Below you will find four small group Bible studies that are especially appropriate for use during Pride Month. You are welcome to edit and adapt these materials as appropriate to your ministry context.

These studies are derived from "Our Story Too: Lesbians and Gay Men in the Bible" authored by MCC's Rev. Elder Nancy Wilson. The full text of this material is located at www.MCCchurch.org. On the opening page, click on "The Bible," on the left side of the page. then select, Our Story Too: Lesbians and Gay Men in the Bible," and follow the clickable links through the text.

Pride Week 1

Theme: A Queer Nation

Read:     "Our Story Too: Lesbians and Gay Men in the Bible," 
                page 3: A Lesbian and Gay "Nation"

Scripture: The story of an encounter between Peter and Cornelius; 
                 read the story found in Acts 10: 17-48

Contemporary Voice:
From Former National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Executive Director and Past MCC Interim Executive Director Kerry Lobel, excerpted from a keynote address given at the fifth International Bisexual Conference held in Cambridge, MA in April, 1998:

    "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."

Discussion Questions:
1.    Is the gay and lesbian community a political lobby, a social network, or a nation? How do you view this community? What is your model?
2.    How do bisexual, transgendered and straight people fit into this model?
3.    What do the "believers" in Acts 10 learn in this story? What can we learn from their experience?
4.    How could you apply that your own experiences in your church or community?
5.    What assumptions do you have that you want or need to challenge that are barriers to your understanding of community? What do you want to learn about others?
6.    What would a lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgendered nation look like ideally? How do you think God wants it to be? What is your role and your church’s role in creating that?

Pride Week 2

Theme: Better than Sons and Daughters

Read:    "Our Story Too: Lesbians and Gay Men in the Bible," pages 4-5: 
               God Blesses the "Barren Ones" and Some People Are Born "Eunuchs"

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

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 fortieth 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."

Discussion Questions:
1.    Jesus’ comments in Matthew 19:11-12 come right before he admonishes the disciples to allow children to come to him and before the rich young man asks what he must do to inherit eternal life. What does the context of this passage tell you?
2.    What do you feel when you hear the words of Isaiah 54 and Jesus’ words in Matthew? What emotions come up?
3.    Have you experienced a process or a time in which you came to understand that the life God had given you was as "natural and normal as everyone else’s"? Does this statement challenge your thinking or affirm it? What does it say to you?

Pride Week 3

Theme: A New Family

Read:    "Our Story Too: Lesbians and Gay Men in the Bible," 
               page 6: Jesus Chooses A New "Family"

Scripture: Read Mark 3:31-35, where Jesus affirms his family

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..."

Discussion Questions:
1.    What do you think about Jesus’ comments about family? Who comprised his family?
2.    Take a few minutes and write a definition of family. What is it?
3.    What is your relationship like with the family you grew up with? How do they fit your definition of family?
4.    Who are the members of your family now as a adult? Are there people you want to add to your family? (For example, children, a lover, more friends).
5.    How can you empower yourself and members of your family?

Pride Week 4

Theme: Relationships

Read:    "Our Story Too: Lesbians and Gay Men in the Bible," 
               page 7: Same-Sex Relationships in the Bible

Scripture: Read Ruth 1: 15-18 and 1 Samuel 18: 1-5

Contemporary Voice:
The following excerpt from the 1998 MCC Board of Elders Pastoral Letter reminds us of the ways God uses 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."

Discussion Questions:
1.    What do you think when you hear the stories in Ruth 1 and 1 Samuel 18?
2.    What emotions do these stories bring up?
3.    If you grew up in a religious tradition, did you hear these stories when you were a child? If so, what did you think of them? If not, how do you feel about not having been told these stories?
4.    Have you made this kind of intimate promise to someone else? What was the experience like for you? What did you feel?
5.    What are the implications for us as Christians to see people in the Bible living in relationships outside of society’s norms?

FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION, CONTACT:
James N. Birkitt, Jr., Director of Communications, MCC
8704 Santa Monica Blvd., 2nd Floor  West Hollywood, CA 90069
Tel. (310) 360-8640  Fax: (310) 360-8680  E-mail: UFMCCHQ@aol.com