Dear Rainbow Circle Members & Friends:
As we enter June when many communities around the country celebrate Pride month, I am aware that this year many churches, institutions, and individuals are experiencing Pride differently . For churches and institutions, Pride will present challenges of different sorts than it will for individuals, many of whom within the trans and non-binary community are fearing for their very existence and lives.
Your consistent support of AWAB through Rainbow Circle giving sustains our ability to keep doing together what we can’t do on our own. Your giving makes it possible for us to:
- bring LGBTQ+ clergy together on a monthly basis for mutual support and encouragement;
- provide regularly and as-needed scheduled resources and events that support churches and individuals in being welcoming and affirming;
- and offer hope and meaning to LGBTQ+ folk and allies, providing more people than we can count the capacity to stay committed to Baptist ministry which is open to all and closed to none.
At the risk at seeming opportunistic given the Christian-nationalist and political forces that are hell-bent on erasing from history family members, colleagues, and friends who are genuinely seeking to be themselves (many for the first time in their lives), I want to express how grateful AWAB is for your monthly support. And daringly I want to invite you, if at all possible, to consider how you may increase your monthly support.
No matter what you are able to do at this time, know that I am grateful for what you have done, continue to do, and may consider yet doing. As expressed above, I believe always in the truth we can do more together than any of us can do on our own.
When I am out visiting and speaking in churches and with educational partners I like to share statistics. One such statistic is that statistically, LGBTQ+ folk are everywhere. I’ll go on to say that even when visiting a place such as Rapid City, South Dakota, I’ve met LGBTQ+ staff at a small Irish-themed pub. Seriously, queer folk are everywhere. Well, even just this week, when attending a local high school orchestra concert in a very small town in rural Ohio, I was reminded again how LGBTQ+ folk, and young people in particular, really are wherever people gather.
Jim Hopkins, an American Baptist pastor who was part of the beginnings of AWAB often says to me, “Brian, AWAB needs to exist because it needs to exist.” AWAB’s mere presence provides hope in more ways than we know. Your presence, and your monthly gift to AWAB, is helping to make this so. Thank you again for your commitment and ongoing encouragement for the welcoming and affirming work we do together. Check out awab.org and our June edition of The Welcoming Spirit for AWAB’s latest news and happenings.
Sincerely,
~Brian
PS: You all are the first to see our Pride Edition quatrefoil…what do you think?