The Coalition has set a goal to double the number of Open and Affirming churches in five years. The Coalition started listing ONA churches in 1987, and reached the landmark of 700 churches during 2007. We now have 750 active ONA churches, putting us on the path to our goal of 1,400 churches by the end of 2012.

Open and Affirming churches not only welcome people in; they also reach out beyond their walls in a variety of ways:

• On the rural Oregon Coast, the Congregational Church of Lincoln City, in response to violence against a gay-identified student in a nearby community, is working with Oregon Safe Schools and Communities Coalition to connect the Safe Schools network with local individuals.

• In California, First Congregational Church of Berkeley is preparing for a state-wide vote to limit marriage by hosting public forums and phone banks about marriage to educate voters that people of faith believe that God directs them toward fairness for all people.

• First Congregational Church of Memphis, after a gay student was “outed” to the whole school by his principal, offered support to the student and his family and gathered members of the community to demonstrate their belief that all sexual orientations are part of God’s creation.

Every ONA church makes a statement in the surrounding community; to other churches; to the secular community; and to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people and their allies—a message that their church is home to disciples who are working for justice.

Reaching the goal requires volunteer commitments and financial support.

Our strategy to get to the goal includes these steps:

• Continue to develop ONA consultants and resource people to work within their conferences. There are 64 active consultants now; we will need 70 more in the next two years to build the local support for churches as they consider and undergo an ONA process.

• Facilitate the work of those volunteers by providing them Coalition staff time to meet in peer groups.

• Review our suggested ONA study process to assess the ways in which we can make it meaningful beyond the mostly Euro-American churches that have embraced ONA. We will need to look at both the language and the process we use in order that we connect with a far wider range of UCC churches.

• Review our process also to make it as inclusive of gender identities and gender expressions as it is of sexual orientations.

We will be reporting regularly on the steps to reach the goal and our process toward it. Watch this space!

Ruth Garwood
Executive Director

One Tribe, One Table, our joint conference with the Fellowship, along with MCC participation, was a rewarding and spiritually renewing experience for me and an important occasion for The Coalition as a whole. The Fellowship is a network of churches that are predominately African-American, predominately same-gender loving and transgender, with a theological intention of radical inclusivity. Most of the churches worship in a Pentecostal tradition. The Fellowship is convened by Bishop Yvette Flunder, whom you may know as the Rev. Dr. Yvette Flunder, pastor of City of Refuge UCC in San Francisco. A number of Fellowship churches are UCC or are considering joining the UCC.

We had about 60 Coalition folks at the event, joining the 300 or so from the Fellowship, so the feel of the gathering was more from the Fellowship than it was from Coalition.

For many Coalition participants the style of worship and even of plenary sessions was entirely new.  Masculine language for God was challenging, even painful. If we had been more informative about the conference being a partnership of two groups, I think the unfamiliar aspects would have been easier to navigate.

The affiliation represented in Dallas is a priority for me. Bishop Yvette Flunder and I are friends with mutual respect, who appreciate each other’s spiritual paths. I wanted The Coalition to have the opportunity to also get to know Bishop Flunder.

Also, as a historically white organization in a historically white denomination, The Coalition benefits from more diversity—not just in race, but also in culture, age, and theology. Going where people of color gather is very different from inviting people to join us. It gives those of us who are white an experience of being in the minority.

There were unexpected fruits of the experience as well. Every time I participate in a Fellowship event—I’ve been to five or six of them in the last three years—I find myself spiritually renewed and inspired to come home and make Bible reading a bigger part of my spiritual practice. Both The Coalition and the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches (MCC) have relationships with the Fellowship. The presence of MCC leaders at One Tribe, One Table gave us the opportunity for The Coalition and the MCC to build our relationship with one another.

Other Coalition members have reflected on the event. You can find some of those on our website on our National Gathering page. Send yours in; we’ll be adding some more to share more perspectives on the experience.

Ruth Garwood
Executive Director

UCAN is inviting those affiliated with or in some way connected to the United Church of Christ (UCC) to share generally on their views about HIV prevention, particularly for the UCC in various community settings. To learn more about this voluntary questionairre, please visit www.ucc.org/ucan/hiv-prevention-quest-f08.html.

Congratulations to UCC Coalition board member, Candace Chellew-Hodge, on the release of her first book, Bulletproof Faith: A Spiritual Survival Guide for Gay and Lesbian Christians.  For more information visit www.bulletproofbook.com, where you can also find a free study guide. Candace is also the founder/editor of the incomparable Whosoever online magazine, which you can view at www.whosoever.org.