Pathways to power was the main topic of discussion at the “Empowering Action for the Common Good: Affirming Faith Forum” at the LGBT Center of Raleigh on Friday, March 23, at 6:30 pm. The goal to work for the common good extends to and beyond the vote on May 8th. The forum generated more ideas on how to join with others in improving relationships in the community while working to defeat the proposed amendment to the state constitution. (more…)
April 5, 2012
Empowering Action for the Common Good
Posted by Rev Jenna Zirbel under Uncategorized | Tags: affirming, christianity, church, church within a church, Community Building, covenant, definition of church, ecclesia, equality, family values, inclusion, justice, koinonia, LGBTQ, LGBTQ health, marriage equality, ministry, ministry development, same-sex marriage, tradition |Leave a Comment
February 2, 2012
The Week that Was
Posted by Rev Jenna Zirbel under Uncategorized | Tags: affirming, change, church, church within a church, Community Building, covenant, definition of church, dignity, ecclesia, equality, family values, inclusion, justice, koinonia, LGBTQ, LGBTQ health, marriage equality, mental health, ministry, ministry development, same-sex marriage, tradition |Leave a Comment
RCCares’ work this past week provided a scope of snap shots of the many different parts Being church incorporates. There are many more faces to ministry as you surely could attest. We enliven the praxis of living into the kindom of love’s reign in many bits and pieces. Our life is a lively kaleidoscope of how we love in sorrow and joy every day. Thank Goodness that we do not stand alone.
On Saturday we were engaged via phone conference with other Rainbow Access Initiative board members in the Capital District in New York as we designed the next steps for establishing the program format for RAI’s Art of Health Expo 2012. Focus on breakout sessions included discussion on the content of the presentations and the support needed for proposed sessions. The aim of the Expo event is to bring the artistic skills of LGBTQ people to the foreground for the purpose of enhancing healthy living amid creative exchange. (more…)
January 14, 2012
Outrageous Acts of Intolerance
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Andy and I are in conversation with ministry leaders throughout the country who are working in diverse and challenging endeavors Being the emerging face of ‘church’ as the body of Christ. As co leaders of the Ministry Development work area for Church Within A Church, we explore the celebratory actions and the struggles of Being the church we want to see. Whether any of us feels that we are the outside other or the inside ministry leader seems to depend on the energy of the Spirit at that moment. Evangelism truly is a queer triangle.
As the ordained minister for Rainbow Community Cares (RCCares), my work is deeply rooted in ministry development and church revitalization. Rainbow Community Cares has emerged from the praxis of neighborhood ministry begun in Schenectady, New York, and now is informed by participation in LGBTQ community organizations in Raleigh, North Carolina. An integral part of RCCares’ vision is to help heal the rift in our communities and co-create a safe place for community to grow. The scriptural imperative to love your neighbor leads the way to the gatherings in which RCCares participates. The 2011 Equality Conference was one such gathering. (more…)
September 7, 2011
Second “Ecumenical Ordination in a Methodist Tradition Minus the Closet!”
Posted by Rev Jenna Zirbel under Uncategorized | Tags: affirming, change, church, church within a church, Community Building, ecclesia, justice, LGBTQ, ministry, suicide prevention |Leave a Comment
The Church Within A Church invites you to attend the Second “Ecumenical Ordination in a Methodist Tradition Minus the Closet!” national weekend event October 21-23, 2011 in Tucson. Please pass this invite to your friends.
You may be especially interested in the workshop on October 22 at the Church Within A Church National Conference “Living Justice in the Wilderness” to be held in Tucson at St Mark’s Presbyterian Church. CWAC is committed to act in support for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Questioning youth and young adults so that they have a stronger reason to believe “it gets better!” In that light, Saturday’s workshop from 9:00 to 11:30 am will be presented by Micheal Weakly, Director of Programs for 1n10 (www.1n10.org). A Phoenix based organization, 1n10 is dedicated to serving the valley youth and working toward safer environments for LGBTQ youth. 1n10 serves LGBTQA youth and young adults, as described in their mission statement, to “enhance their lives by providing empowering social and service programs that promote self-expression, self-acceptance, leadership development and healthy life choices.” Micheal has worked in LGBTQ nonprofit for 10 years, six of which have been as Director of Programs for 1n10. Micheal’s goal for the workshop is that attendees go away with a better understanding of LGBTQ youth issues and how organizations like 1n10 are empowering the current youth movement.
CWAC is dedicated to equipping our members and allies for living in love and justice, and see Micheal’s workshop as an opportunity to learn how to enhance the work of youth and young adults in their involvement as agents of change toward improving community wellbeing and realizing the blessing of diversity.
Workshop Title: Rebel YELL
Workshop Description:
An interactive and engaging workshop about the work with 1n10 and how we empower LGBTQ youth to live fulfilling lives. The workshop will engage the audience regarding the issues facing LGBTQ today, how they are empowering themselves, how they are reacting to these issues and ways that the youth are utilizing social media as an outlet of expression, outreach and engagement. Statistics will be shared along with data reinforcing the need for LGBTQ youth specific programs. Much time will be spent exploring the relationship between spirituality and sexual orientation and how this process is unique for LGBTQ youth.
To learn more about the workshop and/or other events at the conference, go to www.cwac.us
July 11, 2011
Practicing Safe Spirituality
Posted by Rev Jenna Zirbel under Uncategorized | Tags: christianity, church, church within a church, definition of church, dignity, ecclesia, equality, family values, inclusion, justice, koinonia, marriage equality, ministry, religion, theology |Leave a Comment
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender partners and their families are categorically denied full engagement in the communities in which they live, all in the name of religious “morality,” while the heart and essence of the source of life and love upon which religion is derived remains ever present ready to break through the oppressor’s blindness and let the captives go free. In naming and claiming the spirituality that is inherent in our lives and written on our hearts, we are enthused to love ourselves and live in care of neighbor as self. The Spirituality Training PowerPoint that follows was worked out during three workshops with LGBTQ participants.
The culture in which we live is undergirded by a socialized religion granting heterosexual couples’s status in the way of financial, legal, psychological and spiritual supports denied gay and lesbian relationships. Those persons who vary from the “moral” norms of sexual identity, sexual orientation, gender expression and gender identity, established in the same discriminatory manner by the dominant minority, are denied the safeguards that protect their full rights, as well.
Leaders in our nation will sometimes define social practices as “moral,” and therefore “acceptable,” based on dominant religious biases irrespective of the reality of the diversity of relationships lived in community. Heterosexual coupling has been legally identified as meriting “moral” status with the entitlements that go along with it, while discrimination against other relationships is sanctioned. The burden of proof that relationships other than heterosexual coupling are “moral” is placed on the community in a system where the leaders refuse to recognize the “acceptable” existence of diverse relationships. There is no legitimate place allowed for justice in this system. Blindness to the diversity of relationships in community creates an unjust living environment resulting in the denial of civil rights, inequality, oppression, and strife in the name of “morality.”
Practicing Safe Spirituality - PowerPoint presentation
July 1, 2011
doing justice
Posted by Rev Jenna Zirbel under Uncategorized | Tags: books, change, church, church within a church, covenant, definition of church, ecclesia, justice, koinonia, ministry, ministry development, theology |Leave a Comment
Doing Justice: Congregations and Community Organizing by Dennis A. Jacobsen
The message in this book brings a wake-up call challenging the drowsy complacency in heart and soul. It is a call to rally with other church members to remember the value of our own lives well lived, to realize the ability to live in the power of the Spirit more freely and fully in care of neighbor as self. This book is about faith-based organizing and how church communities through grace can consciously choose to live into the professed Christian identity “called to be holy, catholic, apostolic, and confessional.” Jacobsen recognizes the tendency of the well to do churches to be underwhelmed by issues, partly because of the pervasiveness on the part of the church, following the model of society as a whole, of the complacent acceptance of the suffering of the oppressed. The author wrote about the significance of being reflective regarding the mutuality in meaningful relationships in the work of community organizing. Having the passion to be engaged in the work of ministry of love and justice, need be fully accompanied with reexamining how that passion can be used in ways that can make a difference in how to live in community. It is about more than being do gooder’s offering charity and prayers for the oppressed. It is about seeing the struggle for justice and realizing how our specific skills and expertise can serve as reinforcement in that work with others, expanding the power base in the community as a way of broadening the accessibility of the resources in community, and living into God’s salvation and call of justice for all.
April 7, 2011
Ministry Development – Where Church and Community Meet
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My life’s call is about the development of ministry in areas that are not being cared for with recognized sacred space or with leaders who can help people recognize how the people are in prayer.
Where sacred sanctuary space can be recovered is one of the biggest concerns that we have encountered in our work with ministry development. And the next concern that begs to be addressed is how one defines sanctuary. We have watched churches drop one ministry after another that had served the local community in addressing basic living needs. Take care of the widows and the orphans, we have been admonished in the Hebrew Testament. Maybe we take “feed my sheep” from the New Testament too literally, but I don’t think so. If the worry for keeping the building repaired takes precedence over caring for neighbor, what is the use of the church building? And then again, where can people gather that is safe and accepting if there is no open neighborhood sanctuary?
The issues above are not so much erudite as they are practical concerns for those of us in ministry outside the established church walls. We walk the streets in our neighborhoods where there is not a safe place to name what is sacred in our lives, nor to claim a space to share the experience with others. If we have no one to reflect with, we are missing an opportunity to grow to wholeness and improve the well being of the community.
I talked with a person who had been looking for a way to gather with others to celebrate the loving child that we all are, in a safe place. This person had been looking for a way to organize other friends who shared the desire to practice their spirituality in community in a home church. Developing liturgy had been one of her concerns that we had discussed around the work of a home church gathering. Since then, she has found a group that had been organized around the premise of listening for God to speak and has decided that this group of Quakers is a safe sanctuary for her.
Finding a place and finding the words to express what is sacred in life is for me a daily task. Quite naturally, some days are more open to community gatherings than others. On the first day of spring, I led a spirituality workshop I developed for that day at our first Rainbow Access Initiative LGBTQ Mind, Body, Spirit Expo. What an awesome day of celebration of renewed life. The spring equinox is a sacred time for many faith practices and it surely was a diverse and blessed group that gathered in the room where the workshop was held. We honored the sacred in each of us that was named and claimed by us as congregants. We created sacred space for that hour, which was built upon trust and the willingness to respect the other while each of us lifted up what was uniquely our own expression.
Just this past Saturday we got together with a new acquaintance from the Expo to see how we could expand the common ground we shared spiritually, honoring what is sacred in our lives. We talked about our experiences looking for a way to put into spiritual practice with others that which has been put in our hearts to share. We had felt a strong connection in how we view what is of sacred worth in each of our lives, and how the earth is to be cherished as home for us and those who have gone before us. The person with whom we met spoke about his desire to be in ministry using the healing skills that he has nurtured. He is prepared to share his healing power with others in need, but he wonders where he will find a viable place from which to work.
March 15, 2011
Faith Ministry is an Untapped Resource
Posted by Rev Jenna Zirbel under Uncategorized | Tags: christianity, church within a church, Community Building, family values, justice, ministry, ministry development |Leave a Comment
Two weeks ago I learned about a form of ministry that has captivated my attention. Alliance of AIDS Services – Carolina has a brochure explaining a bit about Faith Ministries that I imagine has possibilities beyond my wildest dreams. And I do have some wild dreams.
Faith Ministries organizing is a barely tapped resource from which so many communities could benefit. In order for a community to flourish, all participants have to be enabled to access basic services. When people are left out of the loop of community engagement, their needs do not disappear but are met in less efficient and more expensive manner, often to the detriment of the individual and of the community as a whole.
Grocery stores in most communities are not located in neighborhoods for easy access for those without their own transportation, while convenience stores with high prices for items are more readily accessible. Food pantries only act somewhat as a backup support for people unable to afford to meet their needs because of limited access to a local grocery store. Someone without the money and/or stamina to take a bus to their medical care provider, may find that the only safe means of transportation to get needed medical care is by ambulance to the hospital emergency room. And for some of our neighbors, getting someone able to care enough to accompany them for support and assistance to an appointment is not possible. The injustice of the lack of access for some individuals to basic services hurts the life of the community.
Faith Ministries organizing can be used to establish relationships in communities where the wellbeing of every neighbor is considered significant to the community as a whole. No one deserves to be left out. This ministry can promote an environment where caring for other is realized as in one’s own best interest. To always be on the asking side of a relationship prohibits mutuality and respectful encounters and distorts the meaning of giving. In a healthy relationship it is easy to recognize how giving and getting are mutually inclusive, and how caring for neighbor as self, is caring for self.
June 24, 2010
Hallowed ground
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The engagement point of ministry is changing – molding into shapes that fit the corners and gaps of individual lives; corners where loss lies quietly waiting for healing; gaps where sorrow and joy may meet. We who gather intend to live the love of God, care for neighbor as self, exposing both need and fulfillment.
We sit at the table together, exploring how it is that our lives have needs, some satisfied and some still longing; we are grateful that the food is good and affordable and that we have a place of belonging here. I suppose that we who gather are at times conscious of the mutual acceptance, shared out of trust and in a sense of self-worth. What had been desperation for a safe place has developed into a need for a space of recollection of friends who share common goals and insights, who enjoy some of the same social activities and who want the opportunity to give to others – to be part of the common good.
March 31, 2010
LGBT Health Month
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We would like to invite you to bring New York LGBT Health Month to your community – whether it is in New York or not!! (Why should New Yorkers have all the good health practices?) As you may already know, the National Coalition for LGBT Health has named March 28th-April 3rd, 2010 the 8th annual National LGBT Health Awareness Week.
Rainbow Access Initiative is a member of the Healthcare Committee of the NYS LGBT Health & Human Services Network (coordinated through the Empire State Pride Agenda), and we know that our community’s health is too fabulous (and important) to fit into just one week! So we’ve decided to declare March 2010 as the first annual New York LGBT Health Month.
Our theme this year is “31 Ways for 31 Days”…so throughout the month of March, leading up to National LGBT Health Awareness Week, we are encouraging LGBT New Yorkers and the organizations that serve them to educate, advocate and organize around LGBT health and wellness in all its various forms—physical, sexual, spiritual, emotional and social. We’d love it if all LGBT people everywhere would join us in considering March to be LGBT Health Month by implementing good health practices into their daily routines.
We at CWAC believe it is very difficult to have healthy spiritual practices if we do not take care of our physical being as well as we can, and also that it is tough to be physically healthy if we are spiritually hurting. So, following this article, you will find a series of daily posts reminding us that good health care runs the gamut from taking some very simple steps to some exceedingly important, complex ones. I hope you read them all in good physical, spiritual and emotional health.
For more information on LGBTQ health issues visit Rainbow Access Initiative and choose from the menu options on the left side.
For more information on spititual health for LGBTQ visit CWAC’s website or click on the “email us” button and contact me.
March 18, 2010
Come Out to Your Provider
Posted by Rev Jenna Zirbel under Uncategorized | Tags: church within a church, Community Building, dignity, LGBTQ, LGBTQ health, ministry, ministry development |Leave a Comment
A 2005 survey of gay/bisexual men found that 39% had never disclosed their orientation to their healthcare provider and studies have shown similar patterns among lesbian/bisexual women. If you have never come out to your provider, do it. If you don’t feel comfortable doing so or think you’re provider will react negatively, seek out a provider with whom you can have a more honest and healthier relationship.
For more information on LGBTQ health issues visit Rainbow Access Initiative and choose from the menu options on the left side. Of particular interest might be the section on obtaining the services of culturally-competent health providers – it explains why special attention is needed for LGBTQ healthcare in the first place.
For more information on spititual health for LGBTQ visit CWAC’s website or click on the “email us” button and contact me. CWAC’s anti-heterosexist, anti-racist stand for spiritual justice might just provide the safe place you’re looking for.
March 7, 2010
Reflecting on the Past Year
Posted by Rev Jenna Zirbel under Uncategorized | Tags: affirming, christianity, church within a church, Community Building, covenant, definition of church, dignity, ecclesia, equality, family values, inclusion, justice, koinonia, LGBTQ, ministry, ministry development, theology, tradition |Leave a Comment
THOUGHTS FROM THE PARTICULAR ….
We live and work in the reality of everyday struggle and celebration. Life on our street is in touch with people wondering how we will pay our bills, especially the utilities. We wonder if we can get employment before we fall too far behind in debt. Jobs are hard to find; even harder is keeping the car repaired. The on street parking is an altogether different challenge with every-other-day restrictions dedicated to the 9:00 o’clock hour. A lot of the time we spend our physical energy on transportation. Our homes belong to landlords many of whom are slow or even unresponsive to our requests, quite like the police when we call about an altercation. And the density of families and neighbors living close together brings relationship issues through the walls with easy flow to the street.
It might be easiest just to ignore the neighbors for pseudo privacy, a way to focus attention on my own issues. I may dress up and leave my street – get miles away – leaving the problems of the day behind for a moment, possibly to go worship. But more easily I can shut my door, turn up my noise and drown out the disappointments, fears of failure; my hopes exhausted just like my body by too much exercise in reaching for opportunities just beyond my grasp. (more…)
December 24, 2009
The Celebration of Christmas
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This year we celebrated Christmas at the Damien Center on December 19. The gathering reminded us of the Magnificat.
God has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts …
We gathered as the Damien Center comfortable in our intent to share.
… God has brought down the powerful from their thrones …
For weeks and even until the very night before, people brought from what they had.
… and lifted up the lowly …
There were tables set with room enough for all to sit face to face.
… filled the hungry with good things …
The food served was creatively prepared to satisfy and nourish.
… and sent the rich away empty …
Every guest, even those unexpected, left with gifts.
… in fulfillment of God’s promise.
September 23, 2009
Out of the Darkness – Annual Walk for Suicide Prevention
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On Sunday, Sept 20, Rev Jenna Zirbel tabled for The Trevor Project and participated in the annual walk to benefit American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Almost a thousand people gathered and walked in memory of friends/family who were victims of suicide. Over $76,000 was raised for research and education.
June 14, 2009
Family Diversity Day at NY State Museum
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As part of Pride Week in the Capital District of NY, Family Diversity Day was celebrated on Saturday, June 13, with activities and information tables at the State Museum of NY. Families of all shapes, sizes, colors and couplings demonstrated what true diversity of love and family values looks like. Jenna represented the Trevor Project, a non-profit engaged in many efforts to save young people’s lives, especially LGBT youth at risk of suicide. Along with Jenna were Jenn, a co-worker with Jenna, and her husband, Andy.
Jenna also got to speak with some folks about CWAC and possible alternatives for worship. We are confident that the time is approaching for making a new start of some kind.
Many contacts were made with teachers, youth group leaders and other interested parties about holding Lifesaving workshops – an educational function of the Trevor Project that seeks to educate young people about suicide prevention, peer support and triggers that can lead to suicidal thoughts. Every time a training occurs, more people become educated enough to help prevent suicide in our greatest asset – our young people.
Rev Jenna Zirbel
