Pilgrimage Retreats with Rev. Dr. Brett Webb-Mitchell Organizing Pastor, Community of Pilgrims Presbyterian Fellowship, Portland, OR Have you and your church leaders had a hard time thinking about what you want your next Session retreat, men's or women's retreat, all church retreat, or youth group gathering to focus on, and are wanting something new, different, outside the box and experiential, and yet of the Church?  Consider a Pilgrimage Retreat, an ancient practice for current times. For the last twenty-years I have been on and led pilgrimage around the world with ..read more

So, since I last joined this blog, much has happened. 1. I am no longer the only out gay Presbyterian pastor in a pulpit in OR.  I left St. Andrew's on April 30, 2017. 2. I am now (part time) the Spiritual Life Director of L'Arche Portland.  This is a spiritual/religious community with or without people with intellectual disabilities; 3. I am starting a new church of Presbyterians.  It is either going to be called Community of Pilgrims/the Pilgrim, or Church of Pilgrims/the Pilgrim. Much more to come! Pax! Brett ..read more

Here's my youtube.com clip for Practicing Pilgrimage. Remember: this pilgrimage "thing" is the way I understood and understand the process of "coming out" of my or one's LGBT or Q closet: it is a process, a way of moving out of the confining closet of living as a closeted gay man, to living out free from these self-imposed and culture-imposed confines. Oh: and also please consider purchasing the book! https://www.amazon.com/Practicing-Pilgrimage-Becoming-Pilgrim-People/dp/1620329484/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1483574390&sr=1-1&keywords=practicing+pilgrimage Pax! Bre ..read more

Dear Friends! I am celebrating the publication of my 10th book, PRACTICING PILGRIMAGE: BEING AND BECOMING GOD'S PILGRIM PEOPLE, published by Wipf and Stock in Eugene, OR: http://wipfandstock.com/practicing-pilgrimage.html In this book I explore both pilgrimage as a intense, actual event, say to a place like Santiago de Compestela, or in your backyard, rural fields, or urban setting, in which we live out our ordinary lives in extraordinary fashion. I also cover how "coming out" of one's gay/LGBTQ closet is a pilgrimage of sorts, in which we are always coming out. So click on the link, and ..read more

I'm off this Sunday for India and Nepal for pilgrimage. It is time for me to go on pilgrimage. The life of the openly gay Presbyterian pastor in Oregon needs some time to walk, reflect, think, and ruminate about life. Everything is well. It is just time. To walk. It is also time to learn.  This is my continuing education.  I am fascinated by the issues surrounding the universal nature of the Christ figure.  What better way to explore it than going to India among my Hindu sisters and brothers, and Nepal and Buddhists. So I'm off then. Time to sojourn. To pilgrim. To be ..read more

This is my testimony against reparative/conversion therapy, debated yesterday at General Assembly of the PCUSA: For Bill/Motion #11-23 The Rev. Dr. Brett Webb-Mitchell In Psalm 139: 13-15, the Psalmist wrote, “For you yourself created my inmost parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I will thank you because I am marvelously made; your works are wonderful, and I know it well.  My body was not hidden from you, while I was being made in secret and woven in the depths of the earth.” These words from Ps. 139 are my touchstone as I came out of the gay closet I lived in for forty ..read more

There was a convergence today in my life that I never ever expected: when my being a Presbyterian met my being a gay man, and both are living relatively (yet still some times awkwardly) together. It doesn't happen often in life when we take two parts of who we are, which were, for a long time, at odds with one another, and bring them together and find peace. For years, I feared that my ordination, my "The Rev." would be revoked because I would be outed as a gay man, and censured or de-frocked for writing such publications as "On Being a Gay Parent." I was told by my former Presbyter Exec ..read more

The Pulse Night Club attack came across my Facebook feed and Huffington Post as I prepared to preach on Sunday morning. At first, the report was 20 were killed, which was a horrific amount.  By 9:30 am, it was 50, including the killer, Omar Mateen. I was shocked.  Horrified.  Stunned. I went into the pulpit to preach a sermon that I had eerily titled, "Healing a Broken Community". To say the least, it was easy to weave in the story of Orlando in the part of the sermon that covered the sense of "brokenness." But then I surprised myself toward the end of the sermon when I rec ..read more

So my dentist in NC asked me how I was enjoying my short stay in NC.  "It's going well!" "What have you done in NC while you've been here?" he asked. "I've gone into every women's bathroom in the state," I said.  He laughed so hard he almost fell off his padded stool. Crazy times in NC. Hate-filled times in NC. Time to take the state back to the 21st century rather than the 1950s. Pax! B ..read more

Even though I now live in the state of OR, I must confess that my heart aches for what is going on in the state politics that is NC. I'm not surprised. I am sad.  I am not surprised because I remember watching when the General Assembly in 2010 pass a bill to amend the NC Constitution, to deny us marriage equality, watching Dems and Republicans alike sign on with it, knowing that then-Gov. Perdue couldn't veto it (not in her powers). I remember phone bank calls and attending rallies in RDU area, only to drive 10 miles out of the bubble of Chapel Hill to see the pro-Amendment 1 votes to de ..read more