I am aware that this may be the last time many of us will worship together.
After their congregational vote about pastors officiating gay marriages, the lead pastor of Wilshire Baptist Church spoke these words:
“I am aware that this may be the last time many of us will worship together. If you are one of those who have already decided that you are leaving, I have something to say to you: thank you. Thank you for all the years of sacrifice and service. Thank you for the gifts of time, talents, and treasure that you have given to make us the church we are today. And if you wonder how you will be remembered after you leave, I will tell you: you will be recorded among the saints of this church. No one wants to be judged on the basis of one decision or snapshot of time in a life. So we will bless you and miss you.” *
This megachurch’s story is told in various places. They’d completed an extremely thorough process and had just come through a painful congregational vote. Regardless of the size of your church, one way or the other, your process will also come to an end. Decisions will need to be made. The congregation will need to be told. The website may need to be updated. And ministry will need to move forward.
The final stage in your church’s LGBTQ discovery journey includes making the final decision and communicating it with wisdom and grace.
The Final Decision
When the wordsmithing is done on your statement, it’s now time for the vote. Some teams have created a majority statement and a minority statement, but often the discernment team has consensus on the statement.
And while consensus is immensely helpful, it is not always possible.
In at least half the churches we’ve worked with, the discernment team is not the final arbiter of the church. There’s either an elder board vote or a congregational vote. When it’s a board making the vote, the goal is always consensus. And while consensus is immensely helpful, it is not always possible. One tool to help push towards unity is Ruth Haley Barton’s useful spectrum of consensus:
- Everyone unequivocally agrees.
- "I agree but with some reservation; however, I have expressed my reservations and feel I have been heard by the group, so I can go forward in peace."
- "I don't agree, but I feel comfortable deferring to those who have particular wisdom, who are most affected, who have greater certainty.”
Regardless of whether it’s a congregational vote or a board vote, there’s a whole lot of communication that is going to need to happen (before the congregational vote; after the board vote).
3-D Communication
I remember hearing from a missionary to the Philippines we supported for decades talked about how to communicate in diverse settings. He called it 3-D communication. The idea was that everything he wrote needed to survive scrutiny in three settings: the church itself, the culture surrounding the church, and their financial supporters.
Communication about your church’s newly articulated (or newly re-affirmed) approach to LGBTQ inclusion faces three very similar settings. You’ll need to communicate with the church itself, the non-churchy community in your geographical context, and the stakeholders. Stakeholders include groups like outside funding sources, your denomination, local churches you partner with on projects, and missionaries you support.
Stakeholders
Your stakeholders will certainly not want to be surprised by this conversation. Ideally, all along the way you have brought them in on the process and have received input from them. When communicating the final decision, stakeholder conversations always go best in person (or at least on a zoom call).
The Non-Churchy Community
Clarity is kindness
When it comes to communicating with the world outside the church, these days that is almost always through your webpage. As Brené Brown says, “Clarity is kindness” – so there should be an easy link to your statement from your homepage.
The Church Itself
Communication directly to the congregation tends to come BEFORE the congregational vote and AFTER the elder vote. One way or the other, communicating is a lot of work. You’ll need a plan, you’ll need a timeline, you’ll need some guidelines of how to handle pushback. Besides that, there are so many best practices and pitfalls that it exceeds what we can cover in this piece, unfortunately.
One piece of advice that we are fond of comes from a pastor who simply stood up one Sunday morning and announced the decision that the church would now change from being traditional to being affirming. You can imagine how that went. That pastor told a friend about to embark on the same journey in his own church, “If you do it the way we did, I’ll fly down there and kick you in the n*ts!”
Final Thoughts
The leaders who do it well have loved their church enough to plan and prepare and do a lot of hard work.
No church goes through this process perfectly. The ones who do it best are the ones who are intentional about it. That’s really just another way of saying that the leaders who do it well have loved their church enough to plan and prepare and do a lot of hard work.
*From Mark Wingfield’s remarkably helpful and detailed book, Why Churches Need to Talk about Sexuality.
-Bill
Curious how to individualize this process for your church or organization? Reach out to set up a free 15 min call/zoom.