Nine months after its establishment, Rainbow Cathedral, the first gay-oriented church in Muncie, had cancelled its service for the first time last Sunday.
After the recent resignation of the pastor, Rainbow Cathedral's congregation has dropped from 15 to 20 regular members to only four, including a member who has been substituting as pastor while the cathedral is looking for a new alternative lifestyle minister.
Although the two-story church with four granite columns and tall stained glass windows can hold 500 people in its chamber, no more than a couple of dozen members of the Rainbow Cathedral attended the service at one time.
"The most that we've had was 28 people at one time," said Norman, a regular member and the bookkeeper for the church, who did not want his last name disclosed. "It is sad that we can't fill it in. ... It is really hard when you don't have a pastor. We are struggling."
The resignation of the Rev. Erica Eckensberg, who left Rainbow Cathedral because of a conflict of interests with its founder, Joe Mumpower, is just part of the reason for the decline in a relatively small congregation.
"A lot of gay people in Muncie would not come to the church because they are afraid of being found out," said Van, 39, who preferred his last name not be used. Van has been attending Rainbow Cathedral regularly since its opening in July 2005 and drives from Eaton every Sunday to attend services. He said that despite small progress, Muncie was still backward in its acceptance of the homosexual citizens.
Norman said there was a larger gay community in Delaware County than people realize.
"Gay people are just afraid to be seen," he said. "They don't want people to see their car on the parking lot of a gay church."
Joe Mumpower, retired Ball State director emeritus of residence halls and founder of Rainbow Cathedral, said people's lack of awareness of the existence of such a church was a reason for the small turn out.
"We don't have the money to advertise ourselves," Mumpower said. He paid more than $160,000 to the Christian Scientists Church of Boston for the building.
"Our weekly offering is under $40. That's not even enough to pay our maintenance bills," he said.
Mumpower said there were no articles in the Muncie paper published about the church.
"It takes articles in the mass media in which people can learn about the church," he said. "The Muncie newspapers don't seem interested in doing the story because they are scared and they don't want to stir up any problems."
Bruce Jones, 58, who has a degree in psychology from Ball State and graduated from the Moody Bible Institute from Chicago said Rainbow Cathedral was rather insignificant and not newsworthy.
"I don't think anyone with good sense will pay attention to it," Jones said. "No one will even consider it a church. ... The best thing to do is to ignore it. The more attention you give to these things the bigger they grow."
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