The GALIP Foundation is an organization dedicated to bringing the reconciling message of God’s love and reconciliation to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community.
A Brief History
by Elaine
GALIP, which stands for “God’s Agape Love (put) Into Practice,” was founded and initially funded by Elaine and her wife in 1999. Over the years GALIP has performed many charitable works, which up until 2003 were private in nature and were never disclosed to any outside of the confines of our own church. All that changed in the summer of 2003 when Anita from the Christian Lesbian website announced that she was closing down her bulletin board.
For many of us, this was quite a blow as the board had become a ‘home away from’ home and a ‘safe place’ to fellowship with other gay Christians such as ourselves. This value of this ministry was readily apparent and after praying about the matter I felt led to ask Anita if she would consider keeping the board open if GALIP undertook the funding. Anita, however, did me one better and asked if I would be willing to take over the board. This entailed not only financial responsibility but administrative responsibility as well. In addition, one of the requirements of ownership was that I would have to construct a website to ‘house’ the bulletin board. I was hesitant to undertake such a venture but decided, in the end, that the value of this ministry was simply too important to let it go under.
A few days later it hit me like a proverbial ‘ton of bricks’ that the website and its associated bulletin board fit in exactly with something the Lord had called upon me to do years several years ago (see “My Story“). With a renewed sense of mission and purpose, I pulled out all of my old website plans and drawings for such a site and got to work. While I took over the boards immediately in August of 2003, it took several months for www.gaychurch.org to take shape. By the end of that same year though we were up and operational.
Two Decades of Growth
The LGBT welcoming revival within Christian churches is expanding at a rapid rate. We have seen this growth reflected, not only in our church directory but also in the tens of thousands of new visitors to the website that we get every month. Over the last two decades, we have grown to become the largest, most comprehensive and most popular Affirming Church Directory available anywhere in the world.
Numbers aside, we are seeing a continuation of a ‘grassroots’ effort which propels the leading edge of this revival: individual pastors, congregants, families, friends, and countless others who are at the heart of this movement. They are what makes it personal, gives the revival traction, and who are willing to do the heavy lifting required to open hearts, minds and eventually – church doors.
At the GALIP Foundation, we are fortunate to have a front-row seat to the marvelous work that the Holy Spirit is unfolding right in front of our eyes. This truly will be one of the great revivals in the history of the Church before it is done. Truly, this is an exciting time to be in the Lord’s service. We do this with a very small team of just two volunteers: Elaine (our founder and visionary) and Don (who handles the church directory and is our website developer). If you would like to help with GALIP’s ministry or to donate to the cause click here to learn more!
