January, 2023. The New Years confetti wasn’t even cleaned up, and it was already turning out to be a deadly year for trans people in America.

E. G. Meier (pronouns: Meier / Meier / Meier’s), a licensed professional counselor and psychologist working in Milwaukee and Madison, watched the headlines piling up with a growing mixture of anger, grief, and dread. There was Jasmine “Star” Mack, stabbed to death in Washington, D.C. on January 7; KC Johnson of Wilmington, North Carolina, who was kidnapped in January and whose body would not be found until April; nonbinary environmental activist Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, shot 57 times by police in Atlanta on January 18 as they protested the construction of a new “cop city” training center; Maria Jose Rivera Rivera, an immigrant from El Salvador, killed sometime before January 21 in Houston by an intimate partner in an apparent murder-suicide; and Unique Banks, fatally shot on January 23 in an attack on her family’s apartment in Chicago that also seriously wounded her mother’s boyfriend and two other trans women.

And that was just January. Five brutal killings in less than a month, in a community that comprises an estimated 0.5% of the U.S. population. For Meier, the alarm bells were already ringing.

As the bloody year dragged on, more names and stories were added to the ledger, while cynical politicians poured gasoline on the fire with an unprecedented number of anti-trans bills targeting health care, bathroom use, and participation in school sports. Trans people were the target du jour for the Right’s endless culture war—the latest class of expendable people to be demonized, terrorized, and blamed for all of their constituents’ problems. The hateful rhetoric and the acts of violence reinforced one another, bathing the trans community in a toxic stew of fear and alienation. In Milwaukee alone, four Black trans women would be murdered from September 2022 to October 2023: Regina “Mya” Allen, Brazil Johnson, Cashay Henderson, and Chyna Long.

Something needed to change, and it needed to happen soon.

The Importance of Community 

A long-time social studies teacher before pivoting to clinical work, Meier was already primed to think locally when pondering potential efforts to benefit the LGBTQIA+ community. A doctoral program in counseling would deepen this focus: Meier’s clinical work centered on caring for people in and through a community setting, particularly those who were marginalized along multiple axes. Serving trans women ensnared in carceral spaces was an especially salient clinical experience for Meier. “One of the things they reminded me of was the importance of community in the face of impossible things,” Meier said. “Community is part of how we survive the impossible.”

For Meier, as for many, community had its roots in religion. Meier is an active member of Madison Christian Community (MCC), a partnership between Advent Lutheran Church and Community of Hope UCC. By early 2023 MCC had long been an Open and Affirming congregation, meaning that they welcomed and celebrated their LGBTQIA+ members and encouraged them to be present as their full, authentic selves. Still, there was room for growth. While the church had expressed a desire to serve the trans community, it had not yet taken any practical steps in that direction. Meier challenged the church to change that.

Sarah Canon (she/her/hers), then the president of Advent Lutheran’s leadership council, found herself in church meetings with Meier in the spring of 2023. “Meier indicated in one of these meetings that they [sic] didn’t always feel welcome or safe at MCC,” Canon recalled. “I didn’t like that. I asked to get coffee with Meier and talk about it.”

It was at this meeting over coffee, and others that followed, where Meier laid out a plan of action.

A Plan of Action 

“The Lutheran tradition is, when things are hard, you come together and break bread,” Meier said. The counselor envisioned a regular gathering where trans and nonbinary people could come together for a free meal and fellowship with one another: To make and strengthen friendships and to share their joys and struggles without outside distractions.

“I fundamentally believe that we are wired for community, and in the pandemic, we lost our third spaces,” Meier said. Most of the opportunities for socialization with other LGBTQ+ people in Madison took place in bars or nightclubs, which created challenges for individuals who were sober, neurodivergent, or had social anxiety. A quiet dinner in an alcohol-free space would fill a social niche that had otherwise been lost.

The church leadership was immediately supportive, but it took time for the new dinners to take shape. Many different groups used the space at MCC, and it was important to find a night when the guests would be assured the privacy to engage in authentic and unfiltered conversation. Coordinating the necessary volunteers—for cooking, hosting, transportation, child care, and cleanup—was also a logistical challenge.

“I had never tried to organize anything like this before,” Canon said. “It was a big learning experience.”

With Meier both finishing up the doctoral program and helping to plan the 2023 Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) service, the decision was made to postpone the launch until December 27, after both of those responsibilities had been completed. The holidays were often a challenging time for trans people, whose relationships with blood family are often strained or broken, and Meier hoped that the dinners would be especially helpful in that context.

“On paper, it’s not what you should do,” Meier acknowledged. “Starting something over the winter, over the holidays, in Wisconsin. But part of the conviction of this is that holidays are hard, so if that’s what you need, why would you wait?”

Cultivating Community 

To get the word out, Meier promoted the dinner at a resource fair following the TDOR service. The counselor also reached out to SunShine Raynebow (she/her/Queen/Goddess), a local poet, activist, and drag queen whom Meier had met during the planning for the 2022 TDOR.

“If you want to talk about who knows community, that’s SunShine,” Meier said. She was active in many different community spaces around the city, and Meier felt it would be negligent not to ask her. Raynebow quickly agreed to take part.

The Need for Safe Space 

The night of December 27 was cold, windy, and quiet. Besides Meier and Raynebow, two other attendees showed up: Robin Kelby (pronouns: they/them/their), a software engineer at Epic, and myself, Christen Lester-Jones (pronouns: she/her/hers). Sitting around a meal of hearty soup, salad, and bread provided by Canon and her husband, we discussed the possibilities of these dinners and what they could become.

“You didn’t realize it when you came here, but you are now my co-conspirators,” Meier told us, with a characteristic sly grin. “So let’s see what kind of mischief we can make together.”

One key object of discussion at that first meeting was the importance of making the dinners a space that was welcoming to people of all religious backgrounds. Since it was being held at a Christian church and three of the founding members were Christians (Meier and I are Lutheran, Kelby is Methodist), it would be too easy to turn into a “Christian thing” that would exclude people who didn’t share that heritage.

“I was thinking about how to hold space in a way that feels safe,” Meier recalled later, “because we were asking our community to step into a religious space. That’s loaded for a lot of us, even if it’s good.”

Keeping it Simple 

The dinners would have a simple format: From 6:00 to 6:30 p.m., we would welcome guests, encouraging them to put on name tags and engaging in unstructured conversation. Dinner would be served buffet-style, and we would all sit together at large tables in the lobby outside the kitchen. (As attendance grew, seating was moved from the lobby to the adjacent Covenant Room, which provided more room and greater privacy.) We would pose some icebreaker questions to encourage engagement among the guests, and then let the conversation flow where it may. Meanwhile, the church volunteers ate together in another room, leaving the guests to enjoy a trans-only discussion space. There would be no prayers over the meal, no invitations to other church events, no religious practices or rituals of any kind. The dinners were a space for us as trans people, not for any other affiliations we may or may not have. Dinner would last for about an hour, and then volunteers would clean up and provide transportation home for those who needed it.

From that first dinner we grew slowly, meeting every 6–8 weeks from February through July. We spread the word through texting, social media, Discord channels, Pride events, and LGBTQIA+ groups at our places of employment. At some of the early dinners, only we organizers showed up, but we kept planning the next event, and gradually built a circle of regulars, who in turn built connections with one another. In July we decided that there was enough demand to make the dinners monthly, and with one exception due to a scheduling conflict (September), we’ve held them every month since. Attendance varies but is usually around 10–12 people, about half of them regulars.

“Being involved in the Trans Community Dinners has brought me healing, friendship, and peace,” Raynebow said. “It’s one of my favorite things that happen in my life.”

“I appreciate being able to share with a small group of trans people that just ‘get it,’” Kelby said. “I can be myself in freedom.”

Sustainability 

Making the dinners happen monthly has required resources beyond MCC alone. As a member of the Reconciling in Christ (RIC) subcommittee at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, I extended an invitation to the other members of that group. Several of them quickly volunteered, assisting with transportation, cooking, hosting, or clean-up. After positive experiences with the dinners in November and December, the subcommittee decided to share the invitation with Good Shepherd as a whole. At the time of this writing, the dinners have a volunteer list of 15 people who are assigned tasks on rotation. For the February dinner, Canon arranged the assignments so that members of Good Shepherd and MCC would be working side-by-side for the first time.

“So many of us are looking for places to connect that are sustainable, and it’s been fun to see churches start to come together,” Meier said. “I’m humbled by the partnership that’s emerged between our two churches. We’re actually doing these things that we espouse to be our values.”

“Good Shepherd Lutheran Church is deeply committed to fostering inclusion, support, and community for all,” says Sarah Simon, chair of the RIC subcommittee. “Our involvement in the monthly Trans Community Dinners reflects this mission, offering a safe, welcoming space for individuals to connect, share experiences, and enjoy a sense of belonging. We are excited to be part of this particular gathering because it provides the opportunity to support the well-being of a community that often faces unique challenges. Being able to contribute to a space that nurtures connection, empowerment, and visibility is an honor.”

Additional help has come from Meier’s therapy practice, Integrated Counseling, which has a charitable arm that has been an organizational partner in facilitating the dinners. Heather Andrews, Meier’s Practice Manager, assists with the behind-the-scenes work to keep the dinners running smoothly. “She’s amazingly organized,” Meier said.

Even Greater Need for Community Now 

The Trans Community Dinners recently celebrated their one-year anniversary, and interest shows no signs of flagging. The year 2025 is shaping up to be an even darker year for trans people than 2023, and the need for community in the midst of hardship has only grown.

For Meier, seeing the dream of trans people breaking bread come to life has been a light in the midst of that darkness. The most important decision Meier faced with the dinners was when to step back and leave them in another’s hands—something that happened in September 2024, when the counselor passed leadership of the project to me.

“The model of ministry I was raised up in was big on cultivating not just outreach, but leadership within, to basically cultivate yourself into the background,” Meier explained. “I suppose it’s a Lutheran ‘priesthood of all believers’ thing.”

“I’m really grateful to you all for trusting us and allowing us to provide this for you,” said Canon. “And I’m really glad that Good Shepherd has joined—that it feels like the community of love and safety is expanding. And I’ve really enjoyed meeting everyone who has come in the door, to whatever extent I’ve met them.”

It’s hard to say what the years ahead will hold for trans people in America. Madison feels like an oasis of relative safety, but only time will tell if the hatred, bigotry, and violence being directed at us find their way into these streets. What I do know is this: We are stronger together. Through these dinners, I have had the privilege of making connections with other trans people in this community, and those connections will persist through times of joy and hardship alike. If you’re a trans, nonbinary, or gender non-conforming person near Madison, I hope you’ll come and break bread with us, too.

For more information, please visit www.madisontransdinners.com or email [email protected]  

Christen Lester-Jones is a member of the 10:00 worship band and the Reconciling in Christ (RIC) subcommittee at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Madison and Verona. She is a writer, a musician, a podcaster, a scientist, and a follower of Jesus, with varying levels of success in all of the above. She lives in Madison.