Wednesday night I had a mostly very frustrating meeting at church, though with some positive outcomes. The Rainbow Cabinet, a group of six gay men and lesbians appointed by one of the ministers to help her better understand and address our issues, was scheduled to meet from 7 to 8, and then at 8 facilitate an open meeting of the broader GLBT community from the church to plan social and worship activities for June, which is Pride Month.
I arrived at 7 sharp to find only the minister in the meeting room. We waited... and finally at 7:30 one of the other members showed up. Another arrived at 7:45, and another right before 8:00. Two of the members — both of whom had told me less than a week earlier that they'd be there, and including the group's convener — never showed at all, and hadn't contacted anyone to say as much. And only one additional person showed up at 8 for the planning meeting.
So the evening was largely a bust. We didn't have the critical mass needed, or specific information that the two absentee cabinet members had gathered, to plan any social activities, or any Pride weekend events or group presence at the Pride Festival. Those of us present did manage to do some brainstorming about the Pride Month worship service, though, including generating some potential themes, activities and readings, and eliciting some volunteers to participate in the chorus and in the service itself.
But the wider issue of non-participation has been bothering me over the past few months. We only reinvented the church's GLBT group (formerly called the Gay Alliance, now called the Rainbow Ministry) over the end of last year, with our first official events and activities in January of this year. We did so on the basis of some well-attended town meetings, and the expression of a lot of interest and support. Yet since then, it's been the same two or three of us organizing every event, setting up and cleaning up; staffing the information table every week; participating in service activities; and honoring our commitments to other groups. This frustrates me, because I have other responsibilities and interests within the church, and my interests even within the GLBT community are more toward informing the worship service and educating the membership about sexual orientation issues than in organizing social activities. Granted, these events are well-attended, so there is some interest among the membership in socializing, as long as someone else is doing the work to make it possible.
OK, this rant has gone on long enough. There are certainly always extenuating circumstances, and as summer approaches it's always more difficult to find people to take on responsibilities. So I just need to learn how better to let go; I'll put my energy into the issues more important to me, and either someone will pick up the things I choose to let go, or we'll live without them.
