Photo: Pink Menno gear for the Mennonite Church USA convention in Orlando carried the tagline, “Making love a verb since 2009.” Photo from Pink Menno Facebook page. 

Youth met at the Pink Youth Summit for three hours on July 6 during the Mennonite Church USA convention in Orlando.

“We hoped to create a space for queer youth to claim as their own without having to be outed,” said Nathanael Skroban, one of the summit planners from Marion Mennonite Church, Chambersburg, Pennsylvania.

More than 40 queer youth and allies gathered to engage in conversation on their vision for the future of the church and the involvement of LGBTQ individuals. The summit used open-space technology, which allows participants to generate the topics for discussion.

The youth identified five topics: challenges in intergenerational conversations, how queer Mennonites interact with the Bible, creating nongender-specific bathrooms, ways to support a youth in coming out, suggestions for ways to create more queer-friendly worship, places where homophobia is manifest in the church, and dreams for the future of the church.

Hilary Watson, associate pastor at Lombard (Illinois) Mennonite Church, typed up the notes that emerged out of each group conversation and shared them with Future Church Summit participants before their Friday, July 7, sessions.

“We are distributing [the notes] for people to take into the Future Church Summit in the hope that there will be input from LGBTQ youth and allies that represents the passions of the youth and how they want to shape the church,” said Watson.

Among their hopes for the church, youth listed a desire to see clearer welcome statements from individual congregations and the denomination; greater comfort with talking about sex in general in the church; the development of new understandings of masculinity; and the ability for LGBTQ individuals to fully participate in the church.

“Every [discussion] group at some point talked about how to have a conversation in your church about inclusion,” said Elizabeth Reimer, a youth from Lombard Mennonite, who was also serving as a Step Up participant, which meant she attended delegate sessions. “During our Step Up orientation meeting, we shared a lot of our hopes for LGBTQ inclusion, and we have a lot of allies there, too.”

Amy Epp, associate pastor at Seattle Mennonite Church, said the summit was the best experience she had had all week. As one of the planners, Epp hoped the summit would “empower young people in congregations to be advocates for themselves and for other people in the denomination.”

Skroban noted that youth were very interested in bringing in intersectionality and wanted to be sure the conversation included a focus on racism and sexism as well. “There’s an interest in calling on Mennonite Church USA to practice what they preach,” he said.

The Summit was planned by Pink Menno leaders and was promoted via Facebook, Snapchat, fliers and connections with youth leaders.