When you go to a house of worship as an adult, it is intentional. It is a conscious choice. If you attend services, why do you go?
I attend church at St. Barnabas’ Episcopal Church for several reasons. Today I will share one. There is a sense of community and common purpose in the midst of a congregation like this one that is hard to find elsewhere. I have developed friendships at church, and my family members have friends here too. We do volunteer work together, we share meals, we laugh and have fun, and we care for each other during the hard times. In fact, it is during hard times that I most appreciate and cherish my kinship with friends and loved ones, and my relationship with God.
Community is not limited to your friendly, local house of worship. Being in communion with people around the world is another way we demonstrate our faith. One of the five “Marks of Mission” of the Episcopal Church is “to respond to human need by loving service.”
Every Episcopal church I have attended has performed service projects and fundraising for their local communities and people in need across the globe. At St. Barnabas, service and mission work is varied and plentiful. It includes hosting an afterschool program for at-risk youth, helping staff and supply a local food bank in partnership with other churches, and organizing mission trips to Cuba and Honduras. Serving the common good strengthens our sense of community.
Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori noted in a webcast with Archbishop Desmond Tutu on May 19, 2012 that mission is about receiving love and then responding by going out and sharing.
“It is a matter of calling the near and the far off together into the fold. It is about healing and reconciling. It is about making that love incarnate in the lives of people around us and in the lives of people on the other end of the earth.”
Being part of this faith community is life affirming. Whenever we come together, for communal worship, to listen and learn, for healing prayer, to take care of each other, and to help neighbors
and strangers, we lift each other up.
We make love incarnate.
by Lyn Harris
by Lyn Harris
