A Statement

InnRoads Ministries was named for the intersection we’ve seen between tabletop role playing games and an illustration made famous from pastor and author Chuck Swindoll. If you have ever played in an RPG that takes place in a fantasy setting, you know that your party will eventually roll into the local tavern to rest, resupply, or meet that oddly dressed stranger who clearly has a quest for you. Swindoll posed that the experience you have walking into a local bar is akin to what the experience of entering into places of intentional Christian fellowship should feel like. It should be welcoming to everyone. Folks should get to know each other deeply with time. A person’s entrance should be met with excitement and there should be sadness in their absence. In short – it should be an oasis where folks can find respite in the midst of chaos and pain or encouragement to go out into that chaos and be a balm to others. This is why it’s more than just an act of pithy marketing when our leadership continues to say “There is always a seat at the table for anyone who wants it,” and why we decided that the collective name for members of our community is The Regulars. No matter where you come from, what you look like, your background, your ethnicity, your orientation, your ANYTHING – if you want to be here, we will welcome you, pull out your seat for you, and ask you how your day is going.

The stories we are hearing of pain, grief, loss, anger, hopelessness, frustration, and so on are not new – and that is the point. For far too long our friends, our colleagues, and our regulars have come up to the bar exhausted and in tears, and we are no longer able to simply listen and weep with them just as individuals. We have said on numerous occasions that we shy away from making sweeping statements, as we represent a widely varied spectrum of individuals– even just among those regulars that profess their faith in Christ – that cannot be encompassed in any statement. However, we feel this needs to be said clearly and definitively. I, along with the rest of the board of Innroads Ministries, stand with those who have had to bear the weight of injustice for too long.  They have been made to play this game of life with rules that are confusing, inconsistently applied, or even unwritten. It is unfair, it is unjust, and it is unacceptable for anyone who bears the image of God to be treated as such.

To our black brothers and sisters, you are always welcome at our table.
To our LGBTQ+ brothers and sisters, you are always welcome at our table.

We stand with you because we take strongly the exhortation of the prophet Micah to those asking him what they should do as an act of worship to God.

“He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”