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When Bob Davies announced his intention to step down as North American director of Exodus International, a coalition of gay-transformation ministries, he offered an unusual assurance. "There are no hidden scandals about to be revealed about my life," he said. "I believe in Exodus just as strongly as when I began in ex-gay ministry back in 1979."

Since leaving Exodus in October 2001, Davies has joined the music staff of University Presbyterian Church in Seattle. He and his wife, Pam, have been members of that church's choir for four years. Davies is the coauthor of Portraits of Freedom: 14 People Who Came Out of Homosexuality (InterVarsity, 2001).

Associate editor Douglas LeBlanc interviewed Davies as he was preparing for the transition. Davies reflected on what he has learned in his years with Exodus and where ex-gay ministries may be heading.

Why are you retiring from Exodus?

After 22 years, I've been aware for a while that I was ready for a change. I loved it, and this has been the most exciting, fulfilling time in my life.

But as I prayed about it, I got an impression or a message from the Lord, and it was a message of two words: "Finish well." I thought, Okay, what does that mean? Am I going to be dying of cancer in the next couple of years? I hope not.

Over the years I have seen some people leave Exodus for bad reasons—because they're struggling sexually, because they've fallen into immorality. I wanted to leave Exodus as a positive role model for other leaders.

I believe a shift is happening in the Exodus movement: God is raising up a new generation of leadership. In November [2000] we launched a new department called Exodus Youth, and we're moving into more intervention with youth. We have people as young as 11 contacting us, and it's mainly through our Web site (www.exodus.to). Youth can go in there and find out all the information about Exodus and nobody else has to know.

Do many parents come to you with concerns about their teenagers?

It really began accelerating about eight years ago, when all these youth Bibles started appearing. They would mention Exodus in the footnotes on homosexuality and give our address or our phone number. We started getting these phone calls from kids who said, "I read about you in my Bible." We said, "We've really arrived—we're actually in the Bible now."

I've learned the hard way, many years ago, to not get into those situations where parents are dragging their kids into your counseling office, because you basically waste the next hour. You might as well just save your breath.

A much better way is for the parents, because they already have an established relationship with their kids, to be the ones who present the message and the challenge.

We're developing more and more materials. We have an interactive cd for teens called The Map. We're trying to equip parents to help their teens, rather than just bringing them to us and saying, "Can you fix Johnny here?" That's not going to work. Johnny has to have the motivation to change before anything is going to happen.

Robert Spitzer's recent study argues that people can change their homosexual behavior, and it received a fair amount of press. Will this study make it more difficult for people to dismiss transformation ministries?

The gay and lesbian community is beginning to back off of the whole genetic argument. That has been one of the basic foundational premises of the whole modern gay-rights movement for the last 20 or 25 years.

Dr. Spitzer has an incredible history of credibility; he's been published for years in all kinds of areas. But I'm not convinced that he's going to get this thing published. We'll see. If he had come to the other conclusion, he would probably get it published immediately.

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January 7 2002, Vol. 46, No. 1