Got Moms? An Ad About Church Welcome
Sunday is Mother’s Day—almost a sacred holiday in our churches. Attendance is always among the highest of the year. There is special music and pageantry—don’t forget to involve the kids!—flowers adorn altars and communion tables and, of course, motherhood is affirmed as being close to sainthood (no argument, actually, from me on that one); no controversial topics from our pulpits—just a time for joyful celebration.
There was a time when I was concerned about how all this played with kids who did not have a loving mother present in their lives—kids raised by single dads or extended family. Did they feel left out? Discounted? Second class citizens? This is still a concern, for sure. But in our ever-evolving social reality, a new concern has also emerged: what about those kids who have two moms (or two dads, for that matter). How do they feel? Twice as special? Or, still just a little bit on the outside?
Believe Out Loud has a Mother’s Day gift for everyone: a new video that addresses this very topic. It is a heartwarming story that features the fateful, frightful walk down the church’s center aisle by a visiting family. How many of us can remember such a walk? But this family unit happens to include a young boy with two moms. After inhospitable stares and gestures from pew-sitters, the family is welcomed by the pastor. A familiar music track enhances the emotional impact. The video is a sweetly stated reminder that all should be welcomed and an invitation to church leaders who have yet to take steps to express this welcome publicly and to “Believe Out Loud.”
So, I encourage you to receive this video as a gift on Mother’s Day—and to share it with your own Mom, and invite her to share it with other Moms, and so on, and so on. But I also encourage you to go one step further. This is part of a campaign that we hope will become a movement. Our goal: to get one million—yes, one million—persons of faith to join us on Facebook so that the whole world will know that Christians are not limited to that fringe religious voice that says only some of God’s children are free to walk down the center aisle. I don’t know about you, but my Mom taught me that everyone is equal in God’s sight. Please help me spread my Mom’s message on this Mother’s Day. Join the Movement. Break the Silence. Believe Out Loud.
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