“Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”— Matthew 18:20
Courage UK was a Christian ministry I founded in the 1980s for people seeking to reconcile their faith with their experience of “same-sex attraction”. In its early years the ministry operated within what was then called the “ex-gay” framework, which assumed that sexual orientation might change through spiritual discipline and pastoral support.
A Courage meeting in the early years (1988) always began with a shared meal; everyone brought some contribution, and the table gradually filled with dishes as people arrived. We would eat together, talk, laugh, and catch up with one another’s lives.
After the meal we would move into a time of discussion, where people could speak openly about their faith, their struggles, and the questions they were carrying. Later we would worship together, often led by some remarkably gifted worship leaders who were part of the community. Over the years we also welcomed visiting speakers—some of them outstanding—who helped us think more deeply about our lives and faith.
A Place Where People Could Breathe
A typical Courage meeting felt welcoming. People could relax and be completely themselves. No pretence was needed or wanted. Questions could be asked freely, and almost any subject could be discussed without fear of ridicule or shame. People spoke honestly about their lives, their faith, their struggles, and their hopes.
There was also an unexpected warmth to the gatherings. Because everyone assumed that sexual relationships between members were off the table, there was a surprising freedom simply to show affection to one another. Hugs, kindness, and small gestures of care were natural expressions of friendship rather than signals of romantic interest. In that atmosphere people were valued for who they were, not for how attractive they might appear to someone else. Those who might easily have felt overlooked in more socially competitive settings often found themselves received with the same affection as everyone else.
Looking back now, I believe that atmosphere was the deepest truth about Courage. Before any theology changed publicly—from ex-gay to affirming LGBTQ+ Christians—something more important was already happening: the Holy Spirit was quietly at work among us, creating a space where people could tell the truth about their lives.
That may sound like a small thing, but in the context of the 1980s and 1990s it was not. Many of the people who came to Courage had lived for years with a painful sense of isolation. For some, simply meeting others who understood their experience was an enormous relief. They no longer had to carry the struggle alone.
At the same time, the meetings were openly described as Christ-centred, and that mattered: people wanted to know that whatever questions they were wrestling with, their faith in Jesus would not be dismissed or ridiculed. Courage offered a rare combination: a place where people could be honest about their lives and still take their Christian faith seriously.
Courage began as an attempt to help people navigate that tension. At the time we operated within the framework that was widely assumed in conservative Christian circles: that “same-sex attraction” might be overcome or redirected through spiritual discipline, prayer, and pastoral support.
From time to time we would also break bread together in a very simple way. It was not a formal religious ceremony, but a quiet moment of sharing that felt close to how we imagined the earliest followers of Jesus might have gathered around a table. By that stage of the evening the tensions people often carried when they first arrived had usually melted away. Laughter came easily, conversation flowed freely, and the nervous question many had brought with them—will I really be accepted here?—seemed to disappear.
But something else was quietly happening within the community.
As friendships deepened, it became increasingly clear that people were not simply enduring life in one another’s company—they were flourishing in it. Many had spent years believing that their attraction to the same sex was purely a problem to be overcome. Yet in the context of honest friendship and shared faith, something more complex was becoming visible. The very relationships we had once assumed were spiritually dangerous were often becoming the place where people experienced healing, loyalty, and renewed faith.
At the time we scarcely knew how to name what we were seeing. The possibility that these bonds might point toward something more—something we had been taught was impossible—lay far beyond what most of us could even discuss openly. But quietly, almost imperceptibly, the old certainties were beginning to crack.
As people began to share their lives more openly in that atmosphere of trust, something else gradually became clear. The pastoral reality we were encountering did not always fit easily within the theological framework we had inherited. Over time, the stories we were hearing and the lives we were walking alongside began to raise questions that could no longer be ignored.
When Pastoral Reality Begins to Speak
People were meeting one another face to face. They were telling the truth about their lives. They were praying together, worshipping together, wrestling with Scripture together. Friendships were forming. Trust was growing.
Just as importantly, the isolation that many had carried for years was beginning to lift. For some, the friendships formed at Courage became the first circle of people with whom they could simply share ordinary life. People went to the cinema or the theatre together, celebrated birthdays, and sometimes took holidays as a group—a tradition that continues nearly forty years later. For those who had been rejected by family members, or who had long felt peripheral among their straight friends, these friendships mattered deeply.
And slowly, almost without anyone planning it, the pastoral reality we were encountering began to challenge some of the assumptions we had inherited.
It did not happen suddenly. In fact, I probably moved too slowly. For years I wrestled internally with questions that did not have easy answers. The answers that eventually emerged might have been more obvious to outsiders, but our evangelical theology was so strongly opposed to even contemplating them that we kept trying to find solutions within the old wineskin itself. I was trying to hold several responsibilities at once: to remain faithful to Christ, to care for the people who trusted the ministry, and to avoid causing unnecessary harm or confusion.
But over time a pattern became harder and harder to ignore.
When Experience Challenges Assumptions
The people who gathered in Courage were not living lives of idolatry, as some interpretations of Romans 1 seemed to suggest. Their deepest loyalty was not to sexuality. Their deepest loyalty was to Christ. The centre of gravity in their lives was faith, prayer, and the desire to follow Jesus honestly.
If anything resembled idolatry, it was the fear that had kept so many people silent about their lives.
In fact, the community we experienced together was the very opposite of idolatry. Instead of people being enslaved to desire, we saw people seeking truth, accountability, friendship, and spiritual growth. Christ was not displaced by desire; Christ was the one to whom people were continually turning.
The end of isolation changed many things. When people no longer felt alone, the desperation that sometimes drives human behaviour began to ease. For some, the friendships formed within the community replaced patterns of seeking connection in places that had never truly satisfied the deeper longing for belonging. What many had needed all along was not condemnation, but companionship: a circle of people with whom they could live honestly before God.
That pastoral reality slowly reshaped my understanding.
I remember the moment when that shift first surfaced openly. It was the first Courage meeting of January 1995. Our live-in “Steps Out” programme had recently closed, and it had become clear to me that we could no longer speak honestly about changing people’s sexual orientation.
After our meal together that evening, as we began the discussion, I said something I had never said publicly before. “If anyone has come tonight because you hope we can change your sexual orientation,” I told the group, “then please go home. It is now clear that we cannot do that.”
I remember people glancing at one another around the room, wondering perhaps what others were thinking. But nobody moved.
I went on, “What we can do is support one another in our faith journey and our friendships, and wait to see what God wants to do in our lives.”
At that moment I still had no clear idea where that path would eventually lead. But I knew we could not continue as before. And significantly, no one in the room chose to leave.
The implications did not become clear all at once. For the next two or three years we lived in a kind of tension between what we were seeing in people’s lives and what we had long assumed to be true. By the late 1990s I found myself increasingly disturbed in my spirit at the thought of trying to preserve even a semblance of the old framework. Yet I still did not know how to speak about that honestly or how to guide the community through such a change.
The theological framework that had once seemed clear no longer matched the lives of the people sitting in front of us. It described a problem we were simply not encountering in the community itself.
When the Change Became Public
When Courage eventually acknowledged publicly (in 2000) that the “ex-gay” paradigm had been mistaken and that the ministry had become affirming of same-sex relationships, the reaction was intense. Some people felt betrayed. Others left angrily. Critics on all sides had strong opinions about what had happened.
As it turned out, the moment when the change became public was not within my control. For some time I had been wrestling with these questions internally, trying to find a way of speaking honestly without unnecessarily wounding those who had trusted the earlier framework. In the end the transition came into the open following a conversation with Richard Kirker of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement.
At the time he had accused Courage of running what he described as a “concentration camp to convert gay people.” The accusation was painful and deeply unfair, but it also forced the conversation into the open. In responding to him I explained that my own thinking had already been changing, and that the ministry itself was moving in a different direction.
Once that reality was spoken publicly, the situation could no longer remain half-hidden.
Yet something remarkable also occurred.
The Surprise of Returning Voices
Many of the people who had been with Courage in its earlier years returned and said something very striking: they had been on the same journey themselves, but no one had yet given language to it. When the change was finally spoken aloud, they recognised their own experience in it.
That period also brought another, quieter development. Word began to spread that something unusual had been happening within the Courage community, and from time to time people asked whether they might visit simply to observe and learn.
We always had to be careful. Confidentiality was essential. Many people who attended Courage were still living with the fear of exposure, so there was never any question of allowing journalists or the press into the meetings. But occasionally it was possible to invite trusted individuals—pastors, theologians, or speakers who were curious about what we were doing.
Some came with a certain scepticism. A few seemed quite sure that if they looked closely enough they would discover what was “wrong” with us, or where we had gone astray theologically.
Yet something interesting often happened. When people encountered the community directly—when they saw the honesty, the prayer, the friendships, and the seriousness with which people were trying to follow Christ—the tone of the conversation usually changed.
A few visitors later told me that the experience had reshaped their own thinking. Others did not alter their theology, but even they could no longer speak about Courage in the dismissive or hostile ways that had sometimes circulated at a distance. Seeing the life of the community for themselves made caricatures impossible to sustain.
Looking back now, I think what many of them recognised—whether they fully understood it or not—was the presence of the fruit of the Spirit. Patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness: these were the qualities clearly visible in the life of the community.
And once those things are seen, arguments alone rarely have the final word.
Wounded People Learning to Live Again
It is important not to romanticise those years. Many people who came to Courage were carrying very deep wounds. Rejection, secrecy, family conflict, and years of internal struggle had taken their toll.
Sometimes when care and empathy were offered, the response was not immediate peace but volcanic anger. Long-suppressed pain would surface suddenly and forcefully. Expectations could also be unrealistic. One member once told me quite seriously that when he first came to Courage he had imagined it would be like entering the Intensive Care Unit of a hospital: he would simply lie back while others administered the spiritual equivalent of a drip, and he would eventually wake up healed and at peace with himself and with God. He was deeply disappointed to discover that the journey required hard personal work, patience, and time.
At other moments anger would be directed toward those trying to lead the community. Some members had absorbed psychological theories suggesting that homosexuality resulted from an “absent father,” and occasionally that unresolved anger toward fathers was projected onto me. I could sometimes see what was happening, but it was still bewildering and very painful to navigate.
Looking back now, I realise how little safeguarding there was for those carrying leadership responsibilities in ministries like this. Much attention—rightly—was given to protecting vulnerable individuals. But the emotional strain placed on those accompanying wounded people was rarely acknowledged. Even our trustees, though supportive in principle, were often understandably cautious about engaging with the more difficult realities we faced week by week.
Yet in retrospect those struggles were part of the work itself. Courage was never simply a place where problems were solved. It was a place where wounded people were learning, slowly and imperfectly, how to live truthfully before God and alongside one another.
Relief—and Stepping into the Unknown
Looking back now, I realise that while others were reacting to Courage’s public acknowledgment in 2000 that we had become affirming of same-sex relationships, my own experience of that moment was quite different.
For me, the dominant feeling was not vindication. It was relief.
Relief that the truth we had been slowly discovering could finally be spoken aloud. Relief that the inner tension of trying to hold together conflicting realities had come to an end.
But I was never sure that I was “right” in any simple sense. Too many questions remained. There were still real risks and uncertainties. One of my deepest concerns was that if we said openly that we believed God could bless same-sex relationships, the healthy boundaries that had helped create a safe community might collapse. I feared a sudden “free-for-all” culture that would not lead to mature relationships at all, but might leave some people more wounded and isolated than before.
So the change did not feel like arriving at a final destination. It felt more like stepping onto a path whose end we could not yet see.
In those days I often found myself thinking of the words from Minnie Haskins’ poem The Gate of the Year: the moment when one must “put your hand into the hand of God, and it shall be to you better than light, and safer than a known way.”
That was very much how the moment felt. Not certainty, but trust.
My security did not rest on knowing we had everything right. It rested on the hope that, however imperfectly, we were trying to follow the Spirit’s leading and move toward what was true and life-giving.
The Power of Simple Conversation
Not long after Courage publicly announced its change of approach in 2000, I came across a remarkable book by Margaret Wheatley titled Turning to One Another: Simple Conversations to Restore Hope to the Future.
Her central conviction was deceptively simple: that ordinary people can change the world when they begin listening to one another again. Not through grand strategies or ideological campaigns, but through honest human conversation.
She illustrates this with a striking historical example. In 1980 a small group of Polish workers meeting in the Gdańsk shipyard began talking openly about their situation. Within weeks those conversations grew into the Solidarity movement, mobilising nearly ten million workers across Poland. In time, that movement helped trigger the collapse of the Communist system that had dominated Eastern Europe for decades.
Courage, of course, never altered history on that scale. Yet the principle resonated deeply with what I had witnessed. A small group of people had simply begun meeting to talk honestly about their lives, their faith, and their struggles. Over time those conversations created a community where truth could emerge and where many people found a new freedom to live openly before God.
Looking back now, I think Courage had a far greater influence on attitudes toward LGBTQ+ Christians than any of us imagined at the time. Not because we set out to change the Church or the culture, but because something real was happening when people listened to one another with patience and honesty.
The Real Fruit of Courage UK
In hindsight it seems clear to me that the theological shift did not create the pastoral reality. The pastoral reality prepared the theological shift.
God was already at work among us before we fully understood what that meant.
The friendships that grew out of those years remain one of the most precious parts of the story. Institutions sometimes step back when controversy arises. But personal loyalty, shared prayer, and the quiet recognition of truth can endure long after public arguments fade.
That, I think, is where the real legacy of Courage lies.
Not in winning arguments, but in the creation of a space where people could encounter grace, speak honestly, and grow in Christ together.
Looking back now, I realise that the most important fruit of Courage was never the controversy surrounding its theology. It was the community and pastoral care that existed all along. Month after month our people gathered around a shared table, bringing food, conversation, and their whole complicated lives with them. They spoke honestly about their lives, prayed and worshipped together, and tried—sometimes falteringly—to follow Christ as truthfully as they could.
I should also say that none of this journey was mine alone. Over the years Courage was sustained by an extraordinary team of people who shared the leadership and pastoral responsibility of the community. Each of them brought wisdom, compassion, and deep faith to the work. What I remember most clearly is the quality of the relationships among us: a spirit of mutual trust, love, and respect that made it possible to face difficult questions together. There was never any sense of jockeying for position or defending personal territory. All that mattered was seeking God and seeking the truth together. I realise now how rare and precious that kind of shared leadership is.
Looking back now, I sometimes think that the real struggle surrounding Courage was never simply between individuals or opposing viewpoints. In the language of the New Testament, it felt more like a struggle with what Paul calls “the principalities and powers”—the unseen systems of fear, accusation, and control that can shape human communities. Those forces often appear powerful, especially when they are carried by institutions, ideologies, or public controversy. Yet what we discovered in our small gatherings was something very different: that such powers are not overcome by greater force, but by the quiet practices of the Kingdom—humility, truthfulness, mutual respect, and the ordinary sharing of life in Christ.
In that ordinary pattern of meals, conversation, and prayer, something deeper was quietly taking place. The Holy Spirit was at work in many lives at once, leading us patiently toward a truer understanding of the grace we were seeking to live by. And if anything in the Courage story deserves to endure, I believe it is this: the discovery that truth often emerges not through argument, but through the slow work of grace in a community learning to live honestly before God and with one another.
These experiences also taught me something about the dangers of anger and the way rage can destroy the very communities where truth needs to surface. That is something I want to reflect on in my next piece.
Jeremy Marks, 10th March 2026
When Courage UK was founded in 1988, an unrelated Roman Catholic ministry in New York was already using the name “Courage.” Because communication between our ministries was minimal in those pre-internet years, the shared name initially caused no difficulty. After our ministry later changed its approach, the two groups were sometimes confused, so we began referring to our work as Courage UK to distinguish it from the Roman Catholic organisation.
All is good Jeremy.