Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries (ELM) is committed to the full participation of persons of all sexual orientations and gender identities in the life and ministry of the Lutheran church.

The Rev. James Bischoff

When Lutheran Pastor James Bischoff revealed to his California congregation in the summer of 1998 that he was gay and in a relationship, the congregation fractured. People took sides; friendships collapsed. By the time Bischoff resigned later that summer, a sizable part of his congregation had moved on, too.

Some of those who left chose to attend other area churches. But a small band of dissenters took a radical step. As an act of love, a demonstration of conscience and a protest against the Lutheran church’s policy requiring gay clergy to be celibate, they created an independent Lutheran church and asked Bischoff to serve them.

“As far as I know, at least in the Lutheran family, this has never happened before over this issue,” Bischoff said.  “This is a phenomenal group of people.”

The Church of All Saints, which was founded in 1998, is situated in a town 30 miles north of San Diego called San Marcos. The congregation is devoted to community projects like collecting supplies for homeless children and hosting a forum for local political candidates. It is also devoted to making gays and lesbians, among others, feel welcome.

“It’s not turning into specifically a gay and lesbian church; that’s not it,” said Ray Wiebe, who with his wife, Linda, and dozens of others founded All Saints. “It’s just the fact that the people are open and loving.”

Now, he added, “We can do what we’re supposed to be doing in the world without any qualms at all.”

Perhaps no one has felt more liberated by the new church than Bischoff. “The thing I feared most in life happened to me,” he said, “and it turned out to be probably the biggest blessing in my life, ever.”

Still, the wounds have not healed.

Even if the Lutheran Church eventually changes its policy regarding homosexual clergy, Linda Wiebe said she’s not sure she’d return to the fold.

“I think I’m still a little resentful of their slowness to come around to what’s real in the world, and how they should be behaving as Christian people,” she said.

Bischoff said that, after feeling like he was “kicked out of the family,” he also is unsure he’d return. But he does yearn, he said, to re-experience the fulfillment of being connected to the larger church body. “I really miss that sense of belonging,” he said. “When I was growing up, the church was everything.”

Raised in a rural Michigan community of conservative Lutherans, Bischoff says he knew from childhood where his destiny lay. “The only thing I ever wanted to be was a pastor,” he said.  “I used to force my cousins to play church. I’d smash down bread for communion wafers and all that kind of stuff.”

It wasn’t until he attended seminary, Bischoff said, that another aspect of his destiny became clear: his homosexuality. “I struggled with that a lot,” he said. “I prayed constantly for I don’t know how many years. I’m not proud of it, but I prayed to be an alcoholic, or a drug abuser or anything but this. ... In the middle of my prayers, it was as though God said, ‘Enough. I made you, now accept it and get on with things.’ So I did.”

Bischoff was ordained in 1976 as a minister in the American Lutheran Church, which regarded “homosexual erotic behavior” as “contrary to God’s intent for his children.” [American Lutheran Church Social Statement, “Human Sexuality and Sexual Behavior” (1980)] After the ALC and other branches of Lutheranism united to form the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in 1988, the merged Lutheran Church adopted a statement of “Vision and Expectations” requiring ordained ministers who are “homosexual in their self-understanding” to “abstain from homosexual sexual relationships.” [“Vision and Expectations — Ordained Ministers in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America,” 1990.] So Bischoff led a discreet and largely solitary life.

“I had dated and those sorts of things, but I never had lived with anyone,” he said.

One day, deeply depressed, Bischoff realized that he could not continue to push people away. “I had spent 20 years in parish ministry -- this is before I met my partner -- and I just thought, 'OK, if I meet someone and feel that this is the person I want to spend the rest of my life with, then I will explore that.' And I did.”

Some members of San Marcos Lutheran Church knew about and endorsed Bischoff’s relationship with David Kroll. Others who eventually found out could not accept it. Faced with warnings that he would be reported to the bishop, Bischoff outed himself to his congregation during a sermon. Many worshipers applauded and embraced him, he remembers. But as opponents mounted a campaign to force him out, the mood in the church turned foul. Bischoff said he resigned because he felt the dissension would otherwise never end.

In its first year, the All Saints congregation worshiped in an elementary school cafeteria. “We had Humpty Dumptys hanging from the ceiling,” Bischoff said. Church members made the altar, the altar cloths, the candlesticks, the reading desk and the cross. “The biggest challenge was we had to haul everything in and out every week,” Bischoff said. Between Sundays, the Wiebe family room became a storage space. After that, All Saints rented space in a one-story office building.

For the Wiebes, All Saints is an example of what church members can accomplish when they join together to fight injustice. “We’re the prototype,” Linda said. “When it was needed,” Ray adds, “we took the stand.”

Is what happened to Bischoff’s original congregation a microcosm of what will happen to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America when its studies of its policies regarding gay and lesbian Americans are completed?

“I’m hopeful that the church could come up with some way to not split itself apart over this,” Bischoff said. “But then I think maybe that’s what has to happen. I don’t know. I don’t know. But there’s always hope.”