WINTER 2004Moving forward with inclusive ministry
In the last two years, an amazing number of congregations have been added to the Reconciling in Christ (RIC) roster and more are inquiring about it. RIC congregations often ask for ideas to expand their ministry and faithfully carry out their affirmation of welcome. Welcoming is an ongoing process, and there are many excellent ways to further outreach and cultivate understanding. In its publication “You’re Church is Reconciling in Christ: Now what?,” Lutherans Concerned has adopted a three-stage strategy for inclusive ministry: Basic Welcome to Individuals, Honoring Relationships and Families, and Recognition of Pastors/Ministers. Each section includes ideas gleaned from experiences of the over 285 Lutheran RIC congregations and 21 RIC synods throughout the ELCA and ELCIC (Canada).
Basic Welcome to Individuals offers suggestions for using “welcoming words” in printed materials, how to publicize your welcome to the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and trans-gendered (GLBT) community, resource materials for education, and visual symbols you can use.
The section on Honoring Relationships and Families includes several ways you can recognize and affirm people who are GLBT and their partners and families.
Recognition of Pastors/Ministers reminds us of the many gifts of GLBT clergy and staff who are already serving in the ELCA or are fully qualified to do so—how we can support them and provide opportunities for them to answer their calling.
All of these ideas are strictly voluntary. Some actions work better in some places than in others. You make the final decision about what works for you, and you are encouraged to create new ideas.
If your congregation is RIC, it embodies the Gospel of love and grace to people of all sexual orientations. Be faithful in expanding and expressing the welcome you have so lovingly adopted. Look for “Your Church is Reconciling: Now What?” on our local chapter website for full details on the three-stage strategy. (www.lcsanfrancisco.org).
If your congregation is not RIC, we invite you to consider it. Your ministry will be blessed in ways you never imagined!
(This article includes text and ideas from “Your Church is Reconciling in Christ: Now What?, a publication of Lutherans Concerned North America.)
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Oakland-Berkeley Youth Program
Fact:
I am a pastor who is openly gay, yet there are no self-identified gay youth in
my youth groups.
It is surprising to me that one of the biggest fears of congregations dealing with the possibility of calling a gay pastor, or simply welcoming gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and questioning (GLBTQ) persons into their communities is that if they open their doors in welcome, the whole church will “go gay.” It is surprising to me because I have almost never heard of this happening. This is certainly true with my ministry with youth and the congregations that feed into this ministry. At most, I have heard of congregations increasing their GLBTQ member-ship to 20% . But GLBTQ folks taking over? In my mind this is an empty fear—a fear that is not built on fact or experience.
My greatest surprise is that my being gay is talked about the most when the ELCA tries to figure out which box I fit into, vis-à-vis its policies. In my day-to-day life as a pastor, the fact that I am gay comes up very rarely. I am honest about my relationship with my boyfriend; people know this fact of my life situation. It is part (and only a part) of who I am. Overall, people accept me for who I am, and they ask me normal questions anyone would ask someone they care about: “How are you? How is your boyfriend? How about that Raiders game?” And in regard to my ministry, being gay informs my perspective, yes, but as a rule, it does not come up directly unless the youth bring up the topic of homophobia or sexuality (in general), etc. I am a pastor. I am a pastor who happens to be gay.
So what is different about my ministry? Well . . . honestly? Nothing. Other than the fact that I am in love with a man, my ministry is pretty typical of most ELCA pastors (I am rostered by the Extraordinary Candidacy Project [ECP], a Lutheran group called to and serving ELCA congregations). I preach. I teach. I lead retreats with youth. I lead youth group meetings and service projects. I make hospital visits. I celebrate the Eucharist. I evangelize. So are we different? I don’t think so. Are there some exciting things happening here, and would I be willing to share them with you? YEAH!
Because we are open and affirming to GLBTQ folk and
have called and ordained clergy, both straight and GLBTQ, our community is
reflective of the whole of God’s creation racially, economically, by means of
sexuality, and by means of country of origin. One thing that is noteworthy about
my ministry is that I speak to middle and high schools classes about GLBTQ
issues (usually in life education classes, but also about responding to
homophobia in our schools). We talk about a variety of issues and concepts: 1)
What is homophobia? 2) Is ‘queer’ a socially accepted word in the GLBTQ
community? 3) Why is the suicide rate for GLBTQ teens at least three times the
national average? and the like. It is an amazing privilege for me to take part
in honest and frank discussions with the youth of our communities, and also to
be an instrument of outreach to show that there are GLBTQ Christians and clergy.
“Christian,” or even “religious,” does not necessarily equal “homo-phobic.” My
speaking in the schools is evangelism by my very presence, and I am careful not
to espouse only a Christian perspective, because the students in the Bay Area
come from a plethora of religious backgrounds.
Similarly, I evangelize on the synodical level as an adult representative of the Sierra Pacific Synod Youth Committee-District C. During my two terms on this 30+ senior high youth-led committee, I have helped to lobby expansion of our non-discrimination clause to include sexual orientation. And, while it took a year and a half to be invited to do so, I recently led worship and presided at the Eucharist for over 200 youth and adults at our synod’s middle school youth event. This was a validating and affirming experience—a gay pastor asked to break bread with Lutherans from across our synod! Small steps. But steps forward, nonetheless.
For more information, or to contact me, send email to fufoo2 "at" aol.com (long story: it is an old Middle school nickname that stuck) or call the youth hotline at 510-530-1355.
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Rev. Craig Minich was ordained in 2001 and called as pastor to the Oakland-Berkeley Lutheran Youth Program, a joint urban youth ministry program of five ELCA congregations in Oakland and Berkeley, California. The youth program he directs focuses on a senior high group, Sunday Night Live (SNL); a middle school group, Middle Youth Loving Christ (MYLC); and a 2nd—5th-grade elementary group, The Li’l Devils. Intergenerational gatherings are also featured—an Easter Egg hunt, a sledding-in-the-parking-lot event, a Halloween party and haunted house, and a family camping trip. Pr. Craig preaches and teaches, leads youth retreats, serves on the Sierra-Pacific Synod Youth Committee (as a District “C” adult representative), and does outreach to GLBTQ youth.
Originally from Tampa, Florida, he attended Lenoir-Rhyne College (ELCA) and Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in Berkeley. He was not approved by the ELCA for rostered ministry solely because he is gay and refused to be silent about it, so he applied to and is rostered by the Extraordinary Candidacy Project (ECP). His love of travel has led him to volunteer with Habitat for Humanity International in Guatemala and Bolivia . . . and to the mountains for snowboarding. He loves movies and has written several movie scripts together with Brandon Jones, his writing partner and best friend (who lives in Florida).
Participating congregations in the Oakland-Berkeley Lutheran Youth Program are St. Paul Lutheran, Resurrection Lutheran, Trinity Lutheran and United Lutheran in Oakland, and University Lutheran Chapel in Berkeley. Financial support is provided in part by generous funding from Lutheran Lesbian and Gay Ministries (www.llgm.org)
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Bishop John Shelby Spong speaks
out
As one
writer put it,
every now and then someone “shines a refreshing light in the dark places.”
Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong put the spotlight on fellow Episcopalian and
Washington Post columnist George Will in his open letter response to
Will’s criticism of the Episcopal church’s confirmation of the Rt. Rev. Eugene
Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire. Bishop Robinson is a non-celebrate gay
priest.
In his Post column “Nuclear fallout in the Anglican Communion”
(10/14/03), Will complained, among other things, that:
Episcopalians, the American adherents of Anglicanism, were once a formid-able cultural force–—the American establishment at prayer. But after years of pursuing communicants with political and cultural trendiness rather than doctrinal clarity, Episcopalianism is a small and dwindling faction of American Christianity . . .
Excerpts from Spong’s response follow (the full text is available widely on the Internet):
January 2004
Dear George:
You have a huge platform through television, Newsweek and the Washington Post to
be a major influence in shaping public opinion . . . . I am, however, absolutely
amazed at the profoundly uninformed positions you have recently offered the
public on the questions that are currently the content of ecclesiastical debate
in our churches. You seem to have no understanding of what it means to seek to
bind together an ancient faith with the insights of our contemporary world . . .
.
Yet you, George, in your Washington Post column, have characterized this debate as one that pits the "cultural trendiness" of the Northern Hemisphere nations against the "doctrinal clarity" of the Southern Hemisphere nations. I regard that analysis as breathtakingly naive and suggest that it is revelatory of nothing more than your own deep and abiding prejudice. For you to speak publicly about this issue, when you are as poorly informed as your words reveal you to be, calls either your competence or your integrity, perhaps both, into question . . . .
You pose the issues of this debate as between modernism in religion and the true faith of antiquity. You suggest that two thousand years of Church teaching about sexuality and family are being imaginatively construed in "a certain interpretive trajectory." You quote approvingly a Fairfax, Virginia, Episcopal priest who, referring to the debate at the National Episcopal General Convention last summer, said, "When the plain teaching of the Bible was referenced, eyes rolled, and with expressions of polite exasperation, we were told that it was time to move on. The Bible simply had not kept up." You appear to be saying that those who quote the Bible, as if it provides the last word on moral issues, are to be commended.
Well, George, perhaps you need to understand why it is that people who quote
the Bible to undergird their own inability to embrace reality might need to be
enlightened.
The Bible was quoted to support the divine right of kings when the Magna Carta
made its appearance in 1215. History has demonstrated that the Bible was wrong
on that issue and today no king rules on this planet by divine right. People
have embraced democracy. You might think that represents "cultural trendiness,"
but I believe it represents an emerging consciousness that the writers of the
Bible, bound to their time in history, could never have contemplated.
In the 17th century the church, acting out of what you call "doctrinal clarity," imprisoned Galileo and almost executed him because his study of the motion of "heavenly bodies" led him to the conclusion that the Earth was not the center of the universe and that indeed the Earth rotated around the sun. The "fathers of the Church," in their attack on Galileo, quoted a verse from the book of Joshua, in which the sun was made to stand still in the sky to enable Joshua to kill more of his enemies, as sure proof that the sun rotated around the Earth . . . .
We could go on and show how "doctrinal clarity" led the church to participate in, and to justify with biblical quotations, the institution of slavery as well as slavery's two bastard stepchildren, segregation and apartheid. Are you not aware that even the popes in history have been slaveholders? Is our present integrated society, which has opened the door to people like Colin Powell to serve in an office that was previously denied to any African American, just another example of "cultural trendiness"?
Women in this country were certainly treated up until relatively modern times with what you call "doctrinal clarity." The Ten Commandments defined the woman as property that, along with the ox and the ass, was not to be coveted . . . Women did not receive the power of the vote in the United States until 1920 and even that was accomplished against the opposition of the Bible quoters. The Supreme Court of the United States ruled in 1876 that a woman could not practice law in the state of Illinois because "God has designed her for the more domestic role . . . .”
You see, George, the battle over the full acceptance of homosexual people in both church and society is like all of these other movements. It pits an old and dying definition, supported by appeals to Scripture, against an emerging new consciousness . . . . To discriminate against a person on the basis of something the person is must be seen as nothing more than prejudicial ignorance that leads to the willful destruction of another’s humanity. That makes it an overt act of bigotry. To quote the Bible to render bigotry acceptable is neither new nor is it any more convincing in this situation that it has been when used earlier in our history to justify other evils.
For you to suggest further that nations of the Third World, where such things as polygamy, female circumcision and second-class status for women are still widely practiced, ought to be listened to and respected when they speak out of the context of a discredited and dying definition of homosexuality is bizarre . . . .
Our church has done an audacious thing. We will not now tremble at our own audacity. This is, rather, a cause for rejoicing that another in a long list of human prejudices has begun to fall.
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John Shelby Spong, retired bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark, has authored numerous articles and books throughout his career, including best-sellers Why Christianity Must Change or Die (1991) and Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism (1998) and his recent book, A New Christianity for a New World : Why Traditional Faith is Dying & How a New Faith is Being Born (2002).
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Something to think about . . .
The rapidly growing acceptance and visibility of gays and lesbians over the past 30 years can be explained by simple exponential math: each person who comes out of the closet brings at least some of his friends and family . . . and this in turn makes it easier for others to live openly. It’s a phenomenon alien to the politics of race; rarely, alas does a racist wake up one morning to discover that he has an African-American son or brother.
. . . throughout American history, whenever a sweeping social change has occurred, it has tended to occur within the span of a single generation.
Adam Goodheart in “Small-Town Gay America,” The New York Times, Sunday, November 23, 2003.
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Hearing on Journey Together
Faithfully—Part Two
March 27, 2004—10:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
The Sierra Pacific Synod will hold a hearing session on part two of the ELCA
sexuality study on March 27, 10:00 am to 12:30 pm at Faith Lutheran, 20080
Redwood Road in Castro Valley. This is an opportunity for us to share our
response to the study with each other and the Task Force. It is expected that
participants will have reviewed the materials prior to the hearing. Pr Lucy
Kolin will be the official "listener" for the hearing. No registration is
necessary.
Sierra Pacific Synod Assembly
“Faithful Yet Changing: For the Sake of the World”
May 13-15, 2004 at the Reno Hilton
The 2004 Assembly of the Sierra Pacific Synod is scheduled for May 13-15 at the
Reno Hilton In Nevada. This Assembly will have most of the "business" up-front,
and begins with hearings at 10:00 am for the discussion of resolutions. The
official Opening of the Assembly is set for 1:00 pm. Dr Ted Peters, interim
president of Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary will bring greetings, and
Carlos Pena, the vice president of the ELCA, will lead the Bible studies and
serve as our official ELCA representative. More details are available at
www.spselca.org.
North American RIC Conference and
LC/NA Biennial Assembly
July 22-25, 2004
Wow! What a lineup! Join us on the campus of Augsburg College in
Minneapolis, MN. The theme is "Gather Us In: Receiving, Inviting, Calling."
Featured speakers for the Assembly will be Bishop Robert A. Rimbo, Southeast
Michigan Synod, ELCA; Rev. Heidi Neumark, Pastor of Transfiguration Lutheran
Church in Bronx, NY; and Dr. Erin Swenson, licensed therapist, ordained
Presbyterian minister, and transgendered woman. Save by registering before March
31, 2004 (www.lcna.org or 612-709-4117).
A warm welcome to our newest
RIC Congregations!
Community Lutheran Church
920 Drever St.
West Sacramento, CA 95691
clchurch "at" jps.net
St. John’s Lutheran Church
1701 L St.
Sacramento, CA 95814
www.stjohnslc.org
Ebenezer Lutheran Church
678 Portola St.
San Francisco, CA 94127
www.herchurch.org
LC/SFBA Board Meetings:
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