Just Getting Started | Trans support resources

The hardest thing about community organizing is you don't really know where it will end up. It's about asking questions and letting the answers guide you to next steps.

So today I wanted to share with you a church that is just getting started. Who knows where it will go?

-Liz

Just Getting Started

Every ministry starts somewhere. It's hard to remember, when you have something big going on, that first it was just an idea. First it was just someone throwing out something that might be a good idea. Perhaps a completely different idea from the one that's happening today. When you start, you have no idea if the project will come to fruition. We don't even know if our spark will light the kindling, much less whether it will grow into a fire.

​Haydenville Congregational Church, UCC is a small church struggling with all the things small churches deal with. Do they have enough energy and enough money to be a church? They don't ask if they have enough spirit, their website proclaims accurately that they are "an open and affirming radically inclusive rollicking, small town church with a huge heart in Haydenville, Mass." Their question is usually not "should we do more" but rather, is there a way to do less so our members are less tired.

But there was this spark. This tiny idea. This Holy Spirit whisper. So they are now working with other organizations to advance the idea that Williamsburg, of which Haydenville is a village, become a trans sanctuary town.

In 2015 a previous pastor encouraged this congregation to expand their welcome beyond LGB and to learn what it would mean to be a truly Trans safe space. In 2024 Mark Seifried, their present pastor, asked them to consider what is essential to who they are in their community. This tiny spark appeared in that conversation.

It fits with their other ministries, working with a shelter, with a nearby street church for homeless adults, and with their Peace and Justice work. But those ministries are up and running, this one is just an idea.

What is needed to make this happen?

Perhaps workshops on gender and gender identity for people in the town. Discussions on pronouns. Perhaps speaking up at a Town Meeting. Definitely finding other organizations doing this work and finding what is already happening, and what is not. They need to learn more. They need to teach what they know. They need to listen, and to speak. Until they know who might be opposed to the idea, and why, it is hard to plan precisely what is needed.

Just last week, at a meeting with the local Indivisible group, the discussion moved to the possibility of people losing their right to gender-affirming health care. They talked about how to help with that challenge, imagined what resources are out there, mourned the potential loss of life-giving care.

At this early stage, each meeting with others moves ministry in a new direction. Perhaps they will change their plan, perhaps they will work on both. The Holy Spirit speaks in collaborative meetings in the community.

This is some of what it means to take a risk for the Gospel. To try something that might not work. To be public as you either succeed or fail. To proclaim that something is important, even if your idea may not come to fruition.

They are just getting started.

Is there a project that you are just getting started on? Or something you are in the earliest tentative steps? I'd love to hear about it! Reply to this email. ​
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My Name is George is a song written and performed by my friends Dan and Faith Senie. Touching and hopeful.

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Point of Pride offers financial assistance for people who need gender affirming health care. Trans Equality is gives instruction on how to engage in political action in support of our Trans siblings. Trans Lifeline provides peer to peer support.

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Here is a story from the Christian Century about one Trans soldier who lost her job ... really for no reason at all.

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