Updates from the ONA TaSK FORCE

From: Report of the ONA Task Force for the January 2024 Annual Meeting

During the first part of 2023, the ONA task force continued the work of providing the congregation with the rationale for accepting the challenge of becoming an Open and Affirming church. Drawing on the personal experience of those whose lives were being lived in the non cis-gendered, non-heterosexual, non-heteroromantic world, we sought to make their experience and perspective accessible to our congregation so that each of us would be able to understand why this expression of love and mission was and is so important to our work in the greater community.
As the year moved along, we worked on the wording of a proposed Open and Affirming Covenant and a motion for its adoption. We worked with the church council to schedule a special church meeting at a time when most of our members would be available to vote on that motion. We proposed to the church council that special rules be adopted for that meeting with respect to who would be eligible to vote, how the vote would be conducted, what percentage of the vote would be necessary to carry the motion. Those rules were adopted and followed.

The failure of the motion to be adopted by three fourths of those voting told us that we still had work to do: healing work, listening work, educational work. We accepted the request of the Church Council to continue that work, with the objective of bringing a new resolution and covenant to the church body for consideration when the congregation is ready to accept the challenge and task of becoming truly Open
and Affirming.