Officially Open & Affirming as of October 2023

Letter to Congregation

February 2, 2023

Hello members of Immanuel,

Greetings and happy 2023 from your Open and Affirming (ONA) committee 2.0! Why 2.0? We are adopting this new designation to signify that after having received input from the congregation, and with the approval of the church council, we are moving forward with the process of becoming designated as an ONA congregation. Current members of this committee are Luke Anderson, Dean Bucalos, Keith Coombs, Jennifer Fantoni, Angie Jonson, Mary Ann Sherby, Katherine Taylor, and Katy Whitesell. Pastor Rachel is an ex-officio member.

The sincere hope of our committee is to hold a vote on the ONA designation by the end of the 2023 calendar year, and our next step in moving toward that vote is education. Using the Building an Inclusive Church toolkit, our committee will host several educational opportunities over the coming months. We anticipate that the first sessions will focus on what it means to be an ONA church and on how being an ONA congregation is compatible with Christianity and the Bible. Please be on the lookout for the dates and times for these sessions. Education is vital, not just to a thoughtful vote on becoming Open and Affirming, but also to Immanuel’s members understanding the open and affirming message and carrying it out to the wider community as a whole.

Our efforts are timely as they coincide with the Indiana Kentucky Conference beginning the process of becoming ONA. Luke Anderson shared with our committee members a comment made during that process, one that strongly resonated with us, “This process is not, at its center, about changing hearts and minds. It is about asking what the practical implications are of becoming ONA for the conference, because that is what justice work is about.”

Accepting people is the most Christian thing that we can possibly do. Educating ourselves about how we can better understand others and genuinely engage with them as we seek to worship and learn together will allow us all to do better and to be better. To that end, the overall goal of the ONA committee in this process is for the notable engagement from the congregation through the educational portion of the process. Even if you know where you stand on this issue, we encourage each of you to participate in this process. Attend these sessions as you are able, reach out to committee members with any ideas, or GO BIG and join the ONA committee 2.0! This is the perfect time in this process to bring new members into our work.

As we embark on this exciting journey, we look forward to opportunities to engaging in fellowship with each of you, and to expanding our knowledge of inclusivity so that every person who walks into Immanuel is affirmed. We hope you are as invested and interested in this process as we are, and we can’t wait to get to work!

With Christian love and affirmation,

Your ONA Committee Members

 

Open and Affirming

The Open and Affirming Coalition of the United Church of Christ advocates for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, and equips UCC congregations to become effective witnesses to Christ’s extravagant welcome.

The Coalition’s core ministry is the growing movement of Open and Affirming (ONA) churches in the United Church of Christ. Under our leadership, ONA is now the largest and fastest-growing LGBT-welcoming movement in the Body of Christ. We welcomed ONA church #1 in 1986 and church #1,000 in 2012. Today there are more than 1,700 ONA congregations in the UCC—and we’re growing fast.

The Coalition works closely with the UCC’s national offices and other settings of the church, but we depend on your tax-exempt gifts for most of the funds used to support ONA churches and grow the ONA movement.