irony

A Michigan pastor named Rev. Matthew Makela (who is married with 5 kids) resigned this week from St. John’s Lutheran Church after he was caught cruising Grindr for men.

An anonymous source sent some screenshots of some of his chats to the gay news site Queerty, who exposed his hypocrisy to the church as well as the rest of the world.

In the conversations, he says he “loves making out naked,” “oral and massage,” and he reveals that he is a “top.”

Of course he probably just meant “top Biblical scholar,” right?

As Queerty points out, outing his private gay sex life is important here, as he has been an outspoken, anti-gay voice in his church and online.

He has compared being gay to being an alcoholic, and accused the transgender movement of assisting “opportunistic sickos.”

Queerty writes:

If Makela made even one LGBT kid at St. John’s “Christ-based” elementary school, their parents, friends, family or anyone who ever stepped foot in the church feel like being true to yourself is shameful (and it seems all too likely that he did), then we’re glad to share his hypocrisy with the world.

A senior pastor at the church posted the following statement in response to the story.

“The details of sin that have been kept confidential are being posted online by those who seek to do harm to the Makela family and to St. John’s,” writes Rev. Daniel Kempin. “This is taking an already difficult situation and making it even more painful.”

His profile on the church’s website has since been deleted from their staff page, and St. John’s is telling people not to pay attention to the story. Their Facebook page has also been deleted.

It appears they are trying to erase his online presence and pretend none of it ever happened.

Because if there’s one thing to learn from all this, burying the truth is clearly the best solution.