You're listening to a frequency podcast network production.

Hey, it's Tara Jean. I love you guys for listening and joining me on this exploration of Bethel Church.

Now, I know some of you are on really difficult healing journeys, so here's a trigger warning.

We're about to examine conversion therapy and the ex-gay movement.

Listener discretion is advised. And like we always do on this podcast, we're going to hear a bunch of

different opinions, like wildly different opinions. And I'm going to go first.

This is a candid moment I recorded during a conversation with my previous guest, Kristen Cook Ambrose.

When I left Prince Rupert and I moved to the city and I got my first job in the city and I was away from the church for the

first time, away from my family. The person who I was working with closely in this department

store was an openly gay, flamboyant man. And I thought, oh God, what I'm going to go to hell

just for working here. And then I very quickly realized that he was living his true self, that he was

joyful and happy and had a positive impact on his community. And this man changed my life because

he started in me just a slow sort of deconstruction of what I believed. And because I thought,

well, they taught me that he was an evil man who did really

derogatory things in his daily life.

That is no way he could have joy and peace in his home and all these kinds of things.

And when I found out that wasn't true, I went, well, what else isn't true?

Absolutely. And that's my journey. And I think it's been a journey for a lot of us.

This is Heaven Bent. I'm Tara Jean Stevens. Episode 7, The Once Gaze.

On this episode, we'll examine a wing of Bethel Church called the Changed Movement.

On its official website, changed is described as a community of friends who once identified as LGBTQ plus.

They call themselves once gay, and the co-founders are both pastors from Bethel Church,

...