When We All Get to Heaven is a documentary audio project that uses archival audio to tell the story of a queer church in San Francisco and how it got through AIDS in the years before treatment. The show will be based on an archive of recordings the church made of its worship services from 1987-1999.

Host Lynne Gerber was introduced to the archive in 2011 by a congregant who pulled it from the trash and stored it under the floor in the church’s sound room. Since then, we’ve been cataloging and clipping tape, interviewing members and leaders, and crafting the stories the show will share. You can hear a sneak peek of our first episode below. We hope to make the show a reality this year, but we need your support to make it happen!

Our project tells the story of one of the first gay-positive churches, the Metropolitan Community Church of San Francisco (MCC-SF), and how it faced the personal, social and political trials of the AIDS epidemic, including the deaths of hundreds of its members. The project follows a community of LGBTQ Christians as they struggle to make meaning of illness, death, and stigma while caught between two communities: a religious world that said gays had no place and a gay rights movement that said God had no place.

The series tells a range of stories tied together by a focus on this singular place and the tension of how to be queer and Christian during the AIDS crisis. It’s based on an archive of 1,200 cassette tapes recorded by the congregation during the height of the AIDS epidemic. It also uses extensive interviews with church members and leaders. We will tell some dramatic stories – one minister resigns after faking a hate crime; the senior pastor becomes HIV-positive. But we will also tell stories of the dailiness of living through a crisis and the rituals and relationships that can get you through a week, a month, a year, in an ongoing epidemic.

We’ve been living through a new pandemic and are facing new threats that pose the kinds of social, political, scientific and spiritual conundrums that AIDS did in the 1980s and 90s. The stories of MCCSF point us to possible ways through. And they show us the importance of practicing hope when it feels like there is none.

If you haven’t heard: it’s a particularly hard time in the podcasting industry right now. The big companies have done massive lay-offs and nobody is funding short-series documentary work. (We hear it isn’t appealing to advertisers.) A project like ours doesn’t have a viable financial model for bringing in revenue. But that doesn’t mean that these stories shouldn’t be told or that no one wants to hear them. We believe that it’s incredibly important to share the history captured in this archive – particularly now, when queer history is being challenged, censored, and in some cases, outright erased.

So we’ve decided to produce this series independently, without the financial support of a podcast network or production company. Our core team (Lynne, Siri, and Ariana) have been volunteering their time since 2016, working to bring this project into the world. But in order to get it over the finish line, we need additional resources to hire project support, pay licensing fees, and produce professional-quality audio. That’s why we’re hosting this crowdfunder. If you want to be part of preserving queer history for future generations, we’d love your support in making When We All Get to Heaven.

Our project is being led by a trio of historians and audio makers committed to bringing archival sounds and their hidden stories to contemporary listeners.

Lynne Gerber (Host and Executive Producer) is an independent scholar in San Francisco who writes for academic and public-facing venues. She has taught at Harvard Divinity School and the University of California, Berkeley. She’s been a friend of MCC San Francisco since she first attended a worship service there in December of 2001.

Siri Colom (Producer) is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Worcester State University focusing on how communities face social trauma. She received her PhD from the University of California Berkeley.

Ariana Nedelman (Producer) is the co-founder of the feminist production company Not Sorry and co-creator of the podcasts Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, Hot and Bothered, and The Real Question.

We’re working with a tremendous team of audio professionals who are helping us shape the sound, feel, and narrative shape of the project. They include:

Krissy Clark – Managing Producer
Sayre Quevedo – Story Editor
David Herman – Sound Designer
Tim Dillinger – Consulting Producer

Our goal is to raise $15,000 through this campaign. Your contribution will help us get over the finish-line with production, ensure that the story is fully fact-checked, and share it with the world. Specifically, we plan to use crowdsourced funds for:

Production costs – Thanks to grants, we’ve been able to pay our key production staff for the past year. Your contributions to this crowdfunder will ensure that we can keep paying them through the last stages of sound design.
Fact checking – Many of our stories involve trauma and injustice. Carefully fact checking our episodes is a way of respecting the people whose stories we're telling. Your support helps us afford the time and tools needed to dig deep, consult expert sources, and bring you history that’s not just compelling but credible.
Legal expenses – Queer history is under threat and telling these stories comes with real risk. In today’s political climate, covering LGBTQ+ history, can provoke backlash or even legal challenges. We’re committed to telling the truth with integrity and courage, but we also need to protect ourselves. That’s why we want to hire a First Amendment lawyer to review each episode — so if we’re challenged, we’re ready to fight back.
Music licensing – The soundtrack of this podcast isn’t just background noise; it’s an integral part of the storytelling. Licensing music helps immerse listeners in the world we’re talking about — the fear, the fight, the joy, the resistance.
Promotions – We’ve poured over a decade into this project — now we need your help to make sure people hear it! Reaching listeners, especially the ones who need this history most, takes resources. That means buying ad space on larger podcasts and platforms, but also doing intentional, grassroots outreach to the communities who’ve lived this history: LGBTQ+ groups, HIV organizations, faith communities, and more. Your support helps us bring this podcast not just to the mainstream, but to the margins — where it can truly make a difference.

As a token of gratitude for supporting our show, we’re offering a few perks. All higher level donations include the perks from previous categories.

$10
- We’ll thank you by name on social media
$50
- We’ll send you a hand-selected batch of historical saucy ads from the archives of the Bay Area Reporter (San Francisco’s LGBT newspaper)
$75
- We’ll send you a playlist of highlights from our historical archive
$125
- We’ll send you three 10 minute audio bonuses from the cutting room floor. Each core team member will play clips we had to cut from the show and share why we still love that tape.

$250
- We’ll thank you on our website
- We’ll give you early access to our first two episode
$500
- As soon as the show starts releasing in the fall, we’ll give you immediate access to the first five episodes of the series

When We All Get to Heaven: An LGBTQ+ documentary audio project