Why has our website turned green?

Announcement #2: A new look at our new mission!

With this year being GCN's Year of Renewal, a lot of effort has been put into re-energizing our Board, staff, volunteers, and members. And a recent GCN Radio episode discussed the outcome of a special re-visioning retreat in Chicago where we adopted a new mission statement with five core directions.

So even though this isn't entirely new information, we wanted to remind everyone about our new mission and show you how this connects with GCN's growth.

GCN's mission is "sharing Christ's light and love for all." We've broken this down into five core components that can be visualized as concentric circles:



1. Promoting spiritual growth. Helping individuals reconcile their faith and sexuality and then grow in their walk with Christ.

2. Cultivating safe community. Building safe spaces for LGBT Christians to connect with one another - both online (such as with our message board) and offline (such as with our conferences and local groups).

3. Supporting family and friends. Moving beyond our own community to provide resources directly to the families and friends of LGBT Christians, strengthening those primary relationships.

4. Educating and encouraging the church. Helping the broader Body of Christ become more welcoming than ever before by educating non-welcoming congregations about why they need to change, and working with welcoming congregations to help them be even more effective.

5. Engaging the wider LGBT community and the world. Taking the light and love of Jesus to the entire world, and living out our calling in service and relationship.

As you can see, these core directions build on one another, focusing first on the individual's relationship with God, then our relationships with each other in community, then our primary relationships to family and friends outside of the community, then our relationship to the broader Body of Christ, and finally our relationship to the entire world.

So while we celebrate the growth of our community, we also want to remember that GCN's mission is much bigger than just community. Our mission is growing with our ministry, and that gives us the opportunity to take on much more!

And that means we must grow in another way... (Continue to next page)