To survive, to thrive, and to grow, our churches must serve as compelling, energetic, engaging centers of community life. They must give people what they need — comfort, connection, challenge to growth, and the power to create change.
We can do and be all those things. When take the time regularly to connect with our ideals and with the holy, when we hold one another in trusting and authentic friendships, we create and co-create God — the life force of love that enables all change.
Ours is a life-saving faith, perfectly matched to the challenging times we live in. We are the leaders we’ve been waiting for. Now is the time to stand for our principles, arm-in-arm, and walk toward justice. We are the people and now is the time.
Centering Quote: You Are Needed
You are needed for what is to come, for the struggle against fear, the turning point toward peace, that is why you are here, in the place you are, among the people you call community, to be a wise counselor and a calming presence, to invite others to work together, amid the pulls to extreme, against the rush to partisan. You are a center of hope, a balance of compassion and common sense, that will help to halt the rise of anger, and allow reason to guide the tiller of tomorrow, that is why you are here: you are needed for what is to come.
— Rev. Steven Charleston