Embrace Webinar #29
Finding Common Ground on LGBTQ+ Ministry: Exploring an Embrace Resource
May 4, 2023
Additional Resources
By Randall Wilkens with contributions from Make and Deepen Disciples and a feedback team
Rooted in the values expressed in our six Covenant affirmations, the Evangelical Covenant Church has historically sought to find common ground on areas where many Christians have been divided. In light of this heritage, in 2018 a diverse group of Covenanters developed a list of suggested ways in which we might find common ground in our ministry with and to people who identify as LGBTQ+ within the adopted position of the Covenant. “Finding Common Ground in LGBTQ+ Ministry” includes acknowledgments of how the Church has fallen short and specific encouragements on how we can flourish in love.
Posture Shift is writing a new church history where communities of faith and homes are safe for LGBT+ family and friends. Learn more about resources for pastors, parents and all who care for LGBT+ people.
Embrace Webinar #1 with Preston Sprinkle
Author and founder of The Center for Faith, Sexuality, and Gender, Dr. Preston Sprinkle speaks to the need to love LGBT+ people with theological faithfulness and courageous love. He provides specific examples of what the church has gotten wrong and right in loving sexual minorities well.
Embrace Webinar #2 with Greg Coles
In an age where neither society nor the church knows what to do with gay Christians, Greg Coles offers insights from his journey of faith and sexual identity that are instructive for the Church’s posture and practices. He offers 10 “provocations” for evangelicals to grow in loving LGBT people well.
Presenters
Randall Wilkens (presenter)
Randall Wilkens is a musician, spiritual director, and ordained Covenant pastor who serves as associate pastor of worship and the arts at Bethany Covenant Church in Mount Vernon, Washington. In January 2018, Randall posted his original version of “Finding Common Ground” on the Covenant Ministerium Facebook page, with the hope that it could be a blueprint for unity amid the division our denomination has experienced around issues of human sexuality. The original post attracted the attention of Covenant leaders, and Randall was eventually asked to work with a diverse writing team to develop it into an Embrace resource. Randall and his wife, Bonnie, have lived in Washington state since 2006 and are parents of two adult children.
Claire McClun (Facilitator)
Claire has a passion for equipping the church to be disciples who make disciples. She and her husband Adam earned M.Div. at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and their joint call is to be a bridge between the community and the Church. She has pastored in the Kansas City area for a decade and is a disciple-maker to their two young children, Theo and Grace.
