Invite Welcome Connect with Pride: A Safe Haven When the World Feels Less Safe
- Steve Welch
- 22 hours ago
- 6 min read
Creator God, Holy one, Maker of love and source of joy: We give you thanks for the infinite variety of your creation. We bless you that we are fearfully and wonderfully made, and that we are your beloved rainbow tribe. Grant us the courage to tell our truth, to honor ourselves, to love our neighbors, and to share your grace with a world aching for healing. We pray because of Jesus, who shows us the way. Amen.
—From “Pride Sunday Prayers of the People” by the Rev. Kay Sylvester, Diocese of Los Angeles
As Pride Month approaches this June, we find ourselves at a moment that calls for more than celebration. It calls for courage. It calls for the Church to be, perhaps more urgently than at any time in recent memory.
The truth is sobering: Today, queer people in America feel less safe than they have in years. Across the country, anti-LGBTQ+ legislation has surged. Hate crimes targeting LGBTQ+ individuals have increased. The rollback of protections in schools, workplaces, and public life has left many members of the LGBTQ+ community feeling exposed, targeted, and afraid. Young people who are queer face disproportionate rates of depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation—often because the institutions that should protect and nurture them have failed them or actively harmed them.
The Church has an extraordinary opportunity—and a Gospel imperative—to be different.
A Moment That Demands More Than Words
Nearly 50 years ago, The Episcopal Church took a bold stand. In 1976, General Convention passed a resolution stating that LGBTQ+ people “. . . are children of God who have a full and equal claim with all other persons upon the love, acceptance, and pastoral concern and care of the Church.” That statement was revolutionary then. Today, it is a foundation—but it is not enough on its own.
Words of affirmation mean little if a gay teenager doesn’t feel it the moment they walk through your doors. A resolution passed fifty years ago provides no comfort to the transgender woman who has been turned away from three other congregations. Our baptismal covenant calls us to
respect the dignity of every human being—not in principle, not in policy alone, but in practice, in relationship, in radical and visible welcome.
This Pride Month, in a climate that has grown measurably more hostile to queer lives, the Church’s welcome must be louder, warmer, and more intentional than ever before.
What Radical Inclusion Looks Like
Radical inclusion isn’t just about policy. It’s about culture—the feeling that permeates a congregation and communicates to every visitor, “You are safe here. You are loved here. You belong here.”
Make your welcome visible before people enter:
• Fly a rainbow flag or display a sign outside your building that says, unambiguously, that all are welcome. Let the LGBTQ+ community know they are safe before they ever open the door.
• Add the Episcopal Pride Shield and an affirmation—something like “You Belong. No Exceptions.”—to your church website, your social media, and your bulletin.
• Use customizable social media posts and videos from The Episcopal Church website to tell your community that your church is a place of genuine, unconditional welcome.
• Participate in local Pride events wearing shirts or signage that identify your congregation. Show up.
Make your welcome tangible in worship:
• Hold a Pride Eucharist or prayer service that explicitly honors and celebrates LGBTQ+ people as beloved children of God.
• Incorporate Pride-specific Prayers of the People into a Sunday service—not once, but regularly.
• Invite LGBTQ+ members of your congregation to participate in the planning and leadership of Pride worship—not as representatives of “all LGBTQ+ people,” but as members of the body with gifts to offer.
• Preach about inclusion—from the pulpit, explicitly and unapologetically. Don’t leave people wondering where your church stands.
Make your welcome relational:
• Train your greeters, hospitality teams, and lay ministers with the tools of Invite Welcome Connect so that welcome is not only extended, but felt—deeply and personally.
• Create spaces—in small groups, adult formation, and pastoral care—where LGBTQ+ people can bring their whole selves, including wounds from church experiences that came before yours.
• Don’t assume that a newcomer who is LGBTQ+ has healed from religious trauma. Many haven’t. Meet them with patience, love, and no conditions.
Healing the Wounds of Religious Rejection
If your congregation sets a genuine tone of welcome and safety, LGBTQ+ people will come. And many of them will arrive carrying wounds—from churches that said “we love everyone” and then qualified it with conditions. From Sunday schools that taught them their identity was a sin. From confirmation classes where they hid who they were. From families who chose church over them.
Your church has a chance to be something different—not just welcoming in theory, but healing in practice. That’s not a small thing. For a young queer person who has been told their whole life that God doesn’t love them as they are, a congregation that genuinely sees them, names them beloved, and invites them into the full life of the community isn’t just a nice experience. It can be life-saving.
The Samaritan in Jesus’ parable didn’t just notice the wounded man on the road—he stopped, he bound the wounds, he provided care, he stayed. Christ’s model of radical hospitality is active, costly, and personal. “Go and do likewise.” (Luke 10:37)
Pride Is Not Arrogance—It Is Survival
Some in our congregations may still wrestle with the word “Pride.” But for LGBTQ+ people, Pride is not about arrogance. It is about survival. It is the hard-won proclamation that one’s life has worth, that one’s love is real, that shame—so often imposed by the very institutions meant to nurture the soul—does not get the last word.
Pride is a declaration that every person is made in the image of God. In that sense, it is deeply, profoundly Christian.
In a moment when that dignity is under political attack, when laws are being passed that communicate to queer people that they are less-than, when young trans people are being told they don’t belong in their own schools—the Church’s affirmation of their belovedness is not a political act. It is a theological one. It is the Gospel.
Our Toolkit Is Here for You
Invite Welcome Connect has added a set of LGBTQ+ Inclusion Resources to our online toolkit for evangelism, hospitality, and connectedness. You’ll find resources for Pride worship, social media, welcoming training, and more—all designed to help your congregation move from a posture of passive acceptance to one of active, joyful, radical welcome.
Visit our LGBTQ+ Inclusion Resources page. The materials are available now and will grow over time.
The Stakes Are High. The Call Is Clear.
This is not a moment for churches to stay quiet about where they stand. Silence, right now, communicates something—and not something good. When the world is telling LGBTQ+ people that they are unsafe, unwelcome, and unworthy of protection, the Church that holds its tongue becomes complicit in that message.
But the Church that speaks up—that throws open its doors and says, clearly and without qualification, “You are loved. You belong. You are safe here”—that Church becomes something extraordinary: a sanctuary in the truest sense of the word.
Pride Month 2026 is our invitation to be that church.
Milestones in LGBTQ+ Inclusion in The Episcopal Church
• 1974: Louie Crew founded IntegrityUSA, a nonprofit advocating for full inclusion of LGBTQ+ individuals in the Episcopal Church.
• 1976: The General Convention passed resolutions affirming that LGBTQ+ people are children of God deserving love, acceptance, and pastoral care, entitled to equal protection under the law.
• 1988: In response to the AIDS crisis, the National Episcopal AIDS Coalition was established to support HIV/AIDS ministries across the church.
• 1994: Church canons were amended to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, ensuring equal access to rites and ordination.
• 2003: The Diocese of New Hampshire elected the Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson as the first openly gay bishop in The Episcopal Church.
• 2009: The General Convention affirmed same-sex couples in the life of the church. TransEpiscopal sent its first delegation to the convention, advocating for transgender and nonbinary inclusion.
• 2012: Church canons were amended to prohibit discrimination in the ordination process based on gender identity and expression. A liturgy for blessing same-sex relationships was also recommended.
• 2015: Following the Supreme Court’s decision legalizing same-sex marriage, the General Convention amended marriage canons to allow any couple the rite of Holy Matrimony.
Steve Welch is Executive Director of Invite Welcome Connect. He is the proud father of two queer daughters, former acolytes at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Monmouth Junction, New Jersey.
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