By Jean Fowler
The Woodinville Unitarian Universalist Church became a “Welcoming Congregation” in 1998. This status now needs to be renewed annually and, over the past year, your Welcoming Congregation Committee has successfully completed the renewal tasks.
The Five Practices of Welcome Renewal are five benchmarks that every congregation will need to integrate into congregational life in order to ensure that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, asexual, two-spirit, genderqueer, non-binary, and the like feel fully welcomed, centered, and embraced in our Unitarian Universalist congregation.
This past year our congregation has:
**Included Welcoming Worship into our annual calendar such as recognizing LGBTQ+ PRIDE, and Transgender Day of Visibility
**Observed and celebrated Annual Welcoming Days such as Stonewall Riots Anniversary, National Coming Out Day and Intersex Awareness Day.
**Held the Preemptive Radical Inclusion Workshop by CB Beal.
**And supported TRUUsT (Transgender Religious Professionals Unitarian Universalist Together)
Additionally, our congregation has celebrated with the hanging of our LGBTQ+ flag on the front of our church.
Your Welcoming Committee members are: Erika Jackson Kirkendall, Jessica Belmont, Jo Raymond, Emma Rockenbeck, DD Hilke, John Hilke and Jean Fowler.