Good Morning. My name is Beverley Grace and I am in my third year as a Lay Chaplain here at Toronto First. In my last testimonial, about a year ago, I told you about the wonderful, busy year we’d had in 2003 with the legalization of same-sex marriages in Ontario and the marriages of all those couples who had been waiting for years to be allowed to celebrate their marriages. But the past year has been different – it’s been very quiet with fewer services than usual and our 2004 statistics show that our numbers are down.

We have just trained two new Lay Chaplains, Milton and Gillian, and the four of us are ready to offer all these wonderful, personally designed services for "all-inclusive weddings" (that means same-sex weddings. We did a survey asking same-sex couples what they preferred to be called and this is the our new word for 2005) – all-inclusive weddings, funerals and memorials and child dedications – naming and blessing babies – and any other rituals requested – all especially for people who are not members of this congregation – but they are not calling us – because they don’t know about us!

Our "outreach work" is a well kept secret. We need your help to let this secret out. And we have to do it without money because the Lay Chaplains have no budget allocation to spend on brochures or ads or web site listings. It’s been difficult, working without resources. I’m afraid that my four year term will be finished before this problem is solved. We’ve had this same challenge on the Library Committee with a zero budget for the past year. (Yes, I am on two "budget-free" committees this year!) That committee has survived by asking you to donate books to the Library.

How can this congregation do outreach work without spending any money? We might have to start knocking on doors like Jehovah’s Witnesses. When I started coming here about ten years ago, a lot of people told me that joke: "What do you get when you cross a Unitarian with a Jehovah’s Witness? You get someone who goes around knocking on doors and doesn’t know what to say." We might have to find out what to say because experience shows that the best form of publicity is word-of-mouth.

With all the free time we had this year, many of the lay chaplains were able to take Donna’s sermon-writing course. Donna told us we always had to have a call to action, so here it comes: Please help us to do our outreach work.

It’s our outreach work – not just my work or Tracey’s or Milton’s or Gillian’s – this is your outreach work we are doing – it belongs to the whole congregation Please help us to do our outreach work. (That is the second time I’ve said it.) So how can you do your part?

We have just prepared a new Lay Chaplaincy brochure. If you can think of any way to improve it, please say so. You all have a copy of it and there are more in the office This is out reach – just reach out and hand it to someone when you think they might be getting near one of those milestones that need to be celebrated with a ritual – birth, marriage or death in the family. Tell your friends and relatives, especially those who are mixed faith couples or families that our Lay Chaplains will prepare a ceremony specially written for them – we don’t do those no-name services where you can’t tell whose wedding or funeral you are attending. The guests at our weddings and funerals often tell us that they enjoyed the service because it was so personal – and then they ask, :What church did you say you were from?" That is the outreach part. And then bring them here on Sunday to meet us. You can be a witness at the wedding.

It’s time to change that old joke about the Unitarians and the Jehovah’s Witnesses: we have a new story with a new ending. Now it’s someone knocking on your door inviting you to be a witness at a Jewish-Presbyterian, inter-racial, inter-faith lesbian wedding.

Please help us to do this outreach work. Let’s do it together! Thank you.