I am Pastor Shana Green, a Black, queer, disabled, neurodivergent Mennonite pastor who believes in the holiness of liberation. My purpose work is all about making space. Space for grief and joy, for resistance and rest, for those who have been pushed to the margins to find their way back to the center of sacred belonging. I believe that queer and trans people, particularly those of us who are Black, brown, disabled, and living in the intersections of oppression, are not just worthy of love and inclusion, we are essential to the work of justice, to the story of faith, to the very heart of God.
That’s why Fabulous, Fierce, and Sacred 2025 is more than just an event. It is a sanctuary, a bold and beautiful declaration that we are here, we are holy, and we are wholly beloved. From May 2nd to 4th, 2025, in Philadelphia, we will gather in radical joy, worship, and community, hosted by queer-affirming Mennonite and Brethren churches. We invite you to show up in all your fabulousness, because our liberation is sacred, expansive, and evolving, and it is woven through our joy, our resistance, and our unwavering commitment to each other. It is a liberation that refuses to be confined, one that honors our ancestors, nurtures our present, and dreams boldly for our future.
We live in times where oppression is doubling down, where queer and trans people are fighting for our lives in legislative battles, in churches that struggle and often refuse to name our holiness, and in everyday spaces where our existence is questioned. The weight of white supremacy, capitalism, cis-heteropatriarchy, and ableism presses down hard. But here’s the truth: we were made for joy, for connection, for holy defiance.
Fabulous, Fierce, and Sacred is a space where we don’t have to explain ourselves or fight to be seen. It is a retreat where we get to be held. Where laughter is a form of resistance. Where worship is expansive, unrestricted, and deeply, unapologetically queer.
This gathering is a place of worship that reflects us—no shrinking, no erasure, just the fullness of our queer, trans, disabled, Black, and brown selves embraced in sacred love. It is a space of fellowship that feeds the soul, where community is built on the beauty of chosen family, storytelling, and shared resistance. It is a time for learning that liberates, where workshops and conversations help us unlearn oppression, deepen our faith, and imagine freer futures. Most importantly, it is a reminder that we are not alone. In a world that tries to convince us that we don’t belong, here we find a people who see us, celebrate us, and fight alongside us.
Too often, the church has tried to separate us from God. But God has never left us. We are not an afterthought in the divine imagination; we are a reflection of it. Our queerness, our transness, our Blackness, our difference, it is all holy. To gather together, to lift our voices in worship, to laugh until we cry, to share communion over meals and stories, this is sacred work. When we create space for joy in the face of oppression, we are doing the work of resurrection.
So come, bring your whole self. Your glitter and your grief. Your faith and your doubts. Your tired soul and your wildest dreams of liberation. Come to Fabulous, Fierce, and Sacred 2025, where we will laugh, learn, worship, and set each other free. Because we are already free in the eyes of God.
Shana C. Green
Pastor, New Creation Fellowship Church
Queer Constituency Council Representative
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