Church Life
What makes your church a place you want to be? What makes your church a community you belong to, and want to invite others to come along? Below are a number of ways I have engaged churches within their own walls and outside in the community. Let’s find a way to bring more people to the great things your church provides, and bring your church and it’s gifts out into the world!
At a Christian Education meeting, we were discussing how to better integrate the generations. We asked: what if we connected the lessons in Sunday School to something everyone could participate in? And so family movie night was born! (To respect the privacy of church members, I am sharing the publicity materials instead of photos from the event, which were shared on the church’s internal facebook page. There were 25 people in attendance, and the costumes were very technicolor!)
Many churches celebrate a blessing of the animals, and this one was no different! In addition to blessing real life pets, we also encouraged the kids to bring stuffed animals to bless. The most unique contribution? A dinosaur action figure.
MAAV (the Melrose Alliance Against Violence) hosted a fundraising walk to support their work to prevent intimate partner violence, also known as domestic violence. In addition to speaking on behalf of faith communities in town, our confirmation class and mentors joined in the walk.
Sometimes I bring my own passions into church. I have a number of pen pals through Black and Pink, and love getting to bring this low-stakes offering of connection to the church. It’s a great way to live out our ONA values, and de stigmatize incarceration.