June and summer are Pride festival months, and your community of faith’s support makes a positive difference. Have a look at these new resources, created with the help of people in our Regional Council.

PIE for Pride guide

PIE is Public, Intentional, and Explicit: the standards by which we live out our Affirming commitments. June is national Pride Month, a great chance for all of our ministries and people to consider how to be, and serve, PIE alongside the communities we serve.

Check out our new four-page resource, PIE for Pride (PDF format). It’s the result of three years of annual Preparing for Pride workshops hosted online by Northern Spirit, Living Skies, and Prairie to Pine Regional Councils of the United Church of Canada, all of which are Affirming. All the ideas in the guide are from the community, offered from the lived experiences of church ministries and people. We hope these spark even more ideas from you. One day we’ll make this document look rainbow and pretty, but for now, the words are more important than the design as we get ready for Pride season.

Inclusion assessment and ideas for your church

Pride is a good starting point, but we can go wider in our PIE welcome. Have a look at this short resource to help you assess your building and day to day church activities, and to discover how to make these even more inclusive of a range of needs. Affirming Inclusion is a list of ideas in short form to help ministries assess how inclusive their building and their day-to-day practices are.
Here is the PDF version. And here is the image version.

This checklist was prepared by Sarah Giles and the Living Skies Affirming Committee. Like PIE for Pride, it’s designed to be

  • a starting point for communities of faith who are Affirming-curious
  • a let’s go further commitment for those who consider themselves welcoming but would like to go a little further
  • a reminder to long-time Affirming ministries that there is always more to being inclusive
  • a support to individuals who want to be more inclusive in their daily life and work.

Happy Pride!