Things are not the way they seem

I recently heard of someone who had visited our parish website and was very attracted by our diversity, but when this person arrived at church on Sunday morning, we were—well, we looked pretty old and traditional. We sing standard hymns with an organ accompaniment. Several of us are getting on in years. Though I used to wear flowered bell-bottoms to church in the 70s, now I'm more likely to wear a jacket and tie.

Sometimes the diversity lies below the surface, so here is a deeper look at us.

Women in leadership

It's easy to forget just how revolutionary it is for a woman to lead a congregation. (Ask some of your church-going friends: many of them attend churches in which women are excluded from any leadership position whatsoever—minister or member of the leadership council.) In the business/academic world, women leaders are extremely common, and we will probably have a female candidate for President of the US, so it might not strike you as unusual that St. Matthew's has a woman priest.

Rev. Ashby was one of the very first women in the Episcopal Church to study for the priesthood; now, when you attend a Diocesan event (such as Winter Convocation), you see a lot of female priests, so it all seems so normal. And for us, being led by a woman is normal. It's just business as usual for women to be part of our lay leadership council (Vestry) and for a woman to be our Rector.

It wasn't always business as usual. From what I've heard, a number of people left the parish in protest when the national body consecrated our first female bishop.

LGBT

More people left when Gene Robinson was consecrated as the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church.

Right now, our usual Sunday morning attendance is somewhere between 30 and 40 people, and by my count we have four regulars and three more who attend occasionally who are gay. It's just another non-issue for us, and not something that comes up often in lunchtime conversation, so a visitor might not notice them. (Trust me—political affiliation is a much more lively topic than sexual orientation for conversation.)

A few years back, I remember one of the older women commenting that "We just need more gay people in this congregation."

What else?

We have a lot of educators, a couple of nurses, and a retired judge, but we also have a couple of farmers, a couple of small business owners, and a firefighter. Look at our parking lot on Sunday morning and you will see a Lincoln and a couple of pickup trucks. Over the years you would find our members volunteering at the Grace Episcopal Food Pantry and the Ashland Center for Nonviolence. Some of us attend Pride Parades, and some of us support conservative political candidates. For us, that invisible diversity is just business as usual.