A Word from Laura: Community
It comes up in almost every conversation I have with one of you. Whether we’re talking about stewardship or antiracism or when the choir will start or what’s going on in your work or family, we end up talking about how to find a sense of community.
For months now, our lives have been geared to insulating ourselves and our families, first to avoid the pandemic, then to ward off the delta variant. We’ve learned to worship individually, grieve on our own, and read each other’s body language from what we can discern on a screen or around a mask.
I hear from you that you are tired, that you’re finding work-arounds to connect with family and friends, that you’re optimistic about your boosters or upcoming vaccines for your children, but that you’re wondering when you’ll be able to move on.
I’ve wondered if you’re longing for community, but too tired to make it happen - I know I often feel like that. Or that you miss church, but as long as we’re in the habit of wearing masks, or doing on-line worship, or needing boosters, or any other number of things, you would just as soon stay at home. I understand that, too!
And yet we find ourselves, not only as individuals, but as a congregation, needing to figure out how to reconnect and grow as a community, a community of faith.
Community may happen in our building, it may happen elsewhere. Community happens in groups that have already been formed; it may be in new groups. Growing and re-growing our community of faith needs to be at the center of our worship, our mission, our nurture.
Our Stewardship Ministry Team has claimed the call of community this year. It’s the focus of our annual campaign, and it’s why they have invited you to participate in the Ministry and Mission Festival on October 17 – and in a way that connects us and builds community! (If you haven’t already, take a moment to RSVP here [https://western.ccbchurch.com/goto/forms/81/responses/new]
In all that we do as a church – worship, meetings, small groups – I’m asking leaders to take some time to consider one thing that might help us connect meaningfully with each other. It may mean turning on your camera during on-line worship – not for the whole service, but to say a few words of welcome to someone else. It may mean finding one way to personally connect with someone else you’ve met at church, beyond our church program.
“Courageous community” was the phrase your leaders landed upon almost two years ago, when they tried to describe our “why” as Western. “Courageous community” also describes what Jesus’s first community of his disciples.
May “courageous community” remain our call, so that we might be connected, energized and sustained, doing God’s work together! Laura