Affirmations of Welcome

We gather together as people with great faith, little faith, different faiths and sometimes no faith. It is together where we find community and where we can encounter the Sacred in each other. 

In this community we do our best to welcome all because we believe God welcomes all. God’s love is meant to be shared here regardless of privilege, politics, skin color, sexual orientation, gender identity + expression, relationship status or ability. 

We welcome students who wrestle with addiction, physical or mental health, socio-economic challenges or anything that too often divides us. 

We specifically affirm and uplift the leadership and faithful gifts LGBTQIA2S+ students, BIPOC students and others who too often find themselves on the margins of our churches and society.

These are the ancestral, current and future homelands of the Anishinaabe and Dakota people. 

We acknowledge the painful history of genocide, forced assimilation, and efforts to alienate the Indigenous inhabitants from their territory here. 

We honor and respect the many diverse Indigenous peoples still connected to this land, retained tribal sovereignty, treaty rights, and cultural resilience. 

This is a starting point, not an ending point, for our work as Bemidji Lutheran Campus Ministry as we strive to follow Jesus alongside our neighbors of the sovereign federally recognized tribes of the Leech Lake, Red Lake and White Earth bands of the Ojibwe people.