In the News: San Francisco Chronicle

Transgender pastor preaches to the choir with love

By Kevin Fagan

October 9, 2016 Updated: October 9, 2016 12:00pm

Rev. Megan Rohrer leads the Singers of the Street, a drop in homeless choir that meets every Monday.
Media: Erin Brethauer 

 

The voices intertwine like vines, three strands of harmony wrapping around words that make you cry if you think too hard about them and the people standing there singing them. But you don’t see tears on the Rev. Megan Rohrer’s face as she conducts this weekly session of Singers of the Street.

What you see is what you get pretty much most of the time the pastor talks: a smile so bright it seems to match the glow of the stained glass windows of the church she’s in.

Rohrer spends every Monday leading this little choir of mostly homeless people in song. And if there’s one thing that helps define Rohrer’s mission in life as one of the only transgender ministers in the nation, this may be it. In her — Rohrer, 36, prefers the pronoun “they,” but doesn’t quibble with occasional desires for conventional reference — role as pastor of the Grace Lutheran Church in the outer Sunset District of San Francisco, Rohrer is all about social justice and celebrating differences. About nurturing the goodness at the core of everyone’s soul. Corny stuff. But real.

“I’m going home, quiet-like, some still day, I’m going home,” Rohrer sings with the choir, left hand arcing up and down to conduct the musical flow. “It’s not far, just close by, through an open door...”

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Photo: Erin Brethauer, The Chronicle

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Mark Jackson, far left, sings with Singers of the Street, a homeless choir led by Rev. Megan Rohrer of Grace Lutheran Church during a rehearsal at First Congregational on Monday, Oct. 3, 2016 in San Francisco.

Most of the nine people in front of her don’t have the home they’re singing about. But for those moments they get to have with Rohrer every Monday, they’ll tell you they feel like they have something close to one — and it’s because of the radiant minister standing in front of them in a worn T-shirt and blue jeans.

“We love Megan,” says Kent Hollek, 62, who’d slept the night before on Van Ness Boulevard and carefully stashed his suitcase in a corner of the choir practice room. “She steers us. She guides us. I can’t think of anyone else like her.”

The choir gig actually comes with one of Rohrer’s other jobs in addition to her role at Grace Lutheran. She is executive director of the Welcome ministry, which works with the impoverished all over San Francisco and holds the Singers of the Street practices at First Congregational Church on Polk Street. Having other gigs is nothing new for Rohrer, who seems to be in perpetual motion writing children’s books, helping the homeless with everything from eyeglasses to music, leading garden projects for the community.

And this is all in addition to being a pastor who was born a girl in South Dakota, figured out early she was gender-neutral, and took charge of Grace Lutheran in 2014. That same year, she was honored by the Dalai Lama for her compassionate works.

“My motto is try everything,” Rohrer says. “If it doesn’t work, don’t mention you did that. If it does work, do it some more.” She says this with one of her trademark laughs. And she means it. In the most sincere way possible.


See a short film with Pastor Megan Rohrer and the homeless choir at www.sfchronicle.com/theregulars. The Regulars is a weekly photo and video column by Erin Brethauer that offers a glimpse into the lives of ordinary people in the Bay Area, caught in routine activities of modern urban life. If you know a regular, email regulars@sfchronicle.com.