Breath of acceptance

Gay people find a welcome at a fledgling church whose 20 or so members meet in a hotel conference room.

By RON MATUS, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published August 30, 2002

[Times photos: Ken Helle] The Rev. Ricc Rollins is pastor of Breath of Life Fellowship Community Church, whose members are largely black and gay. "We don't care who you love," Rollins says. "We celebrate the fact that you love."

WEST SHORE PALMS -- Wilson Williams can't forget the words he heard as a gay teenager, slurs planted like land mines in sermons about good and evil.

Sometimes the preacher made limp-wristed hand gestures, mocking people like Williams. Laughter rolled from the pews.

"You'd leave feeling that God hated you," says Williams, 28, a graphic artist in Tampa.

Finding a new church became his mission. Williams, who is African-American, tried so-called gay churches, but the experience was aimed at pews of white faces. He wanted to shout "Hallelujah," not turn quietly to Proverbs.

Spiritually, "I didn't feel it," he says.

Now, on Sundays, he is surrounded by people who made the same journey.

They're members of the fledgling Breath of Life Fellowship Community Church, believed to be the only congregation in the Tampa Bay area that is largely gay and black. For nine months, it has met in a conference room at the Doubletree Hotel on Cypress Street.

Many of the 20 or so members say they feel like outcasts in traditional black churches, where sermons can turn into ugly rants about "Adam and Steve." Nor do they get what they need in gay churches, with mostly white members and a stoic atmosphere.

At Breath of Life, two roads join.

"The difference is, we don't care who you love," says the Rev. Ricc Rollins, who started the church.

Ricc Rollins leads his congregation in song. "I ain't going to fake the funk up in here," he growls. "This ain't no play church."

"We celebrate the fact that you love."

Rollins, 39, says members tell him the service is "part sit-com, part melodrama, with a whole lot of God thrown in."

For more than an hour every Sunday, he smiles and scowls, whispers and shouts, points and stares. One moment he quotes Scripture, the next he's tossing verbal grenades wrapped in street slang.

He dabs at his bald head with a white handkerchief.

"The devil is a liar," he declares.

Members and guests sit on rows of padded green convention chairs, beneath fluorescent lights. There's no stained glass, no choir. Music comes from a toaster-sized CD player that doesn't always work.

It doesn't look like a church, but Rollins makes it feel like one.

"I ain't going to fake the funk up in here," he growls. "This ain't no play church."

Still, they dream of a building of their own, where a rocking choir and soul-food brunches might accompany the spiritual fare Rollins ladles from the pulpit.

A few weeks ago, members took a post-sermon field trip to a low-slung building on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, near Legends Field. It used to be home to another congregation. A neon sign hangs in front: "Drew Park Church of Christ."

"In the name of Jesus Christ, we are claiming this," jokes Daphne Capers, 51, a postal employee who lives in Town 'N Country.

But the asking price tops $400,000, and the inside needs work. "Ugly," several members say when they see the stained carpets and the leaky roof.

They sigh. Other possibilities are miles from this part of Tampa, a good meeting place for members who come from as far as St. Petersburg and Sarasota.

"It has not been an easy road," Rollins says one morning at Books of Thought bookstore in Temple Terrace, where he sometimes lends a hand.

"There have been Sundays where there has been one person in church besides my business partner and myself. One," he says, raising a finger for emphasis. "And we had church anyway. Full service."

Translation: They're not giving up.

Breath of Life first whispered to Rollins three years ago, when he attended services at a different church. The pastor, who knew Rollins was gay, was ripping homosexuality and trying to be funny.

Here we go again, Rollins thought. He looked at other members he knew were gay.

"Faces were crumbling," he says.

Breath of Life excludes no one.

A few members are white.

A few are straight.

Sermons rarely allude to sexual orientation.

Breath of Life is a nondenominational Christian church. Rollins, who once pastored a church in East Tampa, calls it "the little church that could." He resists other adjectives.

He'd rather people not call Breath of Life a gay church.

"It's a church, period," he says.

No rainbow flag hangs from the rafters; no pink triangles trim lapel pins. A black-and-white "mud cloth" from Africa drapes the podium, its threads symbolizing struggle and heritage.

The Rev. Ricc Rollins prays with Breath of Life church member Butch McClellan during a recent service.

People come in business suits or jeans and sneakers. Some bring their children.

"Amen," they say aloud. "Okay," they affirm. "Umm-hmm." They swallow wafers and sip fruit juice, as Christians do at churches everywhere.

But here, "We know no strangers," Rollins says.

The message is especially important today, when AIDS stalks so many in silence, he says.

Black gay men must know "they have a haven, where His love, His forgiveness, His understanding is preached."

Members come for many reasons, but mostly to be themselves while worshiping God.

"I'm fellowshipping with people of my own kind," says Traci Cunningham, 40, a mother of two.

Anthony Brooks says he could walk into Breath of Life with his lover on his arm, just like people do at other churches. There wouldn't be stares or whispers or stinging gossip. There would be hugs and hellos.

He has friends at other churches afraid to be openly gay.

"They say, 'Hate the sin, not the sinner.' But that's not true," says Brooks, 22, a senior at the University of South Florida. "They hate the sin and the sinner. They don't believe what they say."

Williams, the graphic artist, was reluctant to attend Breath of Life, even though he knew Rollins apart from church.

"I didn't want to be opened up and wounded again," he says.

He directs Face to Face, a group that counsels gay and lesbian teenagers. Some are so crushed by church experiences, they leave both the church and God.

Some become atheists or turn to non-Christian religions to "remove themselves from the God they were told about," Williams says.

They do it to avoid feeling evil, he says.

Cunningham, a corporal at the Falkenburg Road Jail in Hillsborough County, doesn't recall gay-bashing in the Methodist churches where her own mom taught Sunday school. But she didn't come out as a lesbian until she was 35. "I wasn't paying attention," she says.

Since then, she has endured sermons that made her wonder if her sexual orientation wasn't somehow "creating a bad environment for my children," she says.

"I went through a whole year of reading through the Bible and reading books that referenced the Bible," she says. "I wanted to settle for myself whether I was sinning."

She wasn't, she concluded. Not by being gay.

Cunningham tried Metropolitan Community Church in Tampa, which has gay members. People were friendly and welcoming. But she saw few African-Americans. She wanted role models for her sons.

Before each sermon, church members greet each other during the "fellowship welcome." From left are Beverly Crecy-Marshall, hugging Ricc Rollins, and Daphne Capers, getting a hug from Pam West, far right.

She tried a mainstream church, too, one with 2,000 members. Some, like her, had careers in law enforcement.

"I liked my children in that setting," she says.

But while the church had an active social program for singles, it didn't include gays and lesbians.

Four months ago, a friend invited her to Breath of Life. She joined immediately.

Tampa was thick with churches that offered pews and choirs and stained-glass windows.

Few, though, could offer her solace.

On a recent Sunday, the Breath of Life CD player gasps.

Two songs into the sing-along welcome, the music begins skipping. Rollins runs to the back of the room to fidget.

When the CD skips again, the minister begins clapping to keep time. It continues to skip, but the voices rise, surer and stronger, until the on-again, off-again CD player is nothing more than background noise.

Someone pulls the plug. The congregation finishes a cappella. Cheers erupt as the final note flutters to a soft landing.

"We don't need no music," Rollins shouts. "Like we used to say in the club, 'The roof, the roof . . . "'

The congregation finishes with him: "The roof is on fire!"

Later in the service, the boom box rises from the dead.

A slow, soulful tune unfolds without skipping. People stand and sway. Cunningham's 11-year-old closes his eyes and waved his hands like a conductor.

When it's over, Rollins charges into his sermon, the boxer after the bell.

"When was the last time you and the Lord had a chat?" he begins.

After some time, he calls Butch McClellan to the front.

McClellan is white but grew up in a Pentecostal church. He was told regularly that homosexuals would "burn in a lake of fire."

Apart from that message, he liked his old church. He joined Breath of Life because in many ways it reminded him of home.

"I feel like it's where I'm supposed to be," says McClellan, a mental health technician in St. Petersburg.

As other members bow their heads to pray for him, McClellan closes his eyes and puts a palm in the air.

Rollins stands close. He lays his hands on McClellan's broad neck.

"All we need to know," he says to the members, focusing their thoughts on McClellan, "is this guy is hurting today."

McClellan's mouth moves, but no words come out. Tears trickle down his cheeks.

Rollins says, quieter now: "Whisper to him, peace unto his spirit.

"Remind him he always has a haven in you."

-- Services at Breath of Life begin at 10:30 a.m. Sundays at the Doubletree Hotel, 4500 W Cypress St. For more information about the church call 873-1889.

-- Ron Matus can be reached at 226-3405 or matus@sptimes.com.

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