Jesus Reached Out to Everyone & SDA Kinship Can Too
- Carolyn & John Wilt
- 3 days ago
- 3 min read
Recently Carolyn and I learned about a Kinship member desiring to help one of their parents understand and accept their LGBTQA/rainbow lifestyle. As we dug a bit deeper we discovered that we personally knew the member. They were a very loving and caring medical field worker - living many gracious years married to their friendly partner - and strongly desiring to reach out to support anyone and any family also living their rainbow life of love and acceptance. We also realized we had never offered to connect with their family.
As Carolyn and I discussed this situation we realized that Kinship Families & Friends has focused on connecting with interested families and allies when they join Kinship, but we truly need to broaden our outreach to every Kinship member who would like support in connecting with their own families. Hopefully as you read this message you may know a fellow member who desires support and ideas they can use to help their family understand and accept. Please encourage them to connect with us for support. As we connect and share we may be able to also offer to connect with their family and share from a mom and dad viewpoint - we can also share as grandparents or aunt and uncle viewpoints.
We truly realize and understand where and how the SDA GC/Divisional/Union leadership inherited the present policies and procedures. They believe what they were taught, and they may feel a bit uncomfortable adjusting or shifting those policies and procedures. But John ‘s favorite personal question for himself is “How do I know what I don’t know ? and within our faith’s rainbow environment how do our leaders and directors “know what they don’t know ?” We enjoy expanding our understandings as we learn new information and realities. We are excited and pleased when our friends reach out to us with new knowledge and experiences. And we are available and comfortable reaching out to all SDA leadership folks willing to learn new information.
Over the past 40 years since we helped our own son out of his gay closet into our loving accepting world we have learned so much and experienced so many wonderful times with many rainbow families and allies. Our personal journey strongly reflects Ecclesiastes 4:10 “If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up!” Our personal church pastor never looked the other way when we shared our knowledge and awareness. He told us to love and accept our son. Whenever Aric came home and visited our and his church that pastor always warmly welcomed him and later welcomed his partner too. He, and several following pastors were very honest examples of 1 John 4:7 Let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God”.
So Kinship members you are not alone. Your Families & Friends group has several excellent loving members available to chat with you - support you - and offer to connect with your own family too. Certainly discussions and information needs to be shared and discussed to create the best path forward for your family. But our team is broad and experienced from many different viewpoints and you can connect with the best team or maybe several team members. We, John and Carolyn share from a scientific, technical and loving family atmosphere. The Widmer’s, Kris and Debbie share from their pastoral, chaplain and nursing an family loving atmosphere. Others are SDA employees and they can share from that complex atmosphere.
So “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as God forgave you!” Ephesians
4:32. Hopefully as we reach out and support each other we can start worldwide changes for all rainbow
families and their members.
Remember our motto:
Jesus never looked the other way and neither should we !! :):)
Carolyn & John Wilt,
Kinship Families & Friends
