Photo: Carol Wise, executive director of Brethren Mennonite Council for LGBT Interests, speaks during the Inclusive Worship Service. Photo by Vada Snider. 

“Bring your whole queer and queer-loving selves.”

Those were the words of welcome given by Theda Good, Pastor of First Mennonite Church of Denver, to those attending the Inclusive Worship Service held Wednesday afternoon at the 2017 Mennonite Church USA Convention in Orlando.

The service was a time of worship, as well as a way to honor and remember those who lost their lives during the attack on the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando one year ago. Forty-eight were killed and 58 wounded, the majority of them Latinx and LGBTQ individuals.

Mark Rupp, Pastor of Columbus (Ohio) Mennonite Church, introduced a naming ritual by saying that while the Pulse shooting was a wake-up call for many, “It came after decades of hitting snooze.” He said the church must consider its practices that contribute to the kinds of ideas and hate that lead to such attacks.

Joanna Harader, Jason Frey and Luke Miller read the names of the victims in groups of seven. As each name was read, it was written on a posterboard bearing the words “Love is Love is Love” and “We Remember” by individuals attending the service. Between the reading of each set of names, those gathered sang a verse of the hymn, “There is more love somewhere.”

Dr. Regina Shands Stoltzfus, assistant professor of peace, justice and conflict studies at

Goshen (Indiana) College, spoke on the importance of remembering those who died in the Pulse shooting, in the attack at the Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina (which claimed the lives of nine church members), and all the other victims of violence and hate in the world. She reminded the gathering, “We are created in the image of the one who created us and the one who created the universe,” and yet we live in a society that tries to exclude people from that image.

Stoltzfus said this means it is the church’s sacred responsibility and trust to speak the names of those who are victims of hate and violence.

She also urged the gathering to let God’s light burn and said, “Anger burns, but love burns too.”

She added that many people hear the church say, “You are too much.”

“We are too much to be contained because we were not made to be contained,” she said.

Stoltzfus concluded her sermon by saying, “May our living be our ‘amen,’ our ‘so be it,’ our ‘take that’ [and] our ‘loving in action’.”

Those gathered were then invited to come forwar to be anointed with glitter to, “Open our hearts and souls to receive healing and to be set apart to be healers of one another.”

The service was planned by Brethren Mennonite Council for LGBT Interests, Pink Menno and the Inclusive Mennonite Pastors group.