I’ve seen an article passed around a lot this week called “What if gay kids had a church that loved them?” and it has generated a lot of comments and shares. There is nothing wrong with the piece; in fact it’s a nice call for churches to be more welcoming. The issue is there are LOTS of churches that love gay kids! In fact, churches like the United Church of Christ, Metropolitan Community Churches, and the Old Catholic church (along with a couple of others) have not only been welcoming queer folks for about 40 years, they’ve been affirming their calls to ministry as well! The problem is, no one knows these churches exist.
Mainline churches (UCC, ELCA, Episcopal, the DOC churches that are affirming, Presbyterians, etc) we have a problem. No one knows we exist and no one cares. And you know why? Because we suck at public relations. We often suck at social media. Our websites are ugly and hard to navigate, our twitter accounts are only links to our sermons and don’t include any interaction, we use terms that no one outside of our denominations can understand. We say things like “we’re a reconciling congregation”, “we’re open and affirming”, “we’re a more light congregation” and expect people to know what those things mean.
It’s not that we’re not doing good work! Mainline churches are often doing amazing social justice projects in the community, they are organizing on political issues, they are sheltering people and fighting for their rights. But our messaging sucks! We’re not trained to be on camera, we don’t know how to give a good soundbite, and so when something happens and the press look for someone to call, they don’t call us.
If it were only about getting press for whatever our new project is it wouldn’t matter, but like the article above says, kids are dying because they don’t know we exist.
When I was gearing up for my ordination I contacted the press. In one of the articles someone left a comment that said, “Our Catholic community ordained a transgender [side note problematic language was the commenter's] in 19XX but we didn’t go out looking for press over it.” And I thought, that’s the problem! It doesn’t matter if you do it if no one knows about it! This isn’t about attention grabbing it’s about sharing a message that can save lives! If a news story about my ordination means that one trans* kid knows that there is a church that welcomes them, then that, to me, is worth it.
Do we believe we have good news to share? Then let’s get out there and share it! Learn how to use social media, learn how to write a press release, call your local newspapers and television stations, learn news people’s names, start a media list. Write blog posts that are easy to share, craft some really good soundbites, learn how to speak in front of a camera. Show up and make statements. Be visible!
We have allowed the conservative, evangelical church to control the conversation about Christianity in this country. We have allowed them to get all of the soundbites. We have allowed them to shape the dialogue. Up until now we have been constantly responding. It’s time to go on the offensive. It’s time to reshape the conversation. To do that we need to shift how we interact with the world. Look at the websites of popular (and growing) evangelical churches. Look how they do their social media presence. Look at how they have branded their churches. This stuff works and we need to be using it! I have been in so many meetings in mainline churches where they do one of two things: roll their eyes at an idea because the evangelicals use it OR come up with an idea that the evangelical church has been using for a decade and act like it’s new. We need to be students of what works. This isn’t about being something that we’re not, it’s about figuring out how to tell people who we are in ways that are accessible and meaningful. The old idea of “if you build it, they will come” doesn’t work anymore.
We’ve been building it for years and no one is coming. Don’t you think it’s time for a change?
Yes yes yes yes.
Thank you so much for this call to action. And for the amazing inspiring work you’re doing. And for sharing it with us!
Word.
Came across this article from @anarchistkevin. Thanks for sharing.
I hear a much needed call for spiritual renewal…old websites, apathy, low tithing, declining membership…I agree and don’t think mainline theology is the problem…I think it’s a spiritual problem…
I have a hunch that many people would agree with mainline theology more than its conservative counterpart…but people want to be a part of a community that is coming alive for God…to be a part of something where they are seeing the Kingdom being realized in their midst and where they are experiencing and witnessing reconciliation of all kinds.
I totally agree – no denomination should have a monopoly of passionate people set on fire for God. I hope every community can hear that call.
Episcopalian here. We do have a problem, but it’s not so much that “nobody knows that we exist”: it’s that the arbiters of discourse know we exist, and disapprove.
A big part of *why* we’re gun-shy, why we hide behind “reconciling” and “affirming” and “welcoming,” is because the discourse is out of our control. To the extent that official channels acknowledge our existence, it is ALWAYS framed in the Discourse of Decline: that we’ve lost the Mandate of Heaven, and therefore are not only dying but *ought* to die to make way for the “Biblical” megachurches. This hurts the mainline because we’re still culturally geared toward the official media perpetuating that discourse, for cultural reasons going back to the Greatest Generation. (The ECUSA is hit particularly hard by this because we *were* the Church of the White Power Structure for so long, and we’re still getting used to the transition from that.)
It’s not an excuse. We have sinned in what we have left undone. But our repentance isn’t just getting the message out – it’s learning to not be surprised, brothers and sisters, if the world hates us, and adjusting our praxis to match.
ironically, the conservative/evangelical set had heretofore been slow to utilize the Internet to get their message out, perhaps because they had it all sewn up in the radio, television and mainstream media. They may have been too suspicious of the Net at first to see its potential, but they haven’t been long in seeing that mistake. Progressives were more open to the Internet in its early days, embracing its freedom and making use of the new frontier. One example, in my experience, has been the bear movement: they were simply everywhere back in the day and influenced a significant development of blogs and websites, perhaps because many were technophiles and programmers and tended to be socially progressive. That presence seems to have faded a bit, just as the conservative crowd has raised its online profile, so let’s do an end run around them once again: get feet on the ground and faces on camera, as Father Shay suggests. The conservatives had been doing the hard footwork and the glad-handing all these years, and it worked. They kicked our ass and we’re paying for it now.
So here’s the other problem: As Edo says, we’ve allowed them to control the dialogue. You know what keeps me, as an out gay man, from reaching out to gay kids and teens? The dreaded label of pedophile. Perversion of youth. The insinuations, the knowing looks, the furrowed brows. Kids aren’t sexual, don’t need sex education, don’t need to be burdened with this adult stuff, must keep their innocence intact, yadda yadda yadda. Until we counter what the mainstream wonders about us what and the conservatives “know” about us (i.e., homos are pedophiles, out to convert the precious darlings), we’ll make little progress, I’m afraid.
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