We have heard that "Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in America," and this is too often the case in our congregations. Come hear about congregations that are transforming themselves from monocultures to communities that actively embrace and welcome all, across race, sexual identity, age, nationality, language and other differences that too often divide us. You will take away ideas to try in your own congregation to continue this journey.
What Is the Issue?
We have heard that “Sunday is the most segregated hour in America,” and this is too often the case in our congregations. Come hear about how congregations are gracefully transforming themselves from mono-cultures to communities that actively embrace and welcome all, across race, sexual identity, gender identity, age, nationality, language and other differences that too often divide us. You will take away ideas and tools to try in your own congregation to continue this journey.
Resources
- Building an Inclusive Church course: This free on-line course, while based on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender inclusion, is an excellent approach for engaging any type of change in a local congregation. In a user-friendly format, this course can be taken at your own pace and details the tools we’ll introduce and practice in the workshop.
www.rmnetwork.org/newrmn/online-toolkit
- Building an Inclusive Church toolkit: The course above is based on this toolkit. It’s a playbook for engaging change in communities in graceful ways. Detailed in 11 steps, this toolkit outlines some processes and plans for engaging the entire congregation in the inclusion process. www.welcomingresources.org/welcomingtoolkit.pdf
- Just Peace: Conflict exists in every healthy community. How we choose to engage conflict is our choice. When living out a call to be an inclusive congregation, conflict will arise. Being prepared to be present in the midst of conflict is an act of deep discipleship. Just Peace offers training, mediation and print resources to engage conflict gracefully.
www.justpeaceumc.org
Suggestions for Action
- Write an inclusion statement for your unit. If your statement explicitly includes people of all sexual orientations and gender identities, join the Reconciling Ministries Network (RMN) (www.rmnetwork.org). Here is a sample statement from the Reconciling United Methodist Women at Saint John’s United Methodist Church in Austin, TX (each circle wrote their own statement and voted to join RMN as a unit):
- “The Anna Circle of United Methodist Women of Saint John’s United Methodist Church (Austin, TX) embraces as a gift the diversity of our community and world. We celebrate our human family’s diversity of sexual orientation, gender identity, race, ethnicity, age, faith history, economic status, marital status, physical or mental ability and education. We affirm that all people are created in the image of God, are beloved children worthy of [God’s] love and grace. We welcome the full inclusion of all women in the life and ministries of the UMW at Saint Johns as we journey toward reconciliation through Christ.”
- Invite Just Peace to present a program on engaging conflict well at your next unit meeting. To take the program a step deeper, invite a small group in your unit to examine your church’s history of change and conflict. Once that group has collected their findings, invite them to share as a part of the United Methodist Women program to contextualize the discussion of conflict to your church.
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