Tips for Churches at Pride

What this episode covers

Pride brings out many people trying to show their support for the LGBTQ+ community and an interesting conversation about how churches show up at Pride inspired this week’s episode. In this conversation, we explore the role of churches supporting and engaging with the LGBTQ community during Pride Month. We have some practical insight on how churches can show genuine involvement, service, and inclusivity, while showing up meaningfully at Pride events and beyond. Takeaways Pride Month is celebrated globally, creating a sense of connection among queer individuals. Churches should actively participate in Pride events to show support for the LGBTQ community. Involvement should be led by queer and trans individuals within the church community. Churches must avoid centering themselves and instead focus on the needs of the queer community. Aesthetic presentation at Pride events matters; churches should invest in their displays. Service and support should be prioritized over recruitment at Pride events. Churches can provide tangible support, such as water stations for marchers. Engagement with the queer community should extend beyond Pride Month. Ongoing education and training are essential for creating inclusive church environments. Churches should explore diverse ways to incorporate queer culture into their programming. Chapters (00:56) Churches and Their Role in Pride Events (04:00) Guiding Principles for Religious Groups at Pride (07:08) Tangible Support and Service to the Queer Community (10:02) Engaging with the Community Beyond Pride Month (12:59) Creating Inclusive Spaces Year-Round (15:56) Ongoing Education and Awareness for Inclusivity (19:10) Broader Engagement with Queer Culture (22:07) Building Lasting Relationships with the Community Resources:. Join our online community at Sanctuary Collective Community If you want to support the Patreon and help keep the podcast up and running, you can learn more and pledge your support at patreon.com/queertheology This transcript was generated by AI and may contain errors or omissions. (9s): Welcome to the Queer Theology Podcast. I’m Brian G Murphy. And I’m father Shannon, T l Kearns. We’re the co-founders of Queer Theology dot com and your hosts from Genesis, revelation. The Bible declares good news to LGBTQ plus people, and we want to show you how Tuning each week on Sunday for conversations about Christianity, queerness and transness, and how they can enrich one another. We’re glad you’re here. Hello and happy third week of Pride. It kind of feels like advent, where you’re like lighting the candles every, every Sunday of Advent, like marking, marking the weekends of, of pride. And I know in different parts of the country, not everyone or the world, not everyone celebrates Pride month in June, so people do it in August, September, October, but I, I know lots of people around the world are, are celebrating pride this month. (55s): And so it’s, it does feel kind of cool that like every weekend as it goes on, like somewhere in the world it is, it’s pride somewhere. It’s sort of like a, a pride is sort of rolling across the world. And so there’s, there’s something, I dunno, mystical, magical, but feeling connected to, to queer folks everywhere. And so keeping with a Pride month theme a few days ago inside of our online community Sanctuary Collective, one of the members posed a question. So the community that sparked some really interesting discussion in the comments there. And so we thought that we would sh bring that to y’all for today’s podcast episode. So Hannah, inside of Sanctuary Collective was asking about how churches can show up at Pride. Her church for the first time ever was going to be active in three different pride events they were doing, being a part of services and being the table, being in a table at the Pride in the Park celebration. (1m 44s): And so