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After talking about it for months, our first All-Committee Meeting is just around the corner! Are you excited? Worried? Curious? Unconcerned? Relieved?
For me it feels like the initial ascent on a roller coaster. Not the momentum-driven cart ride of adrenaline and heart palpitations… No, I am talking about the part before that. I am talking about when you are buckled in, safety has been checked by the attendant, the ride is moving… but slowly. You can hear the clink of machinery ratcheting your cart higher and higher while the anticipation for the eventual drop continues to build. As an adult, I have come to understand that anticipation is a key part to the overall experience. If there is no wait time, no time to prepare, no time for excitement to build, the amount of fun that is experienced diminishes. While I do not expect our All Committee Meeting to be as thrilling as an amusement park ride, here is what I do expect: There will be food! Everyone - and I mean EVERYONE - is invited to stay for a time of fellowship as we eat lunch together. We will begin the meeting with general updates. The joint part of the meeting will include a Session Update, Treasurer’s Update, and Pastor’s Update. Anyone curious about how the congregation’s finances are doing or wants to know what Session is working on is welcome to stay and listen. The three committees will break into their individual meetings. The three standing committees will break to different locations to conduct their individual meetings. If you are not on a committee but have something you would like to bring to a committee’s attention, you are welcome to join them in their meeting. The three committees might spend the whole first meeting simply figuring out what they are supposed to be doing. Because this is our first time in this format, it is okay if all our committees accomplish is figuring out who is doing what and making a plan for the following meeting. Things might be a bit bumpy this first time. I do not expect everything to go perfectly the first time we do them. We will expect that something is going to go wrong. We will take note and fix it for next time. Someone will still not understand how to do something. Transitions and change are difficult things to navigate. Even after we do this once, there will still be uncertainty and misunderstanding of who does what. We will take it one day at a time. I have been working with Session and Nominations for months on this transition. It will not be perfect and there will be bumps in the road. Still, I fully believe that we are ready to take the plunge. Blessings, Pastor Chris “We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the center of the universe.”
― Elie Wiesel, The Night Trilogy: Night, Dawn, The Accident Dear Northminster, I had a realization when I got home on Sunday after worship: I may have implied that all people’s suffering is equal in magnitude and importance. While I whole-heartedly believe that our loving God cares about all of our struggles, the pain of one person’s hurt feelings is not on the same order of magnitude as someone else’s ability to eat or have shelter from the elements. We do not need to create an official ranking system of who-has-it-the-worst to understand that some people’s pain and suffering needs to be more urgently addressed than others; and as Elie Wiesel so clearly pointed out, to whose pain we pay attention and address is not value-neutral. I hinted at this when I mentioned that the pain and struggle we would like to focus on do not necessarily map onto who in our world is experiencing the greatest pain and oppression. As various political policies increasingly target various demographic groups, who we see as our neighbors and who is deserving of our compassion, empathy, and care becomes increasingly important. We are being told that we should not have compassion for immigrants (legal or otherwise), Canadians, Mexicans, Chinese, Ukrainians, Palestinians, and LGBTQIA+ folks. In case you think I am over-reacting, two books were recently published criticizing Christian Empathy: The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits and Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion. These books depict empathy as a tool of the devil to get us to have understanding of people who disagree and have different life experiences than the writers do. In fact, empathy might just be the first foot in the door for doubt and a person to question their faith in God and the Bible. There is one more aspect to this discussion that was brought to my attention after worship. Paul Stunkel challenged my interpretation with another that said that this parable of the Good Samaritan is arranged in a way to make the listener as the person who is attacked, not the person who rendering help. We lay there on the side of the road as we watch a priest and a Levite pass by. When the Samaritan approaches, do we allow the Samaritan to be our neighbor as he tends to our wounds and cares for us? Would we allow the undocumented immigrant to drive us to the hospital? Would we allow the mom on food stamps to pay for our night in a hotel? Would we even accept a Band-Aid if a drag queen pulled it out of her purse and gave it to us? In the end, I fully believe that our scripture guides us to have compassion and empathy for all people. And anything that guides us to hate and despise people is antithetical to the gospels. Blessings, Pastor Chris Happy Pączki Day everyone!
It feels like winter has broken and the coldest days of winter are behind us. The days grow lighter and our clocks will spring forward an hour this Sunday. Yet, the grass stays a muted brown and flowers have yet to poke their heads up. Spring is not here, but we can feel it coming. This Lent, we will be discussing dichotomies and the space in between the two extremes. To do this, we will be using A Sanctified Art’s Lent 2025 curriculum Everything In Between - and the weather at the moment illustrates the core theme: there is space between the dichotomy between winter and spring. We live in a world that loves to break everything into neat and tidy categories; but this Lent, we will break apart those categories to find all of the colorful space in between. Here are a few things to pay attention to coming up: Visio Divina Lenten Bible Study Wednesdays at 10:30 in-person (lounge) and online March 5 – April 16, 2025 “Visio Divina” is a play on the term “Lecto Divina.” Lecto Divina – latin for “Divine Reading” – is a traditional monastic practice of reading scripture and meditating on it. It is often practiced by reading the same scripture multiple times aloud, pausing each time to reflect and meditate on the words. Playing on this idea, Visio Divina is the practice of reading scripture, looking at religious art, and meditating on the words and images. This Lenten season, Pastor Shane and I will be co-hosting a Visio Divina Bible study where we will discuss the scripture and art for the following Sunday. We will discuss words, language, and the history of scripture while also considering the principals of art and how artists use images and mediums to communicate a message. No prep work is required since all scripture passages will be read as a part of the study. So, join us in the lounge this Wednesday or on Zoom and enter into the world of language and art. **This Bible Study will NOT be recorded to be posted on YouTube. Ash Wednesday Service 12:00 p.m. Wednesday, March 5 First Presbyterian Troy will hold an Ash Wednesday soup lunch and worship, with the imposition of ashes, at noon on Wednesday, March 5, to mark the beginning of the season of Lent. All are welcome. Blessings, Pastor Chris |
AuthorPastor Chris Hallam earned her degree at Princeton Theological Seminary and moved to Michigan to become a pastor. Also trained as a studio artist and graphic designer, with an interest in pop culture and social science, her passion is thinking creatively about the future of the church. Archives
March 2025
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