How do I minister to the “one” in the case of LGBTQ members?

Lift and Strengthen

“When you focus on the one, you can really lift and strengthen. I have had the opportunity to visit different areas of the world. And we have attended church in many different wards and branches. And until you’ve seen people that are different than you, in lots of different ways, I think it is easy to get focused on a very narrow segment and feel like that’s the only way to be. I think when we get outside ourselves, when we consider others, it helps us realize that we are all a family, our family of Heavenly Father. …

“Someone might say, ‘Well, I don’t have a need for other people.’ But maybe they have a need for you. When you choose to put yourself out there, you are blessing someone else’s life.

“I think one of the things that we can do is to focus on the one. Can you find one person that looks like they would love to visit or that they need someone to listen to them? Can you look for the person who is sitting on the outside, sitting on the fringe? That gives me a purpose. That gives us a purpose, when we feel not so comfortable with large groups but we just focus on the one.

“One of the best ways to form a good relationship is not to come in with assumptions or preconceived notions, keeping an open mind, an open heart. Sometimes we tend to pigeonhole people, or we assume that they are a certain way because of a certain situation in their life or their family. And it’s always surprising; if you keep your mind open and your heart open, you find out lots of wonderful things about people that you might not have ever expected. When you’ve experienced, when you’ve seen, when you’ve opened your heart to other people, you see that we all belong” (Jean B. Bingham, “Focus on the One,” ChurchofJesusChrist.org).

Foster Relationships with Christ

“It’s important for every individual to have a relationship with Christ, because salvation is a personal, individual experience.

“We do not save people by congregations. We are ourselves saved, one individual at a time. This is a very personal relationship with Christ. The Savior understands us because He is not an abstraction. Because He is a living, breathing, real Son of God. The living Son of the living God. People who think they have sinned too much or gone too far or been away for too long and somehow can’t come back into the circle, my declaration is no one can fall lower than the light of Christ shines. That isn’t possible.

“I think … coming to participate in the sacrament, the Lord’s supper, is the most dramatic way, weekly, that we can show that we want to identify with Him and that in fact there will be a reciprocal gift and power that comes back from that. As we come to participate and be solidly with the Savior in that act, that solidity and that engagement comes back to us, and we leave that congregation, we leave that meeting, with a strength and a power and an understanding from Him that we didn’t have before. Part of it is because we understand Him better. But clearly it represents the fact that He understands us. My personal experience, as well as my apostolic calling, is to declare personally that Christ does know us. He has walked the thorny, difficult, rock-strewn path of our lives. How He did that, I don’t know. I don’t know. He didn’t have a divorce. So you could say, ‘Well, how does He know about me, because I had one?’ I don’t know how He does that. But if somebody out there has had a divorce, He understands.

“This sounds awkward to say, but God loved me, in a sense, almost as much as He loved His Only Begotten Son. At least I can say this: He gave His Only Begotten Son for me. And that says something about my worth in His eyes and my worth in the eyes of the Savior and His willingness to go to Gethsemane and Calvary for me. I’ll never have to do that. I don’t have to bleed. And I don’t have to die for somebody else’s sin. And I don’t have to be that lonely. But I understand it. And I love it. And I appreciate it. And what it means to me is that He understands me, that He loves me and that He reaches me. So I can’t explain how that happens. I just know that it does” (Jeffrey R. Holland, “The Savior Understands Me,” ChurchofJesusChrist.org).