Archive for June, 2010

PRIDE Sermon
Holy Covenant UMC, Sunday June 27th 2010
Rev. Kate Hurst Floyd
Galatians 5:1, 13-25

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Here it is! Pride Sunday, finally. We’ve been building up to this joyous day for the last month. We’re ready to leave here and have fun, celebrate, be set free into Lakeview to march and sing and dance.

And then we hear this scripture passage, from Galatians, which can seem to squelch all our fun. It starts off well and good: Paul is talking about freedom in Christ, telling us that we are no longer under a burden of law or oppression. And he tells us that the fulfillment of the law is summed up in the one commandment: Love your neighbor as yourself.

It’s freeing and it’s beautiful…and then we get to the end of the passage, we’re on the edges of our seats ready to have fun, and Paul seems to ruin it: He tells us about all the things we can NOT do; he tells us that flesh is bad and in Christ we live by Spirit alone. It can be a bummer to hear on this day when many of us want to go carousing and engage in pleasures of the flesh. It doesn’t feel very freeing and it doesn’t necessarily feel like a Scripture passage we want to take pride in. Is this what it means to be Christian? To separate body and Spirit?
It doesn’t sound like a lot of fun. Plus, many of us have been oppressed because Christians have told us are bodies are bad. This passage is about freedom, but it can feel constraining.

Is this something to be proud of? After all, we are gathered today to be proud! (more…)

by Teddy Jay

A year and a half ago I stumbled into this small and funky little church on the north side of Chicago. Little did I know how much it would change my life. For many years, I was a seeker who wondered if a gay man could not only follow Jesus, but do so in a community that saw him as an equal. I also wondered if I could find a place where not only was I welcomed whole-heartedly but also one that pushed me to grow spiritually. Would I be able to find a church community that practiced what they preached? Could I be part of something that really lived out the teaching of Jesus without persecuting people for being “the other”? Holy Covenant answered all of those questions of uncertainty with a deafening and resounding, YES!

As you’ve read from earlier blog posts and communications, Holy Covenant is celebrating 20 years of welcoming all people as a reconciling congregation. This past month has been filled with activities, sermons and songs echoing the spirit of these 20 years, and calling for 20 more. June also included an amazing Prom, “Over The Rainbow,” to raise money for reconciling ministries. Thank you, Prom Committee, for such an wonderful event! Finally, a very strong contingent of Holy Covenant members and friends walked together in the 41st Chicago Pride Parade, united with one common objective: to live out our mission of loving all people. We walked under the theme of “No Place Like Home.” The theme couldn’t be more true. Being a part of this amazing group of people might be the most empowering thing I’ve ever done.

I had the privilege of leading the parade effort over the last two months, and am so proud of our witness on Pride Sunday. On behalf of the Pride Parade planning team, I want to sincerely thank everyone who contributed to our efforts. Special thanks to all who bought a t-shirt, helped with lunches, and built the float. Whether you marched with us, waved at us, or had us in your hearts, I thank you. Thank you for your prayers, and most importantly, thank you for standing up for justice and equality. Finally, a special thanks to all members of the Pride Planning team. None of this would have happened where it not for your gifts and contributions.

Holy Covenant is a community where the often rejected “other” is welcomed, embraced and included in “the one.” It is a community empowered to take part in social justice while embracing Jesus’ message of loving one another. Words can only begin to express the impact Holy Covenant has had on my life. I am overwhelmed and energized after witnessing Holy Covenant’s commitment to the LGBTQ community, especially during Pride Month. Here’s to 20 more years!

Can I get an Amen?

By David E Braden

Last week was the 171st Annual Conference of the Northern Illinois Conference of The United Methodist Church. Annual Conference is a time when clergy and laity (non-clergy) gather to celebrate the ministries of the local and regional church, remember those who have died in the past year, celebrate the ministries of retiring clergy, and celebrate the commissioning and ordination of new clergy members. It is also a time to consider the business of the church where clergy and lay representatives from every congregation in the Conference vote on the Conference budget and legislation ranging from clergy compensation to immigration reform and inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people in the church.

This year, Holy Covenant was represented by Rev. Kate Floyd (clergy), Rev. Monica Isaac (clergy), David Braden (laity), and Brittany Isaac (laity). Other Holy Covenanters at Annual Conference included Rev. Lisl Heymans Paul, Campus Minister at Agape House; Deaconess Rachel Harvey, Associate Executive Director of the Reconciling Ministries Network (RMN); and Audrey Krumbach, Field Organizer at RMN.

The 2010 Annual Conference had a focus on young people and there was a special worship service on Sunday night that involved young people in a significant way. What amazed me most about this service was watching the young people on the overhead screens and seeing a sea of pink, “All Means All” buttons. The “All Means All” buttons are a part of a campaign in the Church to change the discriminatory laws that limit the full participation of LGBTQ people in the church. What a joy and what a witness is was to see this sea of pink from the young people of the Conference!

In the realm of legislation, we had seven petitions focused on inclusion of people of all sexual orientations and gender identities within The United Methodist Church. Summaries of these petitions can be found at the bottom of this letter. Many of these petitions included requests for Declaratory Decisions from the Judicial Council (the Supreme Court, so to speak, of The United Methodist Church) to overturn a discriminatory ruling from 2005 that empowered United Methodist clergy to deny people membership based on their sexual orientation. I am thrilled to report that all seven petitions passed on the floor of Annual Conference with supermajority votes ranging from 87-97%. I have confidence that these petitions will be considered by the Judicial Council and I will report back to Holy Covenant later this fall with the outcomes of the Judicial Council’s decisions. (more…)

Troy Plummer, Executive Director of the Reconciling Ministries Network , was our Guest Preacher on June 13, 2010, as a part of our Twenty Years of PRIDE Celebration.

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Recorded at Holy Covenant UMC, June 13, 2010

SEEK GOD
Hot – sticky worship
Where two or more are gathered
Holy Covenant

LOVE ALL PEOPLE
Inviting summer breeze
All are welcome in this place
Holy Covenant

CHANGE THE WORLD
Blossoming flowers
Make the world a better place
Holy Covenant

Dear Holy Covenant Community,

Greetings from Annual Conference! As I gather with United Methodists, both clergy and lay, I’m grateful for all the ways our church connects to the country and the world. As a denomination, we advocate for immigration reform, put together health kits for Haiti, provide college scholarships and support educational institutions, dream about how to engage young adults in the work of the Gospel, worship with youth and memorialize those who have gone on to be with God. It’s amazing how much abundance is produced when we all bring our gifts together!

But just as we focus on our power as a denomination, I also find my heart and mind back at Holy Covenant and the powerful witness we, as a local church, share with one another and the world. During this PRIDE month, we are called not only to witness to God’s love for all in our community, but also in our denomination that needs to change. I offer you a prayer from Allen V. Harris, from the book Shaping Sanctuary: Proclaiming God’s Grace in an Inclusive Church. (Edited by Kelly Turney
Copyright © 2000 by Reconciling Congregation Program. Reprinted by Permission, p. 35) I hope you will join me in praying this prayer as we continue to discern how God is calling our community to proclaim abundant love:

Gracious God,
We give you thanks for your presence in all of life and for your presence with us now as we seek to discern your will and your wisdom for this community. Remind us, Divine Spirit, that you seek to fill us with your lifegiving power. Encourage us, Eternal Wisdom, to loosen our grip on our individual assumptions so that we might hear your voice speaking through our community. Disturb us, Holy Advocate, that we might be unsettled from our complacency in order to become agents of your grace to a world in need. As we gather as your people, called forth to proclaim your Word and to transform hearts turned cold, give us a clearer sense of what we are to say and do. Lead us back to our ancestors of the faith who sought your guidance when fear, confusion, and despair seemed to rule the day.

Fill us with the spirit of Moses, Aaron and Miriam as they led the Hebrew people from slavery to freedom;
Fill us with the spirit of Queen Esther as she defied conventional wisdom to save her people from sure
destruction;
Fill us with the spirit of the disciples, bereft from the departure of their friend and saviour Jesus, yet able to organize a new community founded on compassion, courage and shared resources;
Fill us with the spirit of Stephen, Lydia, Paul, Timothy, Dorcas and other early Christians who risked living a minority faith in an empire of oppression and enforced conformity.
O God, hear the prayers of this community as we seek to make a public witness on behalf of our Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered sisters and brothers.
Help us to honour the voices of those who have personally known exclusion, heartache, fear, uncertainty and even violence. Broaden our awareness of the movement of your Holy Spirit in our world, so that we might know once again that your ways are not always our ways. Call us to more fully respect the blessed worth of all. Amen.

See you on Sunday, and think about who you can bring with you as we continue to celebrate 20 years of PRIDE!

Grace and peace,
Kate

Who are we?

One of my best friends is a woman named Tracy. We started going to school together in 1st grade and were really good friends by middle school. Tracy, my bold and spunky friend, has always marched to the beat of her own drum.

She and I had different church experiences growing up. Her church was big, with multiple buildings including the sanctuary, gym, nursery, etc., and her youth group was probably among the biggest in the city. One day, Tracy and some of her friends showed up to youth group with alcohol on their breath. Now, Tracy probably wouldn’t mind me saying she never claimed to be a saint. She probably showed up in her inebriated state to provoke a reaction from others, challenge them to embrace her, or possibly to call them out on hypocrisy. Well, the youth group director indulged her in that, and asked her to leave on the spot, implying she was not welcome… and 14 years later… she has not gone back.

I remember Tracy telling me this story and feeling so enraged at this act of exclusivity practiced in her youth group. More recently, some friends of mine challenged me to recognize where that strong reaction at such an early age came from; and after some discussion, I realized I’d had some experiences of my own in feeling excluded in my own youth group a few years prior (though that was from cliques and social circles, rather than church leadership). Still, I thought to myself about Tracy’s story, “Who is this youth director to say who is and is not welcome in the house of God?”

This story has shaped my entire adult faith experience. I feel passionately that all should be welcome at church, regardless of who they are or where they came from. I find myself asking, “Who are we, as a church, to tell homosexuals they are not welcome in the house of God?”

Sermon, June 6 2010
Pride Kick-Off Sunday
Holy Covenant UMC
Rev. Kate Hurst Floyd

Galatians 1:11-24

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Once upon a time, in a far, far away land called Galatia, some people of Celtic descent lived a quiet and quaint life. They worshipped their sun and river Gods, dined on pork and pita and hummus, worked from sun-up to sun-down and gathered with their families at the end of the day for dinner and ritual worship.

One day, a day just like any other day, as the sun began to set, a stranger wandered into town. This man didn’t look or talk like the Galatians, he had his own God. He was a Jew, one of the people from a different land. He told them to call him Paul.

Paul was unlike anyone they had ever met before…he was meek and mild and demeanor but strong with his convictions. The children loved to listen to him talk for he was a marvelous story teller and had lived an exciting life that the Galatians could only imagine in their dreams. He once was Pharisee, a Jewish leader who took delight in persecuting people in the name of religion, particularly people who claimed to follow a man called Jesus Christ. The children were spellbound with his past of violence and hatred, the ways he tortured in the name of God and put Christians on very public trial. His life was what they read about in adventure books. But the adults knew that he was full of regret; they could see the ways his past now lived on the lines in his face.

But Paul’s greatest story wasn’t about his religious persecution, but about how he changed. He’d gather the Galatians around a fire, children and adults, men and women, slave and free, and tell his story: One day, a day just like any other day, as the sun began to set, Paul was walking down a road, on the way to a place called Damascus. His mind was full of the thoughts of the ways he had killed Christians today and the people he was going to hurt tomorrow. Wouldn’t God be proud, he thought to himself? And just as thoughts of God began to circle in his mind, he had a vision. He encountered the living God, he encountered this man named Jesus Christ, and he was overcome with love and grace and mercy. He felt freedom unlike he had ever known. From that day forward, he changed his life. He wanders to different places, like Galatia, all over the Middle East, talking passionately about the love of Jesus Christ. (more…)

Dear Holy Covenant Community,

Hear these words from 2 Corinthians 5:
All is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to Godself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.

This year we celebrate our 20th anniversary of being a Reconciling Congregation! Since 1990, Holy Covenant has been a church open to people of all sexual orientations and gender identities, living out our call from God to reconcile with Christ and one another. Read more about the Reconciling Ministries network.

Throughout the month of June we are celebrating 20 years of PRIDE. In worship each week we’ll focus on what it means to be a reconciled people, hearing testimonies from people who have been part of Holy Covenant for a long time. We’ll sing songs from the past 20 years to live into our history and remember how far we’ve come. And we’ll look to the future as we continue to mourn the current state of The United Methodist Church and work to change it for the better.

On our blog you can read testimonies from Holy Covenanters who will be sharing why they are “proud to be part of Holy Covenant”. And we’ll culminate in Pride weekend, the last weekend in June, with a Prom Fundraiser on Saturday night and a Pride worship service at 10:30am, followed by marching in the parade together. You can buy tickets for our “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” Prom beginning this Sunday. I’ve already submitted my old prom pics from high school-have you?

This Sunday, join us as we gather around the communion table, the place where God’s radical grace welcomes us to reconcile with Christ, one another, and ourselves. What a wonderful time to invite someone to church with you! Think about who you know who needs to hear the good news of reconciliation and to feast at that heavenly banquet where all are welcome and loved. And bring a dollar for our communion mission giving-this month our offering will go to the Reconciling Ministries Network.

See you Sunday, and think about who you can bring with you.

Grace and Peace and Pride,
Kate

My freshman year in high school was the first time that I remember realizing that I was a Reconciling United Methodist (although for a couple of years I did not have the words to describe what I was).

One of my friends had told me about the National Day of Silence, when hundreds of thousands of students nationwide take a vow of silence to bring attention to anti-LGBT name-calling, bullying and harassment in their schools. I was a really talkative high schooler, and I knew that there was no way that I could commit to silence for an entire day. So even though I was a supporter of the cause, I chose not to participate.

That day in choir, we did not sing, out of respect for the people who were participating in the Day of Silence. We basically had a study hall. During the class, some students who I knew to be Christians were harassing and making fun of the students—my friends—who had taken the vow of silence for the day. I remember thinking: this is not how a Christian should treat another person, regardless of who they are. When I voiced this to my classmates, the situation became a little confrontational, but I’m glad I chose to speak up. That was the first moment in what has been and will continue to be a long line of moments when I chose to stand up and speak out for what I believe.

My drive to be a Reconciling United Methodist was further motivated on May 13, 2010 with the death of my best friend’s mother. She made sure that everyone she knew understood that she loved them, and more importantly, that God loved them. She did this, by and large, through her actions: she made sure that the whole person was loved, cared for, and nurtured. In her own way, she welcomed us into her family and into God’s family. I want to carry on her legacy – a legacy of love and welcome for everyone. And that is why I am a Reconciling United Methodist.