Expanding our Welcome

One of the first things I noticed about Church of the Resurrection was the sense of welcome here. I visited with my family in the summer of 2018, while I was on sabbatical from All Souls in Berkeley. None of you knew me here, and I wasn’t wearing a collar, so I knew it wasn’t special treatment... and you all blew me away! People were delightful, warm, and thoughtful in helping us find our way, and it left an impression on me.

This kind of authentic welcome is core to who we are, and one that the vestry, staff, and I are keen to keep fostering and expanding. As part of this effort, the vestry has been discussing one very practical form of welcome: our restrooms! Obviously we all need them, and yet there are some ways that our current facilities aren’t as welcoming as we’d like them to be. To improve them, the vestry has decided that we will convert the men’s restroom in the Church building and both restrooms in the Parish Hall to be single-occupancy gender neutral restrooms. Our hope is that this change will make our church more welcoming in three ways:

• Often members who are older or have disabilities attend church with a caregiver. When they need assistance using the restroom, it is difficult and often impossible for the caregiver to join them in the stall and also close the door. By creating single-use restrooms, we’ll be able to offer more dignity to those in need.
• As I think back on the time when my kids were little, I remember that navigating the restroom with fast and creative toddlers was often a challenge. With young children who are delighted to crawl out from under stall doors, it can be very helpful for a parent to be able to have a restroom to use as a family.
• Single-occupancy gender-neutral restrooms are more welcoming for transgender and non-binary people, as they don’t force a choice between binary options that may not be a fit.

I’m sure there will be more questions as we make this change; here are answers to some of them!

• For now, we will leave the stalls in these three restrooms, but are installing deadbolt locks on the doors to the hallways. We’ll add signs explaining the change, and ask that people simply lock the deadbolt (which will have an occupancy indicator) when they go in, just as you would at a restaurant or gas station.
• The vestry elected to leave the women’s restroom in the Church building as is, in order to maintain our capacity and avoid making people wait in line. (There are three stalls in the women’s restroom in the Church, while there are just two in the women’s restroom in the Parish Hall, and one stall and one urinal in each of the men’s restrooms.)
• We may explore other changes to the buildings in the future, like taking down the stalls or renovating the space more significantly, but we didn’t want to wait for those larger and more expensive changes before making this tangible form of welcome available.

In all, it should be very simple... just lock the deadbolt! Thanks for your help in making this a more welcoming place.

Peace, Liz+