This past Saturday our leadership team gathered to do some visioning and thinking about where God is calling us.
We began with the excerpt below from the Bishop’s recent letter on dismantling racism:
THE CHURCH IS THE PLACE… to wake up and courageously face the sin of racism and to create beloved community.
God gives people of faith a vision of diverse human beings living together in right relationship with one another. But through history, the Christian Church has often created and maintained systems of racial inequity in America and around the world. Today, the church is called to recognize and dismantle its own racism and join a movement of racial reckoning and reconciliation in every place.
Racism can exist without racial hatred. In many places, our churches are passive participants in racist systems that we have inherited and may not even be aware of. If we, the white majority, simply continue to do what we have always done – as the community changes and becomes more diverse – we will, silently, and without even recognizing it, perpetuate white privilege and supremacy. Throughout our lives, Jesus introduces us to new experiences, new people, fresh ideas. When our life paths cross with people from different parts of the world, with different life experiences, different cultural experiences, different aspirations that do not match our own, and may make us uncomfortable, our discomfort is often God at work, stretching and strengthening our love. Jesus invites us to set aside judgment and proceed to curiosity, asking: how is Jesus working through a new relationship to deepen our faith and strengthen the church or community?
The church must not value the familiar, traditional or comfortable over what is right, nourishing, emerging, and hopeful. God says “Look! I’m doing a new thing; now it sprouts up; don’t you recognize it? (Isaiah 42:19a). Embracing the new people and things God sends our way is a spiritual practice that breathes life into the church and through the church, into the world.
-Bishop Elaine Stanovsky
Our leadership team thought about what it might look like in 18 months if we took up this challenge. And somehow as a team after 3 hours we came up with 4 areas of work. You’ll see listed in parentheses the team leads of each area.
- Equip (Amie Waters, Lacey Engel & Barbara Garrett)
- Ally Class
- Racial Equity Class
- Expand (Eilidh Lowery & Laura Jaquith Bartlett)
- Deepen Worship Experience
- Prepare for a future of worship gatherings that are both in-person and on-line
- Create new places for new people
- Evaluate (Tim Sands, David Engel, Jim Lamb, Joy Atkinson, & Gaye Benson)
- Physical
- Programs
- Perceptions
- Engage (Caley Barstow & Sally Butts)
- Research engagement opportunities
- Inquire as to parishioner interest
In the coming year our leaders will be inviting others in to this work of moving our parish forward in God’s love. You might be invited to attend a class. You might be asked to help evaluate some of our ministry. You might volunteer for an experience. You might be inspired by a worship experience to lead in a new way. Together we will do the work necessary for beloved community to a reality not only in our parish, but in our wider community.
-Eilidh
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