Elizabeth Garcia wasnt particularly religious when she first encountered Young Life, a Colorado-based evangelical youth ministry that seeks to win young souls for Christ. Back then, she was just another nervous high school freshman trying to fit in. Young Life took her in, connected her to a Christian community that cared about her, and taught her that Jesus welcomes all kids to his table.

Over a decade later, Garcia learned firsthand that this welcome had a caveat. After serving as a Young Life volunteer and then a staff member, Garcia says she was forced to resign from her job after coming out as queer.

Looking back, she called it a bait and switch.

As soon as I was asked to resign, immediately it was like, They are not who I thought they were, she said.

Garcias story is one of hundreds emerging from a new campaign, Do Better Young Life , that seeks to highlight the voices of LGBTQ people and other minorities who say they have been hurt by the ministry. Former participants and employees who are queer described a pattern of damaging behavior to HuffPost being recruited as children, finding community and belonging in the group, being encouraged into volunteer and staff positions, and ultimately, being pushed away after coming out. They said they lost their jobs at the ministry, were told to just stop being gay, were outed to co-workers without consent, and were treated like a threat to children simply for being queer.

Organizer Kent Thomas, a 30-year-old former Young Life student and staffer from Tacoma, Washington, launched the campaign after learning that the ministry had used a photo of an employee on its Instagram to promote one of its camps an employee it had forced out for being queer. Thomas responded with an Instagram post on June 29 claiming that Young Lifes partial inclusion was even worse than overt exclusion. He encouraged others to share their stories online under the hashtag #DoBetterYoungLife.

Since then, Thomas says, the group has collected over 400 stories from former Young Life students, volunteers or staff members who allege they experienced queerphobia, racism, sexism or other kinds of discrimination at Young Life. Some of these testimonies have been posted on the campaigns Instagram and Twitter accounts. Nearly 7,000 people have signed a Change.org petition that lists more inclusive and transparent policies at Young Life as one of its demands.