Last January our congregation ratified our latest 3-year Mission Commitment, which included five new priorities for us to pursue through December of 2023. Of those five priorities, our second is:
Become a more empowering community for women, people of color, persons with disabilities, and LGBTQ+ persons.
We have already taken a few steps to pursue certain aspects of this priority. We have been blessed to have people of color accept positions of congregational leadership this year. We have been blessed to have LGBTQ person accept staff positions. We are learning to integrate the celebration of people of color and LGBTQ persons in our Sunday Gatherings, starting with Black History Month and Pride Month. We formed an Anti-Racism Team and recently launched our anti-racism learning group, called No Greater Love.
All of this has been a good start. But the time has come to take the next important step to learn how to empower our LGBTQ family, friends, and neighbors.
Just as forming an Anti-Racism Team has helped us to work toward becoming a more anti-racist congregation, we need a small team of 4-6 volunteers to form an Open & Affirming Team. This team will be tasked with helping the congregation develop in three areas:
Areas of learning we need to pursue
Programs we might create together
Partnerships in the community we might cultivate.
Members of this team must be active congregants at The Oceanside Sanctuary. Ideally, this team will include both gay and straight people. Whatever your sexuality, we need people who care deeply for the liberation of the LGBTQ community.
The deadline to express interest is October 10th, so if you are interested, please fill out the interest form below and we will be in touch. Our first team meeting will be at the end of October.
Sincerely,
Rev. Jason Coker
Lead Pastor