wfn.org | Reconciling Congregations changes name, broadens focus

[NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG]

Oct. 31, 2000 News media contact: Linda Bloom·(212) 870-3803·New York
10-21-28-71B{499}

By United Methodist News Service

Seeking to create an inclusive faith community, the United Methodist-related
Reconciling Congregations Program is changing its name and widening its
focus.

"We are recognizing that we are an organization that really seeks to support
individuals as well as congregations," Marilyn Alexander, interim executive
director, told United Methodist News Service in an Oct. 31 interview.

The unofficial organization's board of directors and staff decided at a
mid-October meeting to adopt a new name - the Reconciling Ministries
Network. The network would continue to connect the 166 United Methodist
congregations, 25 campus ministries and 16,500 individuals and groups that
publicly welcome persons of all sexual orientations and gender identities
into the full life of the church.

But it also will allow for a broader collaboration, Alexander explained, "so
that we can network nationally and we can network regionally." 

Decisions made by the 2000 United Methodist General Conference, the
denomination's highest legislative body, had a direct influence on the
program's new direction. Reconciling Congregations, which was founded in
1984, conducted 20 "listening posts," or focus groups, following the General
Conference meeting last May.

Participants in the listening posts were distressed over the fact that a
majority of conference delegates voted to retain prohibitions against
homosexuals and that demonstrators who opposed such action were arrested.

"We heard similar things in each area, starting with the baseline feelings
of anger and frustration and loss and grief," Alexander said. "There's a
great feeling of embarrassment of being United Methodist and about the loss
of a church that they knew."

While groups like the Methodist Federation for Social Action focus on
legislation and political action, the aim of the Reconciling Ministries
Network will be to bring together the roughly 35 percent of United
Methodists who have publicly voiced support for the full inclusion of
lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in the church. That percentage
is based on the approximate amount of General Conference delegates who voted
in favor of more inclusiveness. "There's a lot of people out there who do
support inclusion, but we're not networked in any large way," Alexander
explained.

"We don't have to wait for the church to change in order to have inclusion,"
she said. "We can create that faith community."

The network's next national gathering will be July 25-29 at the University
of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Wash. 
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United Methodist News Service
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