Institute for Welcoming Resources - Faith-Based Community Organizing

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Faith-Based Community Organizing

Passionate?

Concerned about Social Justice and the Gospel?

Committed to your church being welcoming and affirming?

Then join us!

Whatever your passions for Church and society - LGBT equality, peacemaking, economic justice, immigration, stewardship of creation - this training is for you.

Ready to learn new grassroots organizing skills and insights so that you can make a more powerful difference in your local church and denomination? Then, we have an extraordinary faith-based community organizing training for you and for others in your local church, chapter, campus or seminary community.

What is it?

Ecumenical Faith-Based Community Organizing Training is an intense 3 day hands-on workshop intended to give you the skills and knowledge base to build local teams equipped to expand the numbers of welcoming congregations within your area. It prepares you for strategic action rooted in faith.

What to expect?

Concrete skills for making change
Outlines of actions plans for a welcoming and affirming process
Spiritual enrichment
Daily worship and song
Working hard each day
Stretching mind and heart
Good food!

Areas of Focus

Faith-Based Community Organizing

Learn the skills to organize people and organize money including the one-to-one visit and the process for building an activist team in your area.

Graceful Engagement with the Bible

Participants will look at the ways in which scripture provides a powerful support to our work. In particular, we will explore texts of hospitality, justice and love. Participants will also take part in a thorough session dedicated to the “Bible bullets” – texts that have historically been used to validate bigotry and discrimination against LGBT folk in the church. A grounded understanding of the purpose of such texts and ways to combat hateful interpretations will be at the core of these discussions.

Conflict Resolution Tools

Participants will learn concrete tools and techniques for shifting the paradigm around lgbt issues and conflict.

Welcoming Processes and Resources

Learn how to use a variety of welcoming resources. You will learn how to do a congregational assessment and design a study process based on that assessment. Role plays are used to contrast typical situations of Church Council conflict with other more successful methods of discernment.