THE RELUCTANT PREACHER

William “Jeffrey” Campbell

CEO, Allies in Hope – Houston, TX

In great Golden Girls fashion, picture it!  April 1983!  A high school gym filled with about 500 small town students.  I’m there giving a campaign speech for Student Council Vice President for the next year which would be my senior year in high school.  Something happened during that speech that seemed like an out of body experience.  At the end of that speech my schoolmates were on their feet cheering, clapping, and stomping.  I returned to my seat trying to control the trembling that had started in my body and the tears that were filling my eyes.  When the assembly was dismissed, one of the staff who was a dear family friend walked towards me with tears in her eyes.  She grabbed me, hugged me and told me that she was so proud of me and I was going to do great things.  I controlled my tears and my tremors trying to process the moment.  I was baffled but I did win that race.

Over the years, I was able to identify that moment as the first time I got a nudge from God about being a spiritual leader.  I absolutely did not want to do that.  I was from a small town and while I was exposed to good preaching, I did not want to be a preacher.  I was also trying to find words to explain to myself who I was as a sexual being.  The root of that struggle was deep in my relationship with the church that I had known all my life.  I believed that what I felt and what I had been taught could never live in me without conflict.

It was years later, after graduating college, relocating to Houston, accepting a call to ministry, dating and breaking up with women and having lots of sex with men that wise counsel showed up.  It was my conversations with Black women who were near and dear to me that encouraged me to intentionally expand my religious studies to include the historical critical interpretation of scripture rather than the literal interpretation.  That was like drinking fresh water from a new well.  Although it took lots of time and work, I was able to accept that God loved me and the call on my life was real.  I also came to understand that I was called not despite my same-sex attraction but because of it.

Almost 40 years after that experience in that gym, I’m clear that I cannot do the work I do in HIV prevention and LGBTQ advocacy without entering every room as my authentic self.  I’m a Black man who is gay, called to do spiritual work in community and to create safe spaces for community.  That authenticity has created a space for me in places that my 17-year old mind would have never imagined back in that high school gymnasium in 1983.  In the words of my elders, “I wouldn’t take nothin’ for my journey.”