Ministries Development Blog

A critical part of RCCares’ ministry involves community reconciliation. We co-lead a forum that addresses the need for working toward being a loving and just community following the desire to care for neighbor as self. The work of the forum participants is about co-creating safe space while living in the reality of community. It’s about having the space to be able to think about what a person values, to hear what others are thinking, and coming to better understand the comfort of making informed choices. Automatic responses providing protection in turmoil and conflict present in life create barriers.  In a safe space, taking down those defenses put up for protection can provide  opportunity for calm reflection. The safe space is especially significant now when anti LGBTQ hate based religious rhetoric threatens our lives and well being. We meet in the strength and love of community, attesting to how shame and guilt are disarmed.

Our goal is to be a place of radical hospitality acting for community healing and reconciliation. Affirming Faith Forum is held every fourth Friday of the month at the LGBT Center of Raleigh from 6:30 to 8:30 pm. The most recent forum, “Empowering Action for the Common Good,” is described in this article.

Pathways to power was the main topic of discussion at the “Empowering Action for the Common Good: Affirming Faith Forum” at the LGBT Center of Raleigh on Friday, March 23, at 6:30 pm. The goal to work for the common good extends to and beyond the vote on May 8th. The forum generated more ideas on how to join with others in improving relationships in the community while working to defeat the proposed amendment to the state constitution.   

Discussion about how some of the participants have acted in organized efforts to care for them and for others sparked interest. Community actions reported at the forum included work with organized campaigns solely focused against the proposed amendment and campaigns focused more broadly on building community. Engaging in and expanding these efforts to act for the common good included being a part of empowering relationships.

Caution is reasonable in not going too far, extending one’s self beyond what is doable or losing essential supports.  A forum participant reported not being involved in advocacy for the LGBTQ community. The participant was hesitant to act for fear of disclosing too much personal information about their own same gender loving sexual orientation. Losing the support of family and friends, neighbors or colleagues was a serious concern. Lost connection to important relationships weakens relational power. It weakens connection to people who are caring and loving, an important resource for empowerment to act.  Plans can be developed for how other supports can be used to keep and rebuild connections, hopefully before a relationship is harmfully disrupted. Of course, some opportunities for action in advocacy do not require disclosure, such as phone backing and data entry, for example.

Another participant spoke about the repercussions of their disclosure of being same gender loving, and of the liberation that came through that disclosure. They found support strengthened in some venues bringing discovery of new resources even though affirmation was shut down in others. Their action required disclosure which ultimately resulted in strengthening relational power and encouraging further action for good in their life. They continue to work for the health and wellbeing of the community in which they live, work and play, within the context of a diversity of beliefs

The common ground, the highest common denominator, for the participants in the forum was the desire to improve their health and wellbeing, and that of their community. While ‘spirituality’ may not be a word all forum participants embrace, all agreed on the need for respect and acceptance of diversity in every encounter.

The forum discussion concluded that acting to encourage people to live into their fullest potential is good for the community.  Taking responsibility to act appeared to empower people to consider what is meaningful in their lives.  Repeatedly participants reported how what they valued in their lives they were able to affirm in their actions.  Acting for the common good included encouraging others to kindly be true to themselves.

Affirming Faith Forums are held every fourth Friday at the LGBT Center of Raleigh from 6:30 to 8:30 pm. Everyone is welcome. Please visit www.lgbtcenterofraleigh.com for more information.

RCCares’ work this past week provided a scope of snap shots of the many different parts Being church incorporates. There are many more faces to ministry as you surely could attest.  We enliven the praxis of living into the kindom of love’s reign in many bits and pieces. Our life is a lively kaleidoscope of how we love in sorrow and joy every day.  Thank Goodness that we do not stand alone.

On Saturday we were engaged via phone conference with other Rainbow Access Initiative board members in the Capital District in New York as we designed the next steps for establishing the program format for RAI’s Art of Health Expo 2012. Focus on breakout sessions included discussion on the content of the presentations and the support needed for proposed sessions. The aim of the Expo event is to bring the artistic skills of LGBTQ people to the foreground for the purpose of enhancing healthy living amid creative exchange. RAI supports consumers and providers in uplifting that which is the best of what we can offer each other, giving LGBTQ community opportunity to be our gracious and healthy selves. We celebrate with serious reflection on the desires of our community, honest sharing, good humor, compassionate caring and moments of joy.

Sunday was a day for gathering in Raleigh as the Coalition to Protect NC Families worked to educate and encourage involvement in social action.  RCCares joined over 70 other community organizations, religious and/or secular based, to collaborate in the effort toward helping NC voters understand how they will be impacted by Amendment One which is on the ballet for May 8, 2012. [The first sentence of the proposed amendment states “Marriage between a man and a woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this state.”]  On Sunday we were able to talk with leaders from NC, including Jimmy Creech, as well as to renew our acquaintance with Rev Dr Mel White, one of Soulforce’s compassionate founders and a celebrant at Holy Relationships in Iowa City, Iowa, in 2006. We weave the net of connection wider and stronger with each conversation, allowing for more influential actions in Being the church together.  The significance of moving the moderate middle to vote against the amendment in response to the needs of all families is imperative to equality and justice for LGBTQ people, our family, friends and our community. Where we had failed to support each other in the past because of our differences, we now affirm our hope for a better way of life and join in care of neighbor as self.

Monday evening we joined The People of Faith group, a coalition of local faith organization congregants whose mission is supporting all NC families and leading the vote against Amendment 1. Their plan includes public actions in which they intend to engage, including one on one educational conversation with those in their social network interested in families, speaking through the public media, collectively participating in the march in February advocating with the NAACP for issues of justice and equality in our community, and bringing speakers to their congregations’ gatherings to continue the education process regarding the need for all families to receive the benefits offered.  Their strategy is to be a faithful voice of equality and justice for LGBTQ families in their personal relationships, within supportive communal gatherings and in the public forum where legislation and policies are formed. We have discovered that as we tell our stories, what can be revealed in that telling is the good news of freedom and release to truly live.

Tuesday we met with the OutRaleigh steering committee to propose an OutRaleigh Clergy component to that annual event. Discussion centered on how clergy might be brought publically into a commitment to offer support to LGBTQ families as identified OutRaleigh Clergy.  Committee consensus was that criteria for inclusion in the brochure would require public actions that demonstrated support and affirmation of LGBTQ families. The OutRaleigh clergy should be present during the event to respond to requests of event participants. A confirmed, connected network of publically affirming and responsive clergy can serve to counter and denounce threats of hate violence due to religious intolerance based on anti-LGBTQ rhetoric. Where policies and legislation exclude LGBTQ people based on ‘religious morals’ and family value, the OutRaleigh Clergy act to expand the inclusion of all families in community.

Wednesday we attended the North Carolina Harm Reduction Coalition (NCHRC) Transgender Discussion Group. As is too often the case, a person joined our conversation who had never met with others with whom they could identify. Exploring terminology while expanding our self expression is a blessing we offer each other every time we gather. Welcome, acceptance, breaking bread (and peeling an orange) together, forgiving our own shortcomings and that of the other, offering care and support in ways that matter, and encouraging each other to keep on caring are the sustenance of every meeting. We inspire each other, empowering in ourselves the goodness in which we participate, nourishing us for co creating justice and reframing inclusion in our daily lives.

Thursday we attended a presentation at a local coffee shop that has become home for us even, and especially, in the midst of a chaotic community issue conversation. To have a venue where all voices may be engaged in community building is a valuable resource which we support with our heart and soul. However, we were brought up short in the bigotry and hateful language spoken by the presenter. The possibility of open exploration was derailed by the presenter’s personal and immovable opinion of the assumed ‘given’ of the abomination of our lives as LBGTQ persons. Others at the presentation felt called to engage in a rhetorical dialogue with the presenter, so we allowed the space and time for them to pursue that task as we disengaged. God bless us all, everyone. We were willing to admit that our passion in ministry is to those who would have ears to hear.

Friday our work week culminated with the Affirming Faith Forum at the LGBT Center of Raleigh. We led a discussion about the movie “For the Bible Tells Me So” with community members interested in exploring scripture for Biblical support of same gender love and gender self identity and self expression.  Our conversation incorporated our understanding of God’s creating us in God’s image and how we have been blessed with supportive people in our lives. A question was asked, “How can we prove that God loves us?” We sat there quietly, heart and soul in love and care for each other, touched by the love that is beyond all understanding. We inherently believe that God loves ALL of God’s creation and who could prove otherwise? The Affirming Faith Forum will continue to meet at the LGBT Center of Raleigh, however, instead of every 3rd month we will be meeting every month on the 4th Monday of the month.  The Affirming Faith Forum provides a venue for open exploration of the deep passion for love, the desire for a satisfying life and the joy in a self-connection shared. The forum will also offer the opportunity to explore and reflect upon defusing the power of systemic evils of religious intolerance and bigotry.

Andy and I are in conversation with ministry leaders throughout the country who are working in diverse and challenging endeavors  Being the emerging face of ‘church’ as the body of Christ. As co leaders of the Ministry Development work area for Church Within A Church, we explore the celebratory actions and the struggles of Being the church we want to see. Whether any of us feels that we are the outside other or the inside ministry leader seems to depend on the energy of the Spirit at that moment.  Evangelism truly is a queer triangle.

As the ordained minister for Rainbow Community Cares (RCCares), my work is deeply rooted in ministry development and church revitalization. Rainbow Community Cares has emerged from the praxis of neighborhood ministry begun in Schenectady, New York, and now is informed by participation in LGBTQ community organizations in Raleigh, North Carolina. An integral part of RCCares’ vision is to help heal the rift in our communities and co-create a safe place for community to grow.  The scriptural imperative to love your neighbor leads the way to the gatherings in which RCCares participates. The 2011 Equality Conference was one such gathering.

Congregating with over 80 participants at the workshop “Advocating for Religious Tolerance” that I led was awesome. The realization that so many people at a public advocacy conference gathering were interested in investigating this way of community reconciliation, and contemplating what that advocacy would entail, enfleshed the possibilities and the power of advocating for religious tolerance.  As the workshop began we got to work immediately, defining the parameters we hoped to explore in the following 70 minute session. The workshop was 1 of 5 workshops held during the third and final breakout session of the day. With no microphone, no markers for the posters and the dry erase board hidden behind the power point screen, our voices quickly and conscientiously moved around the room, filled to overflowing,  identifying who we were and naming ourselves as 1)contemplative, 2) a follower or 3) a leader.  There was a general mix from each category in the gathering, with several people who identified as fluid, spanning the categories to include two of the three choices.

Here was a group of people who obviously ranged in age from late teens to late 70’s, all with the courage, insight and hopefulness born of the need to be free to live fully, to be accepted by parents, family and friends, and to be treated with equality in community; their goal was life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The diversity of the group spanned such a range of spiritual practices to defy definition.  It appeared that we were a group of LGBTQA with a multi-varied perspective on what it meant to advocate for tolerance and we agreed early in the session to offer to the gathering bits of our stories that were to be gathered, and later compiled and then disseminated by email in December 2011. During group discussion, we listed what an allied religious organization might look like, and then spent a few minutes to individually write a sentence or two about a personal experience on an index card. As a group we discussed a couple of experiences, suggesting a responsive behavior a supporting allied religious organization could make, and then individually wrote a responsive behavior that each of us wanted to see related to our own experience on the other side of the index card. After reviewing how one might prepare for a meeting with a religious organization and practicing responses to the barriers and successes that what we might anticipate, the workshop culminated in a role play of an advocacy meeting.

Most of the workshop participants agreed that we needed another hour to really dissect the process regarding how to set up and carry out advocacy meetings as well as to explore further options for responsive behaviors in collaboration with LGBT community advocacy groups and ally religious organizations.  While this workshop was not designed to address all possibilities for advocating for religious tolerance, another topic of concern voiced by several participants was how to respond to religious intolerance at the moment of confrontation.

RCCares passion for leading advocacy work comes from seeing how religious intolerance enables judgment as harsh as using hell as a weapon to cut us off from those whom  we love and who love us, attempting to deny our common humanity and heedlessly bludgeoning families, severing individual  connections for self realization and friendships, effectively separating us from those we love.

Emotional damage perpetrated by religious beliefs and/or a narrowly prescribed definition of ‘morality’ is contagious as these toxins seep out into the public arena where community gathers. People who choose to nurture their spirituality in affirming ways as well as those who would choose to have nothing to do with religious organizations are assaulted in communal life by the results of this toxicity. Innocent bystanders are drawn into interfamilial strife which would not have occurred were it not for the introduction of that toxin.  Children may not come out to their parents because they have learned rejection outside of their homes and generalize that rejection to their own family. People justify striking out at others with hateful words or physical violence because those people have not heard a consolidated, communal voice denying them the right to create such ‘morality’ boundaries. We challenge this assumption in the work of advocating for tolerance as we reach out across our communities and throughout the country.

Outrageous and violent acts of intolerance, based on purported anti-LGBTQ biases due to ‘religious beliefs’, could not possibly be supported except via a virulent case of homophobia; i.e., a fear that goes beyond rational thought threatening one’s own belief system. There will always be people in this world who want to control the actions of others for a variety of reasons, attempting to refute a perspective other than their own, and a perspective with which they cannot empathize. On the one hand, there is the possibility that in our work advocating for religious tolerance we may encourage an increase in tolerance for diversity with those for whom there is potential for developing empathy and/or tolerance. On the other hand, there remains the responsibility to advocate for justice and equality where people’s human rights are minimalized and marginalized in our society solely on the basis of their sexual orientation, gender expression or gender identity.  A small minority of religious organizations openly advocate for religious intolerance but  many more religious organizations are teaching intolerance through their disallowing recognition and/or speaking out against relationships the LGBTQ communities respect and honor.  This translates as a denial of full participation for the LGBTQ community in social activities throughout community interactions and relationships at work, in places of commerce, and at home. The work of prayerfully creating opportunities to reflect upon and advocate for religious tolerance is the beginning of the beginning to love neighbor as self.