Welcome to The Tower, a new, regular column where members can share how we bring our mission to life in our community. We will publish monthly, deep dives into different focus areas. For a broad overview, check out our monthly Session Digest.
Wherever You Go, I Will Go
The church Session — the elected leadership of our congregation — recently gathered at Holmes Camp and Retreat Center for an intense discussion on what God is calling our church to do. For inspiration, we turned to the Bible and looked for passages and stories that resonated with where we felt the church was and where we may be headed. As we read and discussed where the church had been, where we are now, and where we are headed, several important truths began to emerge.
The first insight we had was that, while there are many pressing needs in our community and our world, we are blessed with an ambitious congregation filled with caring people who are eager to serve in various ways. The next insight was that, as a church, we feel compelled to truly serve our community and reflect God’s love for all God’s people as best we can. As we reflected on these observations and searched scripture for our story, we felt a particular resonance with The Story of Ruth.
“But Ruth said, ‘Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people and your God my God.”
In this story of two women who walk together in a journey of devotion and loyalty, we see many ways that our church can grow into a better relationship with our community. With this new lens through which to view ourselves and our work, three aspects of our mission came into focus, each representing a different layer of our community.
…where you lodge, I will lodge;
As members of a global community to all who call this Earth our home, climate change is a clear and pressing concern. We all have work to do to mitigate a growing crisis. Our building and ground have ample opportunity to improve, by reducing our carbon footprint created by antiquated systems, to greenspace that can better be used. To investigate these opportunities, we formed “A Green Building Initiative.”
your people shall be my people,
As New Yorkers, we live among a growing group of migrants with pressing needs. To discover how we can better serve our community, we formed the “Migrant and Asylum Seeker Outreach,” whose task will be to communicate with the existing Refugees and Immigrants Action Group to explore more of the many specific ideas that emerged from the retreat in this area.
and your God, my God.
First and foremost in all our work, is the devotion we share with one another to the loving God whose presence is felt in our church community. To strengthen our ties to each other and to share the joy of our work, our third initiative is a community-building committee that will look inward and outward to explore how we can better work together and grow our sense of togetherness and purpose.
With these three initiatives in mind, we built a board of ideas for which areas we could focus, who and how we might be of use, and where we could lean into our purpose. Many ideas emerged, organized loosely in several patterns. Two things were clear: we serve a diverse congregation with many interests. From our ongoing commitment to LGBTQIA+ rights and anti-racism to our relationship with artists in our community, and much, much more, we have a diverse range of constituencies to serve.
A special thanks to Sorrel Ann Alburger and Juna Tuazon for their data collection and graphic design.
Looking ahead, we’re excited to see how our call to serve in these areas. We invite all members to familiarize yourselves with the story of Ruth’s courage and commitment. Take a moment to reflect and pray on this image of devotion, and see how it calls you to our community. Think about what you need and what you can offer. We look forward to growing into a greater partnership together.
If you have any thoughts or ideas, we invite you to reach out.
