Today is the coldest day of this winter, I hear! I hope you are safely at home and if you need to be out -- you have protected yourself well. On this coldest day, I am grateful for the community of Broadway that continues to work towards having warm hearts for all God’s people! In that effort we do all we humanly can, to honor the members of our community and the cultures that are present in our community. And while I am not a fan of the idea that we assign one month to honor various cultures in our country, I am grateful for the intentionality it brings in us to celebrate that specific race/culture. February is BLACK HISTORY MONTH, so at Broadway we honor the story of the African and African American people in this month! Throughout the month we will use African/African American music in worship and hear the stories of some of our own Broadway people as they also share a sermon with us.
With all that has gone on in our country, especially in these 12-14 months -- the themes we chose for this year‘s BHM celebration are: Resistance, Reparations, Resilience and Reclaim.
To continue our effort towards being an anti-racist community we are also engaged in a book study during the month of February (on Sundays from 3:30-5:00pm). Orientation for the study was last Sunday. If you missed it and desire to be part of the study, please let me know and I will share the orientation recording with you. (Click on our events pagefor more information on the book study.)
Lenten season also starts in February. We will be delivering ‘Lenten Kits’ to you in the next 10 days. The bag will contain supplies that will be needed for worship in the Lenten season (among a few other things), as we continue to worship on Zoom. If you can help me with deliveries, pleasesend me a message.
Beloved we know our city has moved to phase 4 of COVID safety, and we keep hearing of more aggressive mutations of the virus entering our country from other places. In light of that information, we, among many other churches, have not felt we are ready to open our building, at least for the next 2 months! We will keep you posted as, and if things change. Some of you have already gotten your vaccination, but there are many who will not be able to get them until late Spring or summer. So, I ask that we continue to be patient with our plans for re-opening. We want to be safe and cause no unintentional harm to anyone.
Let us continue to be careful around people, wear a double mask (as has recently been suggested by health experts), continue to wash hands and stay home as much as possible. Together we can overcome this pandemic. Let us also continue our work of overcoming the pandemic of racism, and find ways to be agents of love and peace in this world. Let us reclaim our faith and God who is neither biased nor partial. And remember, I am always your partner in this work of justice!
