Expressions Today

(Oklahoma City, OK) Before Expressions Community Fellowship was established in 2009, a building overrun with weeds stood vacant at the end of Oklahoma City’s historic gay strip on NW 39th Street.

“When we first started the church - before the community center was started - I put a stake in the ground,” said Neill Coffman, founding pastor. “There were weeds higher than my head around this building — it was a dump.”

Five years later, Coffman said, the building is unrecognizable.

Formerly a 1,200 square foot space the Expressions campus now extends 16,000 square feet thanks to the installment of Expressions Community Center - a “cooperative service environment which reaches more than 2,400 clients a year.”

“Anyone that saw the building before knows the difference we made to it,” Coffman said. “There was nothing — no walls were built; nothing. We started from scratch.”

ECCC now houses a variety of HIV testing, treatment and prevention programs, including mental health services, the (federal) Department of Human Services, and nine other agencies operating in collaboration, according to Coffman.

“The original vision when I came to the strip on 39th Street was to provide a safe place for the hurting community,” Coffman said. “Now, that’s what it’s become.”

In 2014, Coffman said, he stepped aside as senior pastor to pioneer Expressions Today, the church’s most recent extension dedicated to missionary work. As the driving force behind Expressions Today, Coffman said, he must dedicate his focus to reaching struggling communities beyond Oklahoma City and the gay strip.

He said Expressions Today intends to reach out to other LGBT-affirming churches and organizations in the U.S. and other countries to help replicate what’s been accomplished on 39th Street. “I have to be able to look at the broader needs outside of Expressions,” Coffman said.

“As a pastor, your heart is so tied in to the ministry and the 150 souls in there that you can’t spend the time doing what needs to be done if we’re going to reach and broaden the mission side of the church.”

Coffman said he hopes implementing Expressions Today will enable ECCC to extend its services elsewhere. He said it takes a collective effort for communities to move forward. “Expressions is not about growing a church - it’s about a community taking care of the community. We have all these collaborations working in this building and they’re like one big family.”

“You don’t see that. You don’t see different corporations sitting under one roof working together - it just doesn’t happen.”

Coffman said he was recently overwhelmed with excitement following a stroll down 39th Street. “I passed maybe six people on the street who I know are homeless,” he said. “Some of them may be selling themselves.”

After seeing those individuals, he said, Coffman felt his passion being reaffirmed — and an energy igniting within him. “That’s why Expressions was started,” Coffman said. “To serve a struggling community. There has to be more arms reaching out. We can do further outreach into the community.”

Envisioning himself standing atop the once desolate building that has since flourished, Coffman sees Expressions Today’s reach extending far beyond Oklahoma City - and far beyond the LGBT community, too.

“When I look out off the rooftop, I’m not seeing just LGBT people - I’m seeing every ethnicity, every income level and all the people that pass down the interstate.”

For more information about Expressions Today, visit www.expressions.today.

For more information about Expressions Community Fellowship or services provided through Expressions Community Center, call 405-601-4200.

by Siali Siaosi, Journalism Intern

The Gayly – November 23, 2014 @ 1:15pm