The session has affirmed my participation as a national board member of the Covenant Network. I am in my second year of service, focusing my efforts on strategies for change in denominational policy and on creative planning for Cov. Net’s annual conference, held in early November. Both Michele Ready and I will volunteer at General Assembly this July to support the legislative efforts of the Covenant Network.

For those who may be interested in learning more, the national co-moderator of Covenant Network, the Rev. Dr. David Van Dyke, will be sharing about our organization with a group over dinner and drinks on April 14. If you are interested in being included in this evening of fellowship and learning, please email Laurie Kraus, Michele Ready, or
Richard Jimenez-Alicea for a reservation and details.

The letter which follows contains the thanks of the Covenant Network, together with a description of an important milestone for one of our brothers, made possible through the work of Cov Net churches and individuals, including YOU–the generous people of Riviera Church. This is where some of your mission dollars have been allocated–to make advancements like these possible–so give in gratitude and grace!
– Laurie

Note: Church Picnic / Family Day is probably being rescheduled. New date TBA.

Laurie Kraus, Pastor
Riviera Presbyterian Church
5275 Sunset Drive
Miami, FL 33143

Dear Laurie,

We had some very exciting news over the weekend, and I want to share it with you and the Riviera session and congregation.

On Saturday, the Presbytery of John Knox (at the intersection of Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota) voted 81-25 to approve the ordination of Scott Anderson to the ministry of Word and Sacrament. Scott is a gifted pastor, preacher, and leader; and he and his partner Ian have been together 19 years.

The John Knox presbyters made this decision using the authority affirmed by the 2006 General Assembly and reaffirmed by the 2008 G.A. – permitting presbyteries to consider a ministerial candidate’s declared “scruple” about one particular point of faith or polity in the context of everything else they know about the candidate’s life, faith, gifts, and fitness for the call. In Scott’s case, they decided that his refusal to follow the common understanding of G-6.0106b did not constitute “a failure to adhere to essentials of Reformed faith and polity.”

You can read about the presbytery meeting and its decision on our newly redesigned website, which I commend to your attention: www.covnetpres.org. (And please let us know what you think!)

Scott’s gifts for pastoral ministry were clear to an overwhelming majority in John Knox Presbytery. They considered his life, his service to the church, his faith statement, and his Affirmation of Conscience, enclosed here.

As you know, San Francisco Presbytery reached a similar determination in November when it voted to ordain Lisa Larges, a greatly gifted, “out” lesbian who has been under care for 23 years. As in Scott’s case, the presbytery considered her life, gifts, service in the church, and faith statement, as well as her Statement of Departure, in deciding to approve her ordination. (Her Statement of Departure is also available on our new website.)

Both presbyteries were able to proceed with these examinations because of a GAPJC decision in November 2009. Covenant Network director Doug Nave won that case; and he is also defending the challenges to both San Francisco and John Knox Presbyteries’ ordination decisions.

The process and legal reasoning both presbyteries used to examine and decide to ordain a candidate “with a departure” have also been followed in several other cases of minister ordinations or transfers (not as high-profile as Scott’s or Lisa’s, and most not challenged in church courts). They can also be used by sessions. These principles are laid out and explained in our booklet Guidelines for Examination of Church Officers. If you’d like a copy, please call or e-mail our office. Or you can order multiple copies for $3 each.

All our work of equipping, advocating, educating, and connecting for change depends on the support of congregations like Riviera. As we look ahead to another very important General Assembly, I am grateful indeed for your financial support as well as your critical local leadership.

We still have a long way to go to the just and generous church for which we long; but I want to celebrate with you this important step along the way. Thank you for your partnership in bringing closer the church we envision!

Faithfully yours,

Pamela Byers
Executive Director
Covenant Network
encl.

If you have any photos of your family or yourself participating in church events such as , weddings, baptisms, oridinations,concerts etc, please submit them to me at this email address or at RNBOWGRL34@YAHOO.COM

Send us Praise! Do you have a statement of faith? a quote on what it’s like being a LGBT person in church? Why do you worship at Riviera? Do you have a short story about your wedding, baptism, life as a LGBT Christian?

Do you remember your first time coming to Riviera? If you do, we want to know!

Please send your stories/photos to myself at this email or the email listed above. We welcome submissions from ALL our LGBT members , including families and single members.

Please note, that by submitting photos and stories , you are granting us permission to post these photographs and stories on the web-site.

Thank you for your help! We look forward to hearing from you!

Peace,
Allison Anderson

During a late-night meeting that Presbyterians followed coast-to-coast via Twitter, the presbytery voted 156-138 to allow Larges to be ordained. And it voted 157-144 to approve That All May Freely Serve, for which Larges serves as minister coordinator, as a validated ministry.

Mary Holder Naegeli, a minister from San Francisco Presbytery who has been involved with earlier legal challenges to Larges’ efforts to be ordained, released a statement to the news media on Nov. 11, saying that “enough signatures were collected at the close of the meeting to secure a Stay of Enforcement while a remedial complaint is filed with the Synod of the Pacific Permanent Judicial Commission.”

More: http://www.pres-outlook.com/component/content/article/44-breaking-news/9395-presbytery-votes-to-permit-larges-ordination-stay-of-enforcement-sought.html

Earlier this summer (in late June) Michele Ready and I participated in the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) in San Jose, California, representing Riviera Church as volunteers for the Covenant Network of Presbyterians (see RPC web site for links and info). One of the tasks I was privileged to accomplish was to address two different committees of the Assembly on matters related to congregations which have diverse membership, including membership of lesbian and gay families. There were a variety of overtures addressing the place of LGBT persons in Presbyterian Church life: the social witness response of Presbyterians toward equal civil rights for LGBT families and their children in the U.S.; as well as how to provide fair support for all individuals, couples and families in churches, crafting a congregational life that reflects the inclusive love of God for all. One of the committees was especially concerned with marriage and legal rights of families and children in our congregations … and how advocating for equal civil rights and adopting more inclusive policies at the national Presbyterian Church level would affect the common life of local Presbyterian congregations. For my two minute speech (yes, I actually made a two minute sermon!) I chose to share about the four baptisms Riviera celebrated in 2007. Here’s what I said:

Thank you for making time to hear testimony from Presbyterians whose lives are affected by the actions you will take regarding the participation of GLBT people in Presbyterian congregations. Many of today’s witnesses have spoken eloquently about their partners in life, and how important the blessing of church community is to sustaining a healthy, faithful, covenanted relationship. I would like to speak about children, particularly, the four children who were baptized last year in Riviera Presbyterian Church in Miami, where I serve as pastor. The first little one baptized is the adopted daughter of a couple in our church. She was brought here from Kazakhstan, and we were thrilled to celebrate the beginning of her faith journey with Riviera by adopting her into the family of faith through baptism. I’m grateful that Morgan’s mom has joined me at GA this week, volunteering for our denomination; a choice she can make without anxiety since her co-parent, her husband Robbie, has the legal right to have adopted their daughter and see to any legal or medical concerns she might have in her mom’s absence.

This is not, unfortunately the case for the parents of our next two baptized children of God; twin boys for whom our congregation watched and prayed during their biological mother’s pregnancy. The parents of these beautiful boys worked extensively with me and with others to set up legal and practical parental access to protect the children and their family: since the non-biological parent is a woman, the state of Florida does not permit her to adopt her sons, nor hold legal custody of them. She must carry a paper around (as do other parents in our congregation) giving her permission to pick up her child, or approve medical treatments if necessary.

Whenever the boys are in church for communion Sunday, their moms bring them forward to receive a blessing…reminding all of us how precious the lives of our children and their families are to a healthy church. The fourth baptism was blessedly uneventful, which was in marked contrast to that of her older sister, two years previously. The older sister was diagnosed with some congenital heart difficulties that caused her to be born early and very small. She was in neo-natal intensive care unit the first couple of months of her life. The session gave permission for me to take an elder and baptize this little one in the hospital because we were certain she needed, and we needed, the claim of God to be on her fragile young life. The day we baptized her was the first time she was permitted out of the isolette that had protected her from infection while she gained strength and size. It’s fitting, we thought that this child leaves an isolette-literally, her isolation-into the arms of the family of God, making promises on her behalf. We had to receive special permission for extra people to be at the baby’s bedside…and there was a question whether both parents could answer the baptismal questions for their daughter…because, since both parents were women, the non-biological mom’s presence at the crib of her daughter was only given by the kindness or whim of the attending medical personnel, as lesbian or gay non-biological parents cannot adopt the child of their life partner. How strange that this sacrament of becoming family of God, should be threatened with fragmentation because of the unequal and unjust legal treatment of GLBT persons and their families. As Presbyterians, when a congregation stands to affirm its responsibility in baptism, we do so on behalf of the whole church. Please help Riviera fulfill its baptismal promises to these four beautiful children, and vote to support equal rights for GLBT families and couples. Thank you.

I was doing some reading on the sacraments recently, and came across this notion about what it is we do in baptism: that is the church’s responsibility to teach our parents that the sacrament of baptism does not so much anchor our children to a Rock as it casts them on the waters to commit age-appropriate crimes of passion and acts of subversion for the sake of God’s justice. And it went on to encourage congregations to help their young parents see baptism as an act of introducing their child to meaningful participation in the body of Christ, the church.

I liked that notion very much, because after twenty years at Riviera, I have the privilege to see how some of the children we have initiated have turned out: as young adults committed to justice, to kindness, to making a difference in the world … as young people whose friends and companions come from all walks and ways of life. These kids you have raised in the church know what matters, and they know how to love and care with openness and justice.

So I have confidence in how these four children of last years baptismal class will turn out. They will be well taught by our Sunday School teachers; welcomed in worship, nurtured by the older children who are a part of their family of faith. Baptism, after all, isn’t holy magic: it is the concerted effort of parents, children, and the church family to see to it that a child learns with their life to reflect the path of Christ. If we do our part to make sure our children always feel welcome in church; if we attend church and Sunday School frequently enough that our presence makes an imprint and a difference in their lives, and as we do our parts as older children and adults to nurture little ones along the path of Christ; if we do this, Riviera and its young will continue to be an important part of the light that shines even in darkness.

Shalom, Laurie

The article is here:

http://miamiherald.typepad.com/gaysouthflorida/2007/05/south_floridas_.html

By Gillian Kraus-Neale

About 9 months ago, at the start of my senior year of high school, I received my very first assignment as a senior English student: write a college essay. Okay, so… how does one simply “write a college essay?” My teacher put it rather bluntly: “Write an essay about how great you are without sounding narcissistic, and try to make it convincing.” Yeah, now I understood. You could tell because I stared at a blank screen for forty-five minutes. Thus, I began my long, fleeting senior year journey and my quest for college-entrance nirvana.

But the essay-writing process (all six or so of them) did more than vex me; it made me think about what was important to me, which is, I suppose, the point: to get high-schoolers at the very end of their childhood to really think about who they are, or at least who they might become. What I discovered- well, it was more of an illumination than a discovery, for I have always known this—one of the things that makes me who I am, that is most important to me in my life thus far, is you, my community, my family.

One prompt made this slightly easier to put into words:find a meaningful quote and apply it to my life, or explain what it means to me. I may have evaded the point to a certain degree, but nonetheless, it led me to speak of you, and of a few other things you may find interesting. My essay begins like this:

A shining pewter angel hung near the top of ourChristmas tree this year. She had been a gift from a family member, a companion angel to one that we already had from a previous year. Both angels, like their retail-store compatriots, bore powerful quotes from well-know women– female movers and shakers of our time– but the words on the one that was catching the moonlight as I began my college essays seemed more appropriate to me.

The quote inscribed on the abstract, glistening angel was by Mother Teresa. Like most of the things she had said during her lifetime it was useful for many occasions, proverbial and heartfelt,and completely appropriate for a living saint: “We can do no great things- only small things with great love.”

I know a small thing that was done with great love. Her name is Angelina, and I am her godmother. Angelina, new and beautiful like all babies, is a very special little girl. Not even a year old,Angelina is already completely set apart from most children, and “most people”; Angelina has two fathers. I worry about her, incessantly. In a diverse and turbulent city like Miami, the range of people and their views is endless, right-wingers, left-wingers, and gray areas alike. I worry about the cruelties of a tender childhood, children who can’t know better raised to shun and hate by their parents, adults shunning and hating as though they were children. I wonder what kind of world we– her fathers, her other godmother, the community in which we live,and myself – are bringing this child into.

The community of which I speak is the church my mother pastors, my family since I was eighteen months old. (That’s YOU,Riviera.) I was there for our transformation from the gray to the white. It was a long and difficult process for the congregation to become what they are now, and it shaped who I am.

It is true, part of that person is full-fledged liberal, wary of republicans and cautious of how and to whom I introduce myself, but I like to think that that aspect of me, although it was forged in my Miami life and my small but fierce church family,does not define who I am. I like to think of myself as someone who finds that the greatest thing I can do does in fact seem small and simple to me. I can’t fight for Angelina her whole life, and I cannot possibly protect her from a world that is often cruel without sacrificing that same world that is many times open and loving, nor canI do anything to alter that world. Nor do I want to. Sheltering Angelina from the world that she lives in would rob her of something more precious than anything we can give her ourselves: herself. Without the toils and snares of childhood, without the recovery and failure and triumphs she will endure, Angelina will not receive the same chance that my fellow classmates and I did to mature into the independent,strong, loving and fruitful people I believe we will be in time. And what a chance it is: as my mother said recently when speaking to my class at my Baccalaureate ceremony, the class of 2005 is one marked by loss. Our freshman year was clouded by 9/11, and the years to follow by a mysterious and unavailing war across the ocean, as we watched scandals unfold at home and abroad, as differences deepened between classmates while support and opposition to the decisions of the preceding generation fluctuated. My mother wondered in her speech what kind of world her generation was leaving us to inherit. She couldn’t change the world for me, and I cannot change the world for Angelina.But I can be part of that world, just as my mother is, just as Riviera’s for me. The small thing that I will do for Angelina for the rest of my life, the same small thing I have been doing all my life, the same small thing that has been and will be done for me, is love her. My church is a small thing done with great love. Angelina is a small thing done with great love- even I am a small thing, but I am full of hope for Angelina’s future, of love for her and her fathers and the community in which we live, and even tolerance for a world that has not and likely never will make up its mind about Angelina and her fathers.

“Little children, let us love, not in word or speech,but in truth and action.” Little children, sons and daughters of a patchwork world, your sons and daughters, this tiny three-member class of 2005 of Riviera Presbyterian church, thank you, our community of faith, for being steadfast and loving, in action and truth, all the days of our childhood, and all the days of our lives.

I know, as I am sure my fellow seniors know, that a promise to this church to continue as we have learned is not necessary.We do not need to promise that we will never forget you, Riviera, as we grow older and (hopefully) wiser. We do not need to promise you that we will be loving and kind when we go out into the this wide, terrifying and awe-inspiring world, because we can do nothing else, after having been saturated with the values that make us true members of this church and the world our whole lives. To break that commitment would let not only you down, but ourselves, as we would be negating all that we have become under your guidance.

In closing, I leave you with this prayer, written by the medieval theologian, Julian of Norwich, for whom I am named:

Life is a precious thing to me,
And a little thing
And the world is a little thing…
But it is in God’s ever keeping
It is in God’s ever loving
It is in God’s ever making
How should anything be amiss?
Yes, all shall be well
And all will be well
And thou shalt see thyself
That all manner of thing shall be well.