"The LGBTQ Community, That's My New Church"

This study examines the experiences of LGBTQ+ individuals who previously attended Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) churches, considering their experiences of being in the church, leaving the church, and rebuilding outside of the church. It also examines sermons from IFB churches that addressed topics related to the LGBTQ+ community to examine the teachings these individuals received while in the church. My examination of this topic was based in scholarly literature addressing the rhetoric of church sermons, the process and experience of religious disaffiliation, and Weick’s (1995) theory of organizational sensemaking. I used multiple qualitative methods in this study, including qualitative content analysis of the sermons and semi-structured, in-depth interviews with LGBTQ+ former IFB church members. This examination resulted in several key findings, addressing the sense participants received in the church around the LGBTQ+ community and themselves, how participants found themselves breaking the sense of the church, how participants experienced leaving the church, how participants rebuilt their sense of self outside of the church, and how the participants have found stability with hope for continued growth outside the church. This study has significant implications for the study of sensegiving, sensebreaking, and sensemaking along with implications for the continued study of religious disaffiliation.