Ideas for Action

Resist Harm offers these additional ideas for your use. They came from a broadly representative group of United Methodists who gathered after the Special General Conference. While the list is not exhaustive, we hope they will be helpful as you plan. They reflect the diversity of contexts around the connection.
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Create a Memorial Wall for all who have committed suicide or been harmed because of their sexuality or gender identity.

Organize a “love-your-neighbor day” when everyone does something for someone different than themselves.

Support busloads of people going to General Conference to advocate on LGBTQ legislation.

Flood committees on investigation with various spurious charges that are other violations of the Discipline, i.e., not paying apportionments, undermining the ministry of another member of the clergy on the National Day of Filing Complaints.

Write names of (out) LGBTQIA loved ones on a large sheet at church and pray for them together.

Ask church members to invite their LGBTQIA family members and friends to church and plan a warm welcome.

Invite WCA members to dinner at your church with LFTBQI persons.

Tie Resist Harm to MLK Day.

Host marriage encounter weekends for same sex couples.

Organize a video conference with a Central Conference.

Host a meal in your UM church with LGBTQ organizations as an act of repentance, learning and reconciliation.

Gather a critical mass of churches in your conference desiring to witness to their disagreement with the Traditional Plan.

Send (positive, message-rich) cards and letters to WCA leaders and followers.

“Each one Reach one” – inclusive folks reach out to traditionalists one-on-one.

Suggest that everyone who has been oppressed by the church in any way, not attend church on one Sunday. Send messages explaining the absences to be posted or shared from the pulpit.

Walk out of church on the first Sunday in January and gather in a public place for worship, as a public witness of resistance to the Traditional Plan.

Bar the doors of the church (at least symbolically) and have a day of mourning.

Write letters to allies to ask for help.

Send personal letters and cards to Bishops, DSs, GC Delegates, Conference Leadership and SPRCs explaining your sadness about the Traditional Plan.

Use rainbow stoles and alter cloths for ordination.

Use #rainbowsunday the first Sunday of January.

Create rainbow Facebook filters for people to identify themselves as allies.

Encourage rainbow signs on church members' lawns supporting full inclusion.

Fly a rainbow flag at your church. (Consider 48 rainbow flags symbolizing 48 years of exclusionary Disciplinary language.)

Encourage United Methodists to wear and use rainbow symbols as visible signs of unity (cross with rainbow flame).

Create a Pride Day Memorial fund or special offering in honor of non-compatibilist Bishops and Leaders of WCA, Good News, IRD.

Withhold two months' apportionments, then give them all on the third month to show the financial heft of resistors.

Pray and fast, putting saved monies into a fund to support resisters.

Pay off seminary debt for persons of color and victims of gender inequality (anyone represented by the -isms).

Fund a scholarship for an LGBTQ student at Africa University (if they can be open) or for an LGBTQ student at one of the eleven historically black colleges in the United States connected to the UMC.

Take a dedicated offering for Reconciling Ministries or for GBCS, a United Methodist agency that fights systemic issues of discrimination.

Create a support mechanism so that suspended pastors can keep doing their work and get paid by a fund/GoFundMe to support clergy who lose their jobs and/or take a Special offering on the First Sunday of January for a Defense/Relief Fund for laity, clergy, or congregations brought up on charges or financially impacted by punitive appointments, assignments, or other financial impacts resulting from resistance.

Initiate a called worship service with all-inclusive voices and live streaming in strategic locations on church property around conferences.

Hold a Service of Remembering for lives lost due to discrimination of all kinds.

Celebrate United Methodism’s open table in the streets (i.e., outside of the church) as well as within.

Invite a LGBTQIA clergy or lay person to preach in your church.

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Resist Harm is organized by everyday United Methodists in every corner of the connection and is supported by a number of organizational partners.* To learn more about our partners, visit their websites:
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*The tools, resources, and opportunities posted on Resist Harm have been suggested by people or organizations associated with the movement. They are not necessarily endorsed by all of the partners.
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