Yes. If you are looking for an LGBTQ affirming church near Windermere, this is one, and the rest of this post says precisely what that means here rather than leaving you to work it out from a photograph.
If you are LGBTQ, you are welcome. If you love someone who is, you are welcome. Not as a debate topic, not as a project, and not as a question still under discussion.
This post is specific rather than warm on purpose. Warmth and clarity are perfectly capable of coexisting, and plenty of churches manage both. The problem is that warmth on its own answers none of the questions you came here with, and anyone searching for an LGBTQ affirming church near Windermere has read enough warmth already.
Finding an LGBTQ Affirming Church Near Windermere Should Not Require Forensics
There is a skill LGBTQ people and their families acquire without ever choosing to, which is the close reading of church language.
You know that everyone is welcome can mean everyone is welcome, or can mean welcome to attend and nothing beyond that. You know to check whether the word appears or is only gestured at. You know to look at the staff page. You know that a church comfortable with you in the pew may hold a very different position about the pulpit, the wedding, or the nursery.
That is unpaid work, done under pressure, often alone, and often late at night before deciding whether a Sunday is worth the risk.
Searching for an LGBTQ affirming church near Windermere should not require that kind of forensic effort. So the specifics follow, and none of them should have to be inferred.
Affirmation Means Full Participation, Not Permission to Attend
Windermere Union Church is Open and Affirming. In the United Church of Christ that is a formal designation a congregation adopts by a vote of its members, not a mood a church describes itself as having.
What it means here is participation without an asterisk. LGBTQ people are members. LGBTQ people serve in leadership. LGBTQ people are married in this sanctuary. LGBTQ people are welcome at a table that is already open to everyone. LGBTQ people teach children here, which is the point at which a number of churches quietly reveal what they actually believe.
There is no separate category, no probationary period, and no version of belonging available to some people here and not to others.
If any of that had an exception attached, this post would say so, because a discovered exception does more damage than an honest limitation stated up front.
You should not have to take our word for it either. Open and Affirming congregations are listed publicly, which means an LGBTQ affirming church near Windermere can be checked against a registry rather than believed on the strength of its own welcome page. Post 4 in this series explains where to look.
Your Family Should Not Have to Decode This Either
Some of the people reading this are not LGBTQ themselves.
A mother trying to find somewhere her son will not be hurt again. A grandmother who wants to bring her granddaughter and her granddaughter’s wife to Christmas Eve and cannot survive another comment from another pew. A husband whose spouse has transitioned, looking for a congregation where that will be ordinary rather than a topic. A father who did not handle it well at the time and is trying to find his way back to his kid.
None of you should have to send a careful email first. None of you should have to arrive early and take the temperature of a place before deciding whether it is safe to say who you are bringing.
So bring them. I am not going to promise that nothing here will ever hurt, because no congregation of actual people can promise that and you would be right not to believe it. What I will say is that if someone says something that lands badly, telling me results in it being addressed rather than smoothed over.
And if you are not out, or are out in some parts of your life and not others, nothing here requires you to resolve that in order to sit down. Attend without saying a word about it for as long as you like. Being known is an option that stays open rather than a step you owe anybody.
Love Above All Means No Fine Print
Being an LGBTQ affirming church near Windermere is not a program running alongside this congregation’s real work. It follows from the thing the church says it is organized around.
If love is above all, then who a person is cannot be the condition that has to be settled before belonging starts. A church that says love comes first and then produces one exception has told you exactly where the exception ranks and what the first part was worth.
It is also fair to ask what a commitment like this has cost a congregation, because affirmation that never cost anything is easy to announce. Ask any church claiming it when the congregation decided, what the vote was, who left over it, and whether it would do the same thing again. Ask this one.
We will not ask you to become less yourself so the church can feel more comfortable.
So bring all of it. Your spouse, your kids, your pronouns, your history with churches that handled this badly, and your entirely reasonable suspicion that this one might too. That suspicion is not an insult. It is the sensible result of experience, and it is ours to disprove rather than yours to drop.
The next post is for households where more than one religion is present, or where one of them is none.
About Pastor Brad Jagger
Pastor Brad Jagger is Senior Pastor of Windermere Union Church (UCC) in Windermere, Florida, a community committed to Love Above All. He writes about faith, doubt, deconstruction, belonging, and what Christianity can become when love matters more than certainty.
If you are looking for a church where questions are welcome, people are affirmed, and you do not have to pretend to have everything figured out, learn more at Yes. If you are looking for an LGBTQ affirming church near Windermere, this is one, and the rest of this post says precisely what that means here rather than leaving you to work it out from a photograph.
If you are LGBTQ, you are welcome. If you love someone who is, you are welcome. Not as a debate topic, not as a project, and not as a question still under discussion.
This post is specific rather than warm on purpose. Warmth and clarity are perfectly capable of coexisting, and plenty of churches manage both. The problem is that warmth on its own answers none of the questions you came here with, and anyone searching for an LGBTQ affirming church near Windermere has read enough warmth already.
Finding an LGBTQ Affirming Church Near Windermere Should Not Require Forensics
There is a skill LGBTQ people and their families acquire without ever choosing to, which is the close reading of church language.
You know that everyone is welcome can mean everyone is welcome, or can mean welcome to attend and nothing beyond that. You know to check whether the word appears or is only gestured at. You know to look at the staff page. You know that a church comfortable with you in the pew may hold a very different position about the pulpit, the wedding, or the nursery.
That is unpaid work, done under pressure, often alone, and often late at night before deciding whether a Sunday is worth the risk.
Searching for an LGBTQ affirming church near Windermere should not require that kind of forensic effort. So the specifics follow, and none of them should have to be inferred.
Affirmation Means Full Participation, Not Permission to Attend
Windermere Union Church is Open and Affirming. In the United Church of Christ that is a formal designation a congregation adopts by a vote of its members, not a mood a church describes itself as having.
What it means here is participation without an asterisk. LGBTQ people are members. LGBTQ people serve in leadership. LGBTQ people are married in this sanctuary. LGBTQ people are welcome at a table that is already open to everyone. LGBTQ people teach children here, which is the point at which a number of churches quietly reveal what they actually believe.
There is no separate category, no probationary period, and no version of belonging available to some people here and not to others.
If any of that had an exception attached, this post would say so, because a discovered exception does more damage than an honest limitation stated up front.
You should not have to take our word for it either. Open and Affirming congregations are listed publicly, which means an LGBTQ affirming church near Windermere can be checked against a registry rather than believed on the strength of its own welcome page. An earlier post in this series explains where to look.
Your Family Should Not Have to Decode This Either
Some of the people reading this are not LGBTQ themselves.
A mother trying to find somewhere her son will not be hurt again. A grandmother who wants to bring her granddaughter and her granddaughter’s wife to Christmas Eve and cannot survive another comment from another pew. A husband whose spouse has transitioned, looking for a congregation where that will be ordinary rather than a topic. A father who did not handle it well at the time and is trying to find his way back to his kid.
None of you should have to send a careful email first. None of you should have to arrive early and take the temperature of a place before deciding whether it is safe to say who you are bringing.
So bring them. I am not going to promise that nothing here will ever hurt, because no congregation of actual people can promise that and you would be right not to believe it. What I will say is that if someone says something that lands badly, telling me results in it being addressed rather than smoothed over.
And if you are not out, or are out in some parts of your life and not others, nothing here requires you to resolve that in order to sit down. Attend without saying a word about it for as long as you like. Being known is an option that stays open rather than a step you owe anybody.
Love Above All Means No Fine Print
Being an LGBTQ affirming church near Windermere is not a program running alongside this congregation’s real work. It follows from the thing the church says it is organized around.
If love is above all, then who a person is cannot be the condition that has to be settled before belonging starts. A church that says love comes first and then produces one exception has told you exactly where the exception ranks and what the first part was worth.
It is also fair to ask what a commitment like this has cost a congregation, because affirmation that never cost anything is easy to announce. Ask any church claiming it when the congregation decided, what the vote was, who left over it, and whether it would do the same thing again. Ask this one.
We will not ask you to become less yourself so the church can feel more comfortable.
So bring all of it. Your spouse, your kids, your pronouns, your history with churches that handled this badly, and your entirely reasonable suspicion that this one might too. That suspicion is not an insult. It is the sensible result of experience, and it is ours to disprove rather than yours to drop.
The next post is for households where more than one religion is present, or where one of them is none.
About Pastor Brad Jagger
Pastor Brad Jagger is Senior Pastor of Windermere Union Church (UCC) in Windermere, Florida, a community committed to Love Above All. He writes about faith, doubt, deconstruction, belonging, and what Christianity can become when love matters more than certainty.
If you are looking for a church where questions are welcome, people are affirmed, and you do not have to pretend to have everything figured out, learn more at windermereunion.org.
Pastor Brad Jagger | Windermere Union Church | Love Above All.org.
Pastor Brad Jagger | Windermere Union Church | Love Above All