Defining yourself as a “gay Christian,” even if you are celibate and not active in a homosexual relationship, is wildly misleading. Would you call yourself a greedy Christian? Would you call yourself a tax-collector Christian? It seems strange to identify yourself with sin. I had such a clean break from it, and it was entirely God’s grace upon me to see that it was necessary. It’s strange to me to see these attempts. Every time I’d listen to a sermon or read the Bible I’d end up in tears: “Oh my gosh, this is true! I can’t believe I know God and know the meaning of life finally!” There are conversations today about whether one can be a “gay Christian.” Is there a way to reconcile following Jesus with having a gay identity? So I had all this time to spend with God, to pray and read the Bible. During that time right after I got saved, I had a three-month period of no work, which was unusual.
It was a process of people discipling me at my church and God discipling me through these other voices. I listened to all of Tim Keller’s sermons, as well as John Stott and Dick Lucas. I would get random “I’m praying for you today!” texts all the time. There were so many others at the church who came around me and supported me, recommending books and sermons and praying for me. Tim and I would meet for coffee each week, and though I didn’t know why, he was discipling me. What did discipleship look like for you after you got saved? It was shocking and unexpected to me, a Road to Damascus moment. It all really resonated, and it prompted me to go forward at the end of the service to receive prayer. So when Tim was preaching all these things that were the exact opposite of what I thought religion was, I was like, Whoa. I don’t think the priests in my high school once explained what the gospel was. I grew up in Catholic schools, and I honestly thought religion was just being a good person, doing good things. Tim Chaddick preached the sermon that day, and everything he was saying basically turned what I knew about religion upside down. When you showed up to church that first Sunday at Reality, you ended up becoming a Christian. But instead I was like, Maybe I could be wrong. Five years earlier I would have been like, You guys are insane. But the reason I was able to accept their answer was because I had that moment in Paris. I appreciated their honesty and that they didn’t beat around the bush. I asked what their church believed about homosexuality, and they explained that they believed it is a sin. They explained the gospel, what they believed. So when I came to this coffee shop six months later and saw that group of young people with their Bibles open, I started asking them questions. I wasn’t confused about what the Bible had to say about homosexuality. But I knew God was never an option, because I was gay. I had already been wrestling with questions about the meaning of life, searching for it in all sorts of ways. It was one of the most intense “is that all there is?” moments in my life. Yet I was overwhelmed with emptiness at this party. I was at a fashion party and just felt empty: I had done everything in Hollywood, met everyone, traveled everywhere. It was a moment in Paris six months earlier. What was going on in your life that made the soil, so to speak, ready to receive the gospel seed? Take me back to that day, in this very coffee shop, 10 years ago. Here is an edited transcript of our conversation. I recently met up with Cook at Intelligentsia-the place where his encounter with coffee-drinking, Bible-studying Christians set his conversion in motion.
In the years since, Cook completed a degree at Talbot School of Theology and wrote a memoir of his conversion, A Change of Affection: A Gay Man’s Incredible Story of Redemption, which just released. He never looked back, trading his gay identity for a new identity in Christ. the next Sunday, where he heard the gospel and gave his life to Jesus.
(where TGC Council member Jeremy Treat now serves as lead pastor ), and they invited Cook to visit the church.Ĭook took them up on the invitation and visited Reality L.A. They were from a church called Reality L.A. On a momentous day in September 2009, while drinking coffee with a friend at Intelligentsia in L.A.’s Silver Lake neighborhood, Cook started chatting with a group of young people sitting at a nearby table-physical Bibles opened in front of them (remember, this was 2009).