedding the past and healing for the future

15/A time to turn

16/Off to war!

17/Will you speak for me?

18/Real restoration takes time

19/Finding Ms Good Thing

PART 4

People like you touching people like us: A message to the church

20/How unbelief, fear and    ignorance breed prejudice

21/Touching a Dead Man

Appendix

Reality Kills: The Profiles

• JD Husband
  

• James Cleveland
  

• Sylvester
  

• Raymond Myles
  

Chapter 3

The front cover of the book Exposing Spiritual Witchcraft, depicted a  huge spider spinning a sinister-looking web. The author, Apostle Jonas  Clark of Florida, was described as "anointed" and carrying a "refreshing  voice of the Spirit." He wanted to educate believers on the dangers of spiritual witchcraft.

  While reading the book's interesting claims, I came across a couple of  paragraphs that threw me for a loop. They seemed like a couple of  rotten apples hidden in a barrel of perfect fruit.

  "I was preaching at  a church", Clark says, "and had an altar call. In  the prayer line was about 40 people. As I was praying for this person,  I smelt this smell and I knew by the Spirit what smell it was. His  name was homosexual. Whenever I get around a person that is an active homosexual, I can smell that devil. It's an unclean spirit. When I was praying for this young man, I smelled that smell and said, 'come off', and  God just body-slammed that kid to the floor."

  In order to get the context of what Clark was saying, I reread the  entire page, but the statement left me disoriented. It left far too many questions unanswered. For example, do other sins have distinctive  smells? If so, what distinguishes them from homosexuality? Out of the 40  people in the prayer line, weren't any of the others sinful? Why did God  "body slam" this particular young man? Does being slammed to the floor  mean you're delivered from homosexuality? Was it His way of showing  special disapproval of those involved in homosexuality or was it just the  author's choice of prejudicial words? And the even larger question is  what happened after the young man got off the floor?2

  Did anyone offer to help him overcome his problem? Also, what does  Clark do when he "smells" homosexuality in a public setting? Does he only  deal with it in the comfortable surroundings inside the church walls?  I'm sorry, but the questions are endless. I have seen at other times an  almost violent reaction (by ministers conducting "prayer lines") to  people who confess they are struggled against homosexuality.

  The example unfortunately highlights a gray area of ministry many  homosexuals fall into when the subject of deliverance comes up. Clark's  bizarre account of "deliverance" of the young man may be a lot more common  than one might believe. Are homosexuals instantaneously delivered by  the power of God or does it take a process of healing to bring them to  wholeness?

  Pentecostal churches, probably more frequently than other  "evangelical" churches, place strong emphasis on deliverance theology. There's  nothing wrong with that, but there's much more to the story. Deliverance, in  the Pentecostal thought, means, whatever your problem is, God will  deliver you from it. And some have added that if you didn't receive your  deliverance, it must have been because "you didn't want it bad enough."  Well, I wanted to be delivered and fast before anyone found out.

  The saints have been known to pray for hours for someone's deliverance  or tarry until someone "came through". Usually someone laid hands on  you and spoke in tongues, prophesied or rebuked devils. But still, so  many people are lost, wandering around in the church looking for the

manifestation of what someone told them.

  Getting lost in the quarry of church-taught deliverance is no joke. I  got lost my first day of school in 1970. I was a second grader and  feeling very proud that I could walk to school with my older brothers. We  didn't live that far from the school, just about four long blocks and a hop through some wooded trails, but when you're lost, it might as well  be a million miles,  you're still lost.

  I have no idea how I got separated from them, but the sick feeling of  being lost finally crept up on me. I ended up wandering around, up and  down the same street, looking for my house. I went past Antioch Baptist  Church and turned around at the corner and went by it again. I was  very tired, scared and lost. I walked for hours looking at each house,  hoping that I could get back home to safety away from the barking dogs.

  Finally, a lady came out of her door and saw me sobbing. She asked me  what was wrong. I told her I couldn't get home. She asked me what my  name was and when I told her my last name, she said "Oh, honey, Miz Foster (my mother) lives right around the corner!" She felt so sorry for me.

I was only one block away, but didn't know it.

   Can you imagine wandering around the church for years, trying to find  your way out of homosexuality? For many brothers and sisters it's a  terrible reality. Revival after revival, prayer meeting after prayer meeting, but yet still lost. Deliverance seems so close, but yet so far  away. The way out is simple, but not simplistic. We just need an  understanding.

  I believe strongly in God's delivering power. Yet, there is an after altar process that is sorely lacking in our churches. I believe this is why so many strugglers fall back into the lifestyle. Too much emphasis is placed on one night of ecclesiastical passion.

  What happens when all the crying and snot-slinging is over? What happens when you get up off the floor or finish running around the church on your deliverance trot? What happens when the preacher has finished  dousing you with oil and nearly knocking you unconscious? What happens

after you have hollered three times to three people "I'm delivered, I'm  delivered, I'm delivered!"? I'll tell you what happens. Nothing.