GCN has been a place of hope and community for me. One can post prayer requests and get support when in the lowest of times - often, for many of us, when we come out and our fellow Christians denigrate and hurt us. Finding support - even if it is from someone far away - is essential to our learning to accept ourselves. I have not personally experienced organized in-person community on a more local or regional basis in person through GCN; perhaps that is an area for improvement.

The work of The Gay Christian Network is not something you can quantify. You can't put it into words. You can't fit it into a box. The kind of work organizations like GCN do is life-giving. It, in a few inadequate words, allows the "gay" person or the person with "same-sex attractions" to experience that they are loved - whether they act out on those feelings or not. GCN loves and affirms one where they are. There is no pressure. There is a prayer board. There is discussion. There is community. I have experienced the power of the love and concern of people for me that I have never met before; a kind of love and support that literally keeps you going. Things can be dark in this world for someone with gay feelings - sometimes especially within religious settings. To hear that God loves you no matter what anyone has to say about it - no matter what your position is on whatever - is something I can't describe. Non-profits like GCN undoubtedly deserve our respect and appreciation.

This ministry saves lives. I am a gay, 20 year old male who was raised a very conservative, fundamentalist Christian household. I needed someone or something that would help me figure out that what had made me so depressed and overweight and unpopular for most of my life up to age 19 was because I was denying who I was. I was living in a world of black and whites, when the world is gray. It gave me the possibility of happiness found through accepting an essential, God-given part of me - my sexual orientation - instead of painfully denying and attempting to suppress it. It kept me from committing suicide over the despair of trying (and having failed) to change through ex-gay therapy for almost 4 years. If that doesn't far exceed the expectation of what a non-profit should do, I'm not quite sure what does.