Out In The Mountains : News - MCC Explores VT; UCC Has Open & Affirming Vote

     According to a recent press release, a group of lesbian, gay bisexual, transgender Vermont residents connected to the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) is beginning to study where they could hold worship services and community service activities. Led by Robert Wolff of Randolph, they call their project “Your Spiritual Home.”
      MCC is a Christian church with a special ministry to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community where everyone is welcome. Wolff says that the approach in Vermont is to develop a spiritual community where everyone is welcome and that is open to people of all faiths. He hopes that the new congregation in Vermont will seek to include people of the Jewish and Moslem Faiths, within a church facility that worships Jesus as the Christ.
      “It is time that all the faiths worshiping the God of Abraham learn how to live in peace with each other, and celebrate each other’s traditions. Perhaps we could model this here in Vermont, and have some impact on peace in troubled parts of the world,” he said.
      The Vermont LGBT study group will conduct a series of community meetings during the July and August. These events will give anyone interested an opportunity to meet with others and to discuss their unmet spiritual needs. The group has no intention of drawing people from worship services they already attend, Wolff said. “We see our church as having a unique role within the Christian church, standing with the marginalized and oppressed and having an open table where all are welcome.”
      For information about the study group and the community meetings contact Robert W. Wolff at mccvt@innevi.com.
      In other church-related news, Springfield’s First Congregational Church became the thirteenth member of the Vermont Conference of the United Church of Christ vote to identify as “open and affirming.” The margin was nearly two-to-one.
      “Open and affirming” is the term used to designate churches that welcome gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people as attendees, members, Sunday school teachers, deacons, and clergy on an equal basis with any other church member. The Vermont Conference voted last year by a nearly three-to-one margin (270-93) to become “open and affirming.”
      The Guilford Community Church, also affiliated with the Vermont UCC Conference, had scheduled a vote for May 27 after taking a year to explore the issues and the thoughts and feelings of its parishioners (see “To Bless and Affirm... Or Not” in the July, 2002 edition of OITM).
      The vote in Guilford is a choice between four proposals and one motion to table the issue and continue current practice. One proposal “welcomes all who seek to be transformed” and requires that civil unions not be performed on church property. Two identify the church as “open and welcoming,” but with different emphases: one limits civil unions on church property to members; the other welcomes all, “whatever their race, national origin, gender, sexual identity or disability” and authorizes the pastor to perform ceremonies for all “who wish their weddings or civil unions blessed in this community.”
      The fifth proposal is worded more affirmatively, embracing “those brothers and sisters” who have historically been barred from full participation as “equal partners in the Body of Christ with full access to every opportunity to serve God.”