PITTSBURGH, July 2, 2012 – “We are here in Pittsburgh, the city of bridges, and today we can build bridges,” shared Deborah Block, Covenant Network Director, to the Covenant Network of Presbyterians Luncheon at the 220th General Assembly.
Tricia Dykers Koenig, Covenant Network National Organizer echoed that theme, insisting, “The PCUSA is big enough for all of us” and urged those gathered, “We stick together in mission and ministry because Jesus loves us all.” 
“We do not want to impose our view on those who do not share it,” assured Dykers Koenig. But she was also adamant in her framing of the Covenant Network’s goal for the assembly: “No turning back.”
Brian Ellison, incoming Executive Director of the Covenant Network, was able, because of the passage of 10-A, to introduce his partner of nine years for the first time in this context.
”The church wants to be inclusive—our work is about helping the church to be deep down inside what it wants to be,” said Ellison.
That work is, in part, a work of both imagination and courage, according to the luncheon’s speaker, Scott Anderson, the first openly gay Presbyterian minister (teaching elder) to be ordained after the passage of Amendment 10-A, which lifted the prohibition against ordaining non-celibate gay and lesbian persons.
“I speak of imagination because I believe there is a movement afoot in our world,” said Anderson. “I speak of the movement of God, the one who has gone way out in front of us, on a mission to heal and to reconcile and to restore all of creation,” said Anderson.
It is a movement, according to Anderson, witnessed by such events as the repeal of the Defensive of Marriage Act, the fact that eight states have legalized same gender marriage, and that even on such evangelical campuses as Wheaton College and Biola University there are groups of LGBT students able to meet openly.
But it is also a movement that is witnessed by wrestling with Scripture, creating new opportunities for mission and ministry through initiatives such as ‘1001 Worshipping Communities’ and living a Christian witness in an increasingly religiously pluralistic world.
There is a movement afoot in the world, Anderson insisted. “The challenge before us is this—will we have the courage and the imagination to join in?”
