Vashon United Methodist Church has become an all-inclusive church and is working to spread the word with a new welcome statement that is being displayed prominently at services.

The statement indicates that the church’s welcome is extended to “people of all ages, races, ethnicities, abilities, sexual orientations, gender identities, family structures, economic situations and faith histories.”

Rev. Dr. Kathy Morse said the new statement and the work being done to ensure all are welcome does not represent a change in the church’s philosophy, but a public statement of such beliefs.

“It’s who we (the congregation) have been since I’ve been here; it was just time to say so,” Morse said of the decision to craft the new statement. “We have this statement. Now we have to live it out. We have to walk the walk.”

The decision was made by the whole congregation through a unanimous vote.

“We think that unanimity is significant,” Morse said.

A vote by the church trustees taken on April 10 approved the new statement and ongoing inclusion work. A task force made up of members of the congregation worked for roughly one year to inform the congregation of the plans.

The church went through a tumultuous period in 2005 when an openly gay pastor was appointed and the congregation began to fall apart as “some believed the rules of the church had been broken,” Morse said. The congregation decided to remove the pastor after one year.

“That was painful,” task force member Debra Taylor said. “We wanted to be very thoughtful, deliberate and slow. We did not want to repeat the past.”

Taylor said the approach seems to have worked as, near the end of the process, the congregation “was telling us to hurry up and finish it.”

Fellow task force member Dick Vanderpool said the inclusion is necessary for a community such as Vashon.

“Information spreads so fast these days and for us to stay in the old way and say, ‘We don’t talk about this’ makes no sense. The world was already past us,” Vanderpool said.

The church is working to become part of multiple Methodist caucuses — groups of advocates for specific races, sexual orientations and other potentially excluded groups that campaign for their interests in the church — to become fully inclusive. Morse said the church has joined “all the race caucuses,” including those that advocate for Pacific Islanders, Native Americans and Latinos.