Community of Hope Mennonite Church, which defines itself as queer and wild, is the newest member of Mennonite Church USA’s Pacific Northwest Conference.

Delegates voted to welcome the church plant during their June 19-22 annual meeting at Flathead Lutheran Bible Camp near Kalispell, Mont.

“Wild,” which means outdoors, is a method of worship used by a growing number of Anabaptist faith groups in the U.S. and Canada. Lacking a building of its own, Community of Hope gathers once a month outdoors in parks and forests in and around Bellingham, Wash. Bible studies take place in cafes and pubs. It began as an online community during the Covid pandemic in 2020.

Pastor Rachael Weasley said she began praying and speaking with conference leaders in 2017 about planting a church to serve LGBTQ+ people and allies by looking for where God is operating on the margins.

“I thought about it being a local church, but then an [Anabaptist Men­nonite Biblical Seminary] student heard about it and invited friends, and immediately half the people were far away,” Weasley said. “That continues today. Half our people are far from Bellingham, and that was never my vision.”

Participants come from across the U.S. and Canada, especially during quarterly Queer Theology Sunday School sessions on Zoom and online support groups for parents of LGBTQ+ children and queer people in ministry.

“If you’re a queer Mennonite, chances are you don’t have a local community that’s going to do queer theology Sunday school,” Weasley said. “You probably don’t have a community who will do a Bible study with a devotional written by a trans author.

“Half of our members come from across the country, partly because some have left communities that have harmed them or their children. Some are parents of queer children, or they have a community that supports them but isn’t doing this niche ministry of supporting queer spirituality — for example, having prayer and discernment that involves gender descriptions with nonbinary pronouns for God.”

Regarding “Queer,” Weasley said LGBTQ+ people embrace what once was a slur. It can also be a verb.

“To ‘queer’ something is to look at something in a new and more complicated way and see that there are more than two sides of a coin — more like a kaleidoscope and not binary,” she said. “There’s day and there’s night, and there’s also in-between and overcast days. There’s dusk and dawn. Creation shows us that everything is not divided into two neat categories.

“Queer theology is helping us look at the world in a more complex way. . . . When you go through trauma, a lot of the time what you need is a God who can handle more complexity. . . .

“When you really love someone, it changes you to love them. Too often, ‘inclusive’ means, ‘We’re not going to change, but you’ll be part of us.’ To do queer theology is to allow yourself to change by loving those who are queer and trans.”

Weasley has found that extending hospitality to people with church trauma creates hospitality for everyone. Those hurt by the church might include women whose call to ministry wasn’t honored or children whose parents were divorced.

“Maybe [someone has] only had good experiences in church, but because we set the stage for those who haven’t, it ends up making them feel welcome, too,” she said.

“Churches can be such powerful places of affirmation. When it’s wholehearted, it’s life-giving. When it’s only partial, it’s painful.”

She was surprised that the online side of Community of Hope continued so vibrantly after the pandemic.

Distance can hinder expressions of care like helping someone move, delivering a meal or watching the kids in an emergency. But Weasley has found many aspects of ministry work just as well online.

“I actually love doing pastoral care over Zoom,” she said. “And if anybody needs to talk to a queer pastor, please get in touch with me. I’m willing to talk and pray and listen to people. Maybe you go to a great, inclusive church and you can’t just talk to a pastor about certain things because they aren’t queer.”

Pacific Northwest executive conference minister Eric Massanari said one of the things that drew him to the conference more than two years ago was its support for Community of Hope.

“When my wife and I decided to locate near family in Bellingham, it brought the ­added benefit of making Community of Hope our home congregation,” he said. “Pas­tor Rachael’s creativity, the congrega­tion’s spirit of radical welcome and in­clusion, and the collective willingness to explore and express together the inherent ‘queerness’ of the gospel of Christ, make COH a vibrant and vital gift to all who connect here, to the local community, to the PNMC and to the broader body of Christ.”

Also at the Pacific Northwest meeting, delegates approved a statement on Christian nationalism. “A Call to Discipleship Amidst a Culture of Christian Nationalism” proclaims that Christ’s love is for all, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, national origin or religious identity, and that followers of Christ should extend welcome and hospitality to all.

Massanari said the statement was developed because the language of Christianity is being used to support oppressive powers.

“Any violence, negligence or abusiveness in our words, actions or attitudes is a sign that Christ’s work of transformation in our lives remains incomplete,” the statement says. “. . . Any effort to confine the good news of God’s love in Christ within particular political ideologies, cultural boundaries or national borders is contrary to our faith.”