Exuberant Church

The Exuberant Church

Barbara Glasson describes the experience known as ‘coming out’, and I found this an enlightening book to read. It doesn’t only include members of a particular LGBT community known to the author (i.e. lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender), though in common parlance the expression ‘coming out’ tends to be used with that reference. Barbara Glasson includes adult survivors of childhood abuse, people with addictions, homeless people, refugees and asylum seekers, people with mental health problems and a group of disabled ministers with whom she has contact – people ‘on the edge’. These are ‘prophetic communities’. She is obviously strongly committed to listening to them. She herself has been minister of ‘Somewhere Else’, a radical Christian community in Liverpool, affectionately known as ‘the bread church’ (supported by the Methodists, she says), before moving on to new challenges in Bradford. Her own experience of ‘coming out’ is not of the LGBT variety, but has lain in discovering a process of ‘dis-ease’ with the church and in re-examining the masks she wears in her role as a minister. Just what is this experience like? ”A process of transformation, of discovery and adventure”; “a movement of the self into new ways of being and the possibility of surprise and joy”; “a betwixt and between place”; “a liminal threshold between the old and the new self”, which may begin with inner turmoil and a seeming “meltdown of identity and relationships”, to allow for a “reconfiguration and realignment of self-understanding” prior to “an integration of the new identity” – these are just some of the expressions that Glasson uses to describe the essential character of ‘coming out’. Its effects can vary between opening up “great skies in which to soar to new heights” and “seemingly bottomless fissures into which the vulnerable emergent self is in danger of plummeting”. Coming out of what? Chapter 5 deals with four paradigms within British culture – the perfect family, the functional body, the competent worker and the rational mind. What does ‘coming out’ mean there? But Glasson’s chief interest is in the Church. What about the churches then, that have so often ‘excluded’ those ‘on the edge’? Coming out is a “passionate process”, full of “pent-up energy”. Can churches handle that? The Church needs to be transformed, needs to come out of its own “cycles of hypocrisy and pretence” and needs to listen to the voice of coming-out people and communities. Chapters 4, 7 and 8 stir the heart and mind. And how about the ‘Why Not?’ questions on Page 125! My enthusiasm for this book should be clear!

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