120 Years of Love in Action

Happy February!

Valentine's Day has come to dominate the theme for February, at least in the card shops and candy stores, there is more to the month than ooey gooey chocolate. Love is usually associated with the heart and butterflies in your stomach, but that is only a part of the equation. Love without action is pretty useless. Words without actions are pretty worthless. Just like telling someone that you love them without actively showing what that love looks like has zero meaning.

This past weekend Glendale City Church in Glendale, California celebrated 120 years of proclaiming and living the Gospel of Jesus to their neighborhood and to the whole world ( ie showing love in action). GCC has lived its message for many years, but during the AIDS crisis it took on a whole new meaning of showing love. It saw a need that very few Christian churches were meeting and no Adventist church at that time was even acknowledging. It opened its doors to the untouchables. It saw the queer community not as a group that needed to be saved from their orientation, but an integral part of their community.

They opened their doors unconditionally to everyone. They cultivated a welcoming environment where Kinshippers felt comfortable being open and out. Kinshippers sat together to worship in what fondly became known as the "Pink Pews". GCC did not do this secretly, but was very open about it and shielded us from the arrows and slurs from the official Adventist church. GCC paid a price for living their love, but that is exactly what Jesus would have done. It also became known as a safe haven for anyone who was being threatened to be disfellowshipped by their home church anywhere in the world. All they had to do was to contact the church clerk, and the membership was transferred, without question, to GCC before the homophobic home church could blink or take action. Also more recently, GCC employed, for many years, an openly gay, same sex married, pastor paid for by the congregation (not the Conference or GC). Thanks Pastor Leif Lind for your service there.

In recent years, several churches have followed suit and have openly declared themselves as Kinship Partner churches or have openly stated on their website that they welcome and affirm LGBTQIA members, both single and married. I want to state that Kinship is proud of all our allies and ally churches and we hope we can help develop more congregations that love like Jesus did.... taking ACTION to show their love by truly welcoming and affirming everyone.

Congratulations to Glendale City church and all the supportive past pastors for the past 120 years and to Pastor Uriel and Pastor Rebecca who are now leading the congregation. May God richly bless you! Kinship members, let's always show our support and love in action for this ground-breaking and wonderful congregation. Here is their statement on their website:  Glendale City Church