“I was encouraged and on fire for the Lord and I felt a call to become a Presbyterian pastor and I also knew that I was gay, and that’s a paradox if ever there was one, and I had to figure it out.” In his talk David Norse, the first openly gay man to be ordained as a Presbyterian Pastor in Philadelphia, follows his journey from around the campfires at church camp, to Woody’s gay bar, to becoming a pastor at Broad Street Ministry. He illustrates and debunks the use of Scripture to exclude LGBTQ people from the church, and his personal story of how he reconciled being a gay man and also being Christian. From the societal shift to support same sex marriage within the church to the revolution of the Christian identity and LGBTQ identity coming together, David invites us to ask questions and challenge what we know and believe about God and the LGBTQ community.

David Norse is the first openly gay man to be ordained as a Presbyterian Pastor in Philadelphia. An Oregon native, Norse pursued personal wholeness through the intersection of his Christian and LGBTQ identity. David is a graduate of Lewis & Clark College and Princeton Theological Seminary and has served as Pastoral Associate at Broad Street Ministry since September 2013. In his work, Norse challenges the narratives that cut communities off from wholeness and thriving. In so doing his work extends radical hospitality to the most vulnerable adults in Philadelphia.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx