A Building Inclusive Church workshop–cosponsored by Equality Pennsylvania and the National LGBTQ Task Force–is coming to a city near you!

February 20-21 King of Prussia (Southeast PA)
March 6-7 Harrisburg (Central PA)
May 1-2 Pittsburgh (Western PA)
May 15-16 Kingston (Northeast PA)

Building an Inclusive Church helps congregations navigate towards an Open and Affirming covenant in ways that build consensus and reduce the risk of conflict, and help existing ONA congregations revive and strengthen their ministry of inclusion and justice.

Register today at welcomingresources.org/communityorg.htm. Download this PDF flyer and post at your church. Help us spread the word!

Our church has been publicly welcoming for a long time, but we need to do more work to be sure we are fully inclusive of transgender people and same-sex couples who want to get married.”

We used the Building an Inclusive Church tools and process very effectively in our congregation. Now we are ready to take our mission outside the walls of the church and adapt this wonderful process to interfaith coalition building to make lives better for LGBT people in our community.”

We are taking our first steps toward becoming a welcoming congregation. We might not be ready to be publicly welcoming of LGBT people this year, but what I hear about Building an Inclusive Church is that it allows us to start conversations and go through a healthy process at the pace that is right for us. Even if we do not end up taking a vote to be publicly welcoming, it will be good for our congregation to start having sacred conversations about people we love.”

We have been an [LGBT-welcoming] congregation for many years and are known for being strong advocates for LGBT people, but it occurs to me that many people who are part of our congregation were not here when we made that decision years ago, and we haven’t talked about it much lately. I hope to send people to help us renew and revitalize our commitment to be fully welcoming of all LGBT people.”

Being an official Open and Affirming church has been a big benefit for us. Not only do LGBT people find us more easily through the Internet, most young couples with children who join our church say that they chose us because mom and dad wanted their kids to grow up in an inclusive church.”

Our decision to become an [LGBT-affirming] congregation is what literally saved our congregation: people found us and saw that we were set free to love Christ and each other!”

We realized that there were no publicly welcoming congregations in our community and we want to do something to change that by becoming a More Light congregation.”