back to top
 

    "If we want to build a movement that is transformational, we will model honesty, we will model openness and we will take the risks that challenge conventional thinking. We will act with integrity in our personal relationships and in our relationships with our colleagues. We will seek out and lift up every voice, challenged by what we hear but not afraid. We will listen to every voice.
    "The true test of democracy is how it embraces those who look, act, and think differently, not just those who are the same. This is the world we dream of - a more compassionate society. One that values the worth and dignity of all people. . . 
    "We can't subscribe to the "I'll get mine now and we'll add you later" mode of politics. As a woman, as a lesbian, as a Jew, I can't be a woman on Thursday, a lesbian on Friday, and a Jew on Saturday. Perhaps it is an old fashioned notion, but I believe that to move forward, each of us must move forward together.
    "But I challenge you to go further. I challenge each of you to break through your world to a new place, to challenge your assumptions, to develop new relationships, to act as though the world that you create for yourself and your community is the model that each of us should live by. I challenge you to tear down your walls, to tear down your stereotypes, and to lead."

back to top

Pride Week 2

Call to Worship
One:    Sing praises to our God, who has done wondrous things!
Many:    We thank God for the gift of bisexual people, who teach us that love is boundless.
One:    Sing praises to our God, who has done wondrous things!
Many:    We thank God for the gift of transgendered people, who teach us the beauty of change and courage.
One:    Sing praises to our God, who has done wondrous things!
Many:    We thank God for the gift of straight people, who teach us to seek community beyond the ordinary and accepted.
One:    Sing praises to our God, who has done wondrous things!
Many:    We thank God for the gift of lesbians, who teach us to love that which is like ourselves and to celebrate the goodness within.
One:    Sing praises to our God, who has done wondrous things!
Many:    We thank God for the gift of gay men, who teach us to look for love beyond the expected and to live beyond the everyday.
One:    Sing praises to our God, who created us, redeemed us and sustains us. Thanks be to God!

Scriptures
Isaiah 54: 1-3, 10, 14  Matthew 19: 11-12

Contemporary Voice
Riki Ann Wilchins, founder of Transsexual Menace and Executive Director of GenderPAC, speaking at a transsexual speak-out at New York's Lesbian & Gay Community Center, held in honor of the 40th anniversary of Christine Jorgenson's sex-change surgery:

". . . let me tell you about one transsexual. After ten years of hiding and passing and sucking up to non-transsexual women, strung out and totally desperate, she started a transsexual group. She started talking with them and hanging out with them and being seen with them, although at first she hated it. She started wearing buttons and coming out at every appropriate and inappropriate moment, just as if her life, that life God had given her, why, it was just as normal and natural as anyone else's, which of course, it was. And she learned that although she might hate herself, she could not hate the 50 or 100 or 150 other transsexuals she met, and whose stories she heard, whose tears of frustration and rage she saw, whose everyday, one day at a time, courage to survive she witnessed. And she understood, at last, the redemptive power of community, and how it can only be stifled by self-hate and silence. And community, my friends and transsexual kin, is what we build here today, by coming together to claim our own, our history, and our Christine; Christine who, standing all alone in God's own light in a way none of us have had to since, made all of this and all of us possible."

back to top

Pride Week 3

Call to Worship
One:    From the east and the west, the north and the south,
Many:    We gather in the presence of the Holy One.
One:    Bringing our joy and sorrow, with comfort and with trepidation,
Many:    We come together in this place.
One:    To those who love us and those who fear and despise us,
Many:    We proclaim the power of God working in our lives.
One:    Once we were not a people,
Many:    Now we are a people of God.

Scriptures
Isaiah 56:1-7   Mark 3:31-35

Contemporary Voice
Eddie Martinez, Community Outreach Director at The Wall-- Las Memorias Project, quoted in QV magazine, April 1998:

   "Empowerment has to do with yourself. You have to really love and believe in yourself and let your inner beauty come out in order for you to be what you want to be. Too many people just don't have faith in themselves, and they are always negative. Because of that negativity, they don't think they can be what they want to be. Say, for example, someone wants to be an artist-- he may feel like his opinions aren't that good, that he can't draw, or that he doesn't have the power to become an artist. You've got to be confident in what you do. Of course, you can be scared and have some fears, but you've got to learn to overcome those fears..."

back to top

Pride Week 4

Call to Worship
One:    For all who have taken the risk of loving another,
Many: We thank you, O God of Courage.
One:    For all who integrate their sexuality and spirituality,
Many:    We praise you, O God of Life.
One:    For all who have colored outside the lines that society has placed around us,
Many:    We rejoice with you, O God of Creativity.
One:    For all of who have lived true to the inner voice within,
Many:    We celebrate with you, O God of Integrity.
One:    For all of who proclaim their pride at who you created them to be,
Many:    We dance with you, O God of Joy.
One:    For all that you are in our lives, and all the gifts that you have given us, and most especially, for the unique creation that is each one of us,
Many:    We honor you, O God of All.

Scriptures
Ruth 1: 15-18   1 Samuel 18: 1-5   Luke 7: 1-10

Contemporary Voice
The following except from the 1998 MCC Board of Elders Pastoral Letter reminds us of the ways God has used our connectedness and our unity in diversity to become "co-creators with God."

   "To be a part of the MCC is to share in the strength and wonder of one of the most powerful and liberating movements in Christian history. As the people of God gathered together in this movement we are co-creators with God of a new thing God is doing. We are part of a movement for which people have died, for which others will die and to which many more are devoting their lives. Together, we find the increased strength and support that comes through identity and cohesion with a larger movement bringing about positive change in the world. We gain strength in numbers, and strength from our unity in diversity. The whole is more than the sum of its parts... As people of the covenant we recount with joy the ways in which God has acted, reflect on our faithfulness to God's call and rededicate ourselves to the vision God has given us."

back to top