Read our news release on Deepening the Welcome: After Churchwide 2009: A Workshop on Living Out Our Welcome to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Persons in our Congregations, held April 17, 2010 at Edina Community Lutheran Church.

UPCOMING EVENTS:

 

Believe Out Loud Power Summit
Oct. 9-11 in Orlando, FL
The Believe Out Loud Power Summit is an advanced training for leaders in the Welcoming Church Movement planed by the Institute for Welcoming Resources of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. The focus on concrete skills-building in key areas of organizing and movement building such as:

• -Building effective teams for work within our denominations
• -Building effective and strategic campaigns within our denominations and for partnerships with secular efforts.
• -Working at the intersections of race, faith, aging and economic justice
• -Taking leadership to the next level
• -Media and messaging
• -Board Development
• -Fundraising
• -Transgender and Bisexual
• -Action-planning within our denominations and in partnership with local and state-wide secular efforts
• -Visioning about the world we want to leave for our children

 

LC/NA is hoping to get 100 Lutherans to join with people from other denominations at the Power Summit. This is going to be a tremendous event that helps our organization go to the next level of organizing. If interested, contact Ross Murray at LC/NA … now!

 

2011 Metro-wide Reconciling in Christ Festival Worship
Saturday, January 29, 2011

It seems a long way off, but the days are already growing shorter ... So mark your calendars now for the 2011 (Sixth Annual) Metro-wide Reconciling in Christ Festival Worship.

We gather on this Saturday evening, the night before RIC Sunday, to join with Reconciling Lutherans and others from across the Twin Cities area for worship and fellowship. The service will be late afternoon (last year it was at 4:30 p.m.) followed by fellowship time over a soup supper.

We’ll post further details, including exact time and place, in the months ahead. Now, more than ever, this opportunity to leaven our church with the joy of welcome is precious!

 

Walking the Talk of Welcome
Spring 2011 (exact date yet to be set)

Now that the ELCA has changed it policies to be more welcoming, it might be tempting to think that the Reconciling in Christ program is obsolete. But it is now more important than ever. The RIC program is an established process that is perfect for helping congregations live their way into the welcome that is now ELCA policy.

And the reactions against the decisions of Churchwide 2009 makes very clear that it will be years before LGBT Lutherans can take for granted that any particular ELCA congregations actually welcomes them.

If your church is ready to begin exploring what a Reconciling in Christ process might mean for them -- or is ready to begin that process -- please let us know! We are planning our next Walking the Talk of Welcome workshop for spring 2011 (date and location yet to be set), and we want you to be with us. For now, contact David Weiss, LC/TC-RIC Communications at drw59@comcast.net; we'll be sure to keep you in the loop.