Want to begin, advance or deepen the welcome and affirmation of LGBT persons and their families in your local congregation, presbytery, campus ministry or seminary community?

Working to address other social change and faith matters such as racism, sexism, economic justice, immigration, and peace-making?

If you said yes to either of the above questions, then this training is for you. Inspired by Gamaliel training, created by Lutherans Concerned, and co-sponsored by More Light Presbyterians, this faith-based community organizing training weekend offers you insights, practical resources and tools to help you achieve change in your church, local community and presbytery.

Join us -- May 17 - May 20, Boston, MA at The Walker Center, 171 Grove Street, Auburndale in Newton, metro Boston. Information and details follow this invitation.

Please forward and share this opportunity with others in your network or circle of family, friends and church.

If Boston is not possible for you, future trainings include: July 26-29, 2007 Columbus, Ohio and October 18 - 21 , Santa Fe, New Mexico.

For schedule and registration - go to: http://www.lcna.org/rictraining_2007-05-17.shtm

Faith-Based Community Organizing

What is it?

Ecumenical Faith-Based Community Organizing Training is an intense 3+ day hands-on workshop intended to give you the skills and knowledge base to build local teams equipped to expand the numbers of welcoming congregations within your area. It prepares you for strategic action rooted in faith.

What to expect?

• Concrete skills for making change
• Outlines of actions plans for a welcoming and affirming process
• Spiritual enrichment
• Working hard each day
• Stretching mind and heart
• Hospitality

Training Areas of Focus

Faith Based Community Organizing: Learn the skills to organize people and organize money including the one-to-one visit, the proposition (it's not what you think), and the process for building an activist team in your area.

Biblical Self-Defense and Bible Bullets: Participants will take part in a thorough session dedicated to the “Bible bullets” – texts that have historically been used to validate bigotry and discrimination against LGBT folk in the church. A grounded understanding of the purpose of such texts and ways to combat hateful interpretations will be at the core of these discussions. Participants will also engage Biblical texts that offer hope and promise for our welcoming work and learn ways to speak from them.

The Implications Wheel®: The I-Wheel® takes the emotion out of the conversation. The results may be objectively scored to predict points of conflict and possible negative and positive outcomes. This training includes an introduction to the I-Wheel® process as well as a sample I-Wheel® session.

Welcoming Processes and Resources: Learn how to use a variety of welcoming resources. You will learn how to do a congregational assessment and design a study process based on that assessment. Role plays are used to contrast typical situations of Church Council conflict with other more successful methods of discernment.

Trainers

Emily Eastwood is the Executive Director of Lutherans Concerned/North America and the Reconciling in Christ (RIC) Program. She is a lifelong Lutheran, would-be pastor, story-teller, organizer and sometime stand up comic. She and her partner, Jan Bailey, are members of the first RIC congregation. Emily is a graduate of Texas Lutheran College and attended both Gettysburg and Luther Seminaries before choosing a career in business to support her church habit. For the next 18 years, Emily worked as a volunteer in ministry with and on behalf of GLBT people, their families and friends. In May of 2002, Emily was hired to run the Reconciling in Christ Program. In September of 2002, she returned to seminary. In July of 2004, Emily was named Executive Director of LC/NA. Emily travels throughout North America working to promote the mission of the organization and the need for all of God's children to be welcome in their church. Using the principles of faith based community organizing she is building and training teams to foster the expansion of the RIC program in the Lutheran church.

Rev. Rebecca Voelkel , an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, is the Executive Officer for the Institute for Welcoming Resources, a national, ecumenical collaboration of the Welcoming Church Movement. Before coming to IWR, she served as Interim National Coordinator for the UCC Coalition for LGBT Concerns, as pastor of Spirit of the Lakes UCC and as Program Staff for the Center for the Prevention of Sexual and Domestic Violence. Rev. Voelkel is the author of Preventing Sexual Abuse: A Course of Study for Teenagers (Pilgrim Press, 1996) as well as numerous articles and sermons which have appeared in such journals as Spirit Currents, The Journal of Religion and Abuse, and Parenting for Peace and Justice. She is a graduate of Earlham College and Yale Divinity School and is currently working towards a Doctor of Ministry at United Theological Seminary in the Twin Cities. Rev. Voelkel has devoted her life's ministry to following Jesus' command to minister to "the least of these," ones whom society has deemed outcast, unclean or unworthy. As a way to balance her spiritual life, Rebecca is also a runner, hiker, biker and avid community-builder, spending time with her friends and family as often as she can.

Rev. Troy G. Plummer has served as the Executive Director of the Reconciling Ministries Network of the United Methodist Church since November 2003. During that time he has traveled coast-to-coast organizing and bringing an inclusive Gospel message. Prior to RMN, Troy served 13 years on the pastoral staff of Bering Memorial United Methodist Church-a reconciling congregation in Houston, Texas. Circumventing the church's refusal to honor God's call to ministry of openly gay clergy in loving relationships, Troy was ordained at Bering Memorial UMC by the Orthodox Catholic Church in 1991 and has served the UMC since. As a psychotherapist, he directed Bering's on-site counseling center and support network for those affected by HIV/AIDS their families and friends. Just outside Bering's sanctuary, he performed a "street wedding" for a lesbian couple celebrating 25 years together and facilitated Bering's equal treatment of all couples policy. Facing a bomb threat with 50 other couples, Troy and his partner Walter, shared promises and rings on Freedom To Marry Day, February 12, 2003 for their 5th anniversary.

Jerry Vagts is the Grassroots Organizer for LC/NA and the RIC Program. He will work closely with the participants as they prepare to take the skills learned back home and into the field. He will also periodically follow-up with participants for linking with other teams and/or members and to provide updates on available resources and activities. Jerry is based in the LC/NA office in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Dr. Michael J. Adee , National Field Organizer for More Light Presbyterians, is an openly gay Elder in the Presbyterian Church (USA). He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Michael has been working in the LGBT & HIV-AIDS community since 1988. A human rights/gay activist and an educator, he earned his Ph.D. at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge. Having served as a college professor in Louisiana, Kentucky and Ohio, he has also been a hospital and hospice chaplain, bereavement counselor, campus minister, diversity consultant, tennis coach and a teacher/relief worker in Zimbabwe, Africa. It was a welcoming congregation in Cincinnati that loved Michael back to church and enabled him to reclaim his faith as a gay man. He became involved in the welcoming church movement as a volunteer in 1991, and as National Field Organizer with More Light Presbyterians in 1999. As an out gay athlete he competed in tennis at the Ist World Outgames in Montreal winning a bronze medal and in the last four Gay Games winning a Silver Medal in Chicago. He just climbed Mount Kilimanjaro as a benefit for equality.

www.mlp.org

www.welcomingresources.org

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Ref: http://www.mlp.org/article.php/20070508084113502