The Sanctuary Church Task Force of the United Church of Gainesville will recommend that the United Church of Gainesville publicly proclaim and act to be a support congregation to the local Sanctuary Movement at the Congregational Meeting on May 13th. We hope you will be present to vote on it. As a Support Congregation, UCG and its members will have opportunities to volunteer, contribute resources and money to support the movement and the affected community. If, in the future, circumstances are such that additional needs arise within the Sanctuary Movement, then those needs will be studied, and additional actions will be presented to the UCG Congregation for action.
Being a proclaimed, “support” congregation is indeed different from moving towards becoming an actual place of sanctuary ourselves. It is important to note that our initial discussions around sanctuary began through a request from Sanctuary Coalition, a local organization dedicated to assisting undocumented residents, to ask UCG to consider becoming a Support Congregation for a church in our local community that is fully prepared to offer sanctuary to any undocumented individual or family should the risk of deportation become too great for them. The Sanctuary Coalition is operating with the full support and participation of the very community that is being affected by the current issues around immigration and undocumented residents of our community. Our role will be to offer support and assistance; to partner with those who are already working tremendously hard on this issue– not to try to solve these issues on our own.
Offering our support to the movement will enable UCG to utilize our terrific resources and strength while taking minimal risk for our congregation as a whole. Offering our support will also enable our outreach and justice committees to provide financial support through their annual operating budgets.
Our call to support will not jeopardize the tax-exempt standing of the United Church of Gainesville. Should individuals choose to volunteer with our undocumented neighbors, they do so themselves, and NOT on behalf of the United Church of Gainesville. This will shield the church from legal recourse, which was has been a very important consideration for many of our members in our discussions thus far.
UCG has a long history of being a leader and advocate for justice issues as they arise in our local community. As a people of faith, seeking to follow, even imperfectly, the way of Jesus in personal involvement with each other, and strengthened by this bond, to act in Christian concern for all people, it is essential that we reflect and pray on how we sense God’s call in this action. As a congregation, it is crucial that we bring our discerning minds and combined wisdom to determine what our role will be.
If you have not yet done so, we hope you will join us at our final congregational discussion this Sunday on April 29th to hear about our process and our reasoning behind our proposed recommendation.
If you have any questions or would simply like to discuss the issue, please reach out to one of our Task Force members – they are wearing a name tag that says “Ask me about Sanctuary”.
We thank the many who have participated and shared their thoughts and concerns with us as we have wrestled with this important issue. And we are especially grateful for the other members of our Sanctuary Task Force for their hours of service. Thank you for your prayerful consideration.
Dick Elkins and Andy Bachmann, co-facilitators of the Sanctuary Task Force