St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church | Presbyterian Church in Calgary, AB

Today we celebrate Indigenous History month with the national Presbyterian Church in Canada. Our Indigenous team at St. Andrew’s and friends will lead the service. Rev. John Snow, (United Church minister and Scottish Lord from Stoney First Nation) will reflect on the Good Samaritan and ponder: Are there preconditions for helping? How do we meet people where they are at? The children will ponder: Why is the forest beautiful?

This past Sunday, Rev. Laurie and the Rainbow Team led our worship service. We are so grateful to them for sharing their stories and vulnerability with us. And for their challenges TO us.
On Monday morning, Rev. Laurie received an email from a man in response to watching Sunday’s livestream service. Here are some words he shared with us, words of gratitude and thanks:

As a gay man I have a complicated relationship (as I am sure many queer and trans folks do) with the church and organized religion. I grew up in the church, going every Sunday with my grandparents, Sunday school each week, and bible camp in the summer. I left as I began to question my beliefs and how I felt about organized religion, especially as I came to understand my sexuality and my identity as a queer person. I grew up hearing messages of intolerance and hate, hearing that I, and people like me, were evil, sinful, unworthy, and were doomed to spend an eternal afterlife in hell because of who we were. This messaging was formative in the deep-rooted internal homophobia, hatred, and self-loathing I had towards myself. It led me to question my purpose, my sense of self, and even my life at times. To be frank, the only thing that stopped me from taking my life was the fear of an even greater level of torture and damnation because I was both gay and killed myself.

Sadly, I know those messages are still being preached today in many churches across Calgary, Alberta, Canada and elsewhere in the world. But that’s not what I heard from you today. As I sat and listened to your service today and to those who felt compelled to share their personal stories of growth, unlearning, and how they continue to challenge these messages they too would have grown up with, I found myself overcome with emotion and spent most of the service crying. It was beautiful to hear people within a church challenge these harmful and hateful stereotypes and welcome all people regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity into their church community.

While I am sure there are some within your congregation who do not agree with what you did today, I want to tell you how much it meant to me. I thought of how much my younger self would have appreciated hearing that from a reverend as part of their sermon. The difference it would have made in terms of how I viewed and valued myself. It gave me hope for any of those children, youth, or even adults, who are struggling with their identity that they will feel safe, supported and loved by a community that is important to them. Truly, thank you from the bottom of my heart to you and the church community members for doing this work towards inclusion and creating safer places for people to be themselves and feel welcome and loved.

Thank you again for what you did today. It takes courage and strength to question the institution, the beliefs that hold back progress and reinforce stereotypes and create division.

This email was a gift. A gift to Rev. Laurie, to the Rainbow Team, to our faith family as we work together to become more inclusive and more accepting. To know that the service made a difference in someone’s life, that it was so meaningful to him that he took time to compose and send an email, to know that by loving as God loves, we can make a REAL difference to those who are feeling unaccepted, unwelcome, unloved, and marginalized.

Accepting, welcoming, loving as God loves us, erring on the side of love every time. Could God ask anything less of us?
~ Debby

Sunday’s service was so impactful that it is getting both a ‘Grateful / Thankful / Blessed’ write-up, and a special mention below. I was so grateful to the members of the Rainbow Team for their willingness to be vulnerable in sharing their stories and thoughts. It is amazing how many connections have been made from that service. Read the ‘Grateful/Thankful/Blessed’ article to read one man’s response to the service. Thanks to all the members of the Rainbow Team for their contribution to leading our service on Sunday. A few highlights:

Cathy Millar: We are called to be a beacon of hope and a witness to the world, showing the power of God to transform lives.
Derek Wilkinson: God loves all people - God created all people - God loves differences. Help us see the differences, and help us love all the differences. Every day.
Rev. Laurie McKay: Loving people like Jesus loved ~ can lead to division. I have experienced that division in my own family. One of my children is a person of deep faith, and is embarrassed and apologetic that I, as a Christian leader, would wear a Rainbow pin and seek to live out inclusion. The other child feels safe, that as a bisexual person who has been hurt by Christian exclusion, is loved unconditionally as a daughter. I love my children. As a follower of Jesus, I trust that he is present, even in the tension. Come, Holy Spirit, and bind us together even when we are different. May we see your image in all of your children.
Kim Mclachlan: Clinging to a specific interpretation of specific verses ~ and holding that interpretation in higher regard than the character of Jesus ~ leads to devastating human consequences. God’s nature is love. At the end of the day, if I am going to be wrong, I will choose to err on the side of love every time.
Linda Johnson: When our youngest child, raised as a boy, let us know that she now wanted to be known as female, she was concerned that our religious practices would stop us from loving and supporting her. It stings that a child who was raised in the church ~ had this fear. Our journey has sometimes been bumpy. We have had to learn what is appropriate, and what isn’t. My answer to God is to love this child as God loves me. For if I don’t love my child unconditionally, how can I ask the world to love and accept her? May we, the church, become beacons of hope and be witnesses to the world, showing the power of God to transform lives.
Lynn Judd: Today can be an opportunity for us to think about inclusion in the wider sense. In our lives there will be situations where we will need to call on God for support. Such was the case for Bill and I when Ian was born with Down Syndrome. We found that people were often uncomfortable and didn’t know what to say. Throughout this rewarding and challenging 37 year journey… we have tried to help people see the person of Ian, and not the disability. Affirming the identity of individuals is shown in the life of Jesus who consistently moved toward those on the margins until the margins disappeared.
Stephanie Werle: We know and accept that not everyone is at the same place on this inclusion journey. And so we meet people with grace, and love, and a willingness to listen. Please continue to pray to be open to the movement of the Spirit in you, at St. Andrew’s, and in our community.

Powerful, powerful, stories and challenges! Did you know that, as a community of St. Andrew’s, we have STATED VALUES? These stated values are qualities we aim to live out in all we do. This Sunday, as we celebrated worship together, we were living out many of our values ~ but we’ll highlight two of them now.

Accepting: Honouring different ways of thinking, perspectives, languages, cultures, races and genders, enabling the Spirit’s creative spark to bring forth new possibilities.
Welcoming: Inviting you to experience God’s presence and love in community, whoever you are and whatever your circumstances.

It was SO HARD to choose which words to include here from those that were shared on Sunday. I would REALLY recommend that you watch (or re-watch) this service on YouTube. It will touch your heart. And maybe help you on your journey to be more inclusive, accepting, welcoming, able to share God’s love. This work is in no small part of what allows us to say on Sunday mornings, “This is holy ground.”

~ Debby