strukture coaching
Build a life that carries weight
Faith and sexuality integration coaching for gay men who've been told they have to choose — and know, somewhere deep down, that they don't.
If you're a gay man who still has faith — or grief about faith that failed you know that you are not alone.
There's a way of being more fully you than you could have imagined when trying so hard to be the person others thought you wanted to be.
My name is Peter Hausmann. I'd love to be your coach on the way to being a more authentic you.
"I love to build, whether it be words or wood in the making."
That was the opening sentence of my application to Princeton Theological Seminary in 1995. I'd studied Architecture and Construction in college. Ours was a very philosophical program. But when I raised my theological questions, my Dean of Students suggested I look into Seminary as a place for me to wrestle with my questions about life, meaning, and God.
And though I didn't admit it to anyone else — sexuality.
"Just say yes," said the pastor in my confirmation class, weary of my "whys."
I grew up in a “mainline” Presbyterian church, and had a lot of questions they didn’t fully know how to deal with. By the time my family moved to my fourth city, I had a lot of loneliness and a lot of cynicism toward the world — and especially the churches that I encountered along the way.
Fellow students from an evangelical Presbyterian church in a Texas town hooked me in with a missions trip to Mexico. I didn't much care for the mission part, but I wanted to travel. However, their preparation classes — which combined a unique mix of evangelical talks and field trips to social justice ministries — laid a foundation for me to confess my trust in Jesus on that same mission, going into my senior year of high school.
CHAPTER 01
Foundation
CHAPTER 02
The body betrays the illusion
“How can you go to that dead church?”
In college, I straddled the two worlds of the liberal Presbyterian Campus Ministry and the and fundamentalist preachers. Each group looked at the other with distrust, but I knew I was somewhere in the middle of the two.
Underneath was the fear that my same-sex attraction was more than a phase that could be fixed with discipline, scripture, Pentecostal prayer, or hours of therapy.
Nonetheless, I put on conservative Christianity like Spanx, hoping it could contain what my body knew it was made for — but my wishful theology would not allow. But as we know orthodoxy cannot deliver on its promise to make you straight. For if one could be healed from being gay, I would have been.
"You’re just gay” was both relief and a crack in the foundation of who I was supposed to be.
After coming out, I did not do well holding the tension of guilt for broken promises and joy for new possibilities, and instead chose to wallow in self-centered shame, hurting folks close to me.
Being a former conservative pastor in a liberal denomination, I had no idea how to show back up in that tradition that I judged for being pro-gay and no welcome in my old congregation that judged people for being gay. Two other churches helped me re-build: First Presbyterian and a Mennonite Fellowship. Each made space for me just to be as I am, loving me when I could not love myself, and advocating for me when others judged me.
It's been a long journey of finding that God not only loves me, but actually likes me. When I encounter other gay folk I hear stories of their own heartbreak and hope.
Some have walked away, with damn good reason — for the church can be cruel. Some have put it on a shelf. Some have found a way to be both faithful and fully sexual in ways we were told we could not be. And I have found that I have been useful to persons queer and straight alike, and otherwise as they too wrestle with questions of body and soul.
My name is Peter Hausmann. I studied Architecture at Clemson and Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. I am an ordained Presbyterian minister at large. I served as a pastor in New Jersey and in North Carolina, then moved into Construction with the company that renovated the last church I served. In the years that followed I renovated churches, warehouses, and hospitals. Then eight years ago I moved into work helping banks with their security. I have been in intentional groups of men coaching one another for years. And in my work with a coach last summer it became clear that it would be a good thing to offer myself, my gifts, and my services to other folks who may also be trying to make sense of their sexuality in relationship to their religion. My coaching happens parallel to my day work and is a vital place to learn with others what it means to be more fully human and no longer split apart.
CHAPTER 03
It gets better?
Our Services
A low-pressure conversation to see if we're a fit. No agenda, no sales pitch.
30 minutes · Video call
Price is per session
50 minutes, video call
For focused exploration
At your pace
A twelve-week walk together through story, shame, faith, and integration.
Weekly sessions for 12 weeks
Phase 1: Your Foundation Story (Weeks 1–3)
Phase 2: Demolishing Shame (Weeks 4-6)
Phase 3: Renovating Your World View (Weeks 7–9)
Phase 4: Living into Integration (Weeks 10–12)
Journal prompts, email support, reading list
So I offer myself to walk with you for a season.
If this sounds inviting, please reach out for a discovery call to see if we could grow together. At the very least, I look forward to hearing your story for a bit, as a fellow broker in this life.