It was a beautiful thing last Sunday to return from my sabbatical and enter our sanctuary in the new year. I heard the laughter of my sweet church familia, the familiar sounds of our worship, and the hugs and smiles that I have come to know and love so well! To see Alicia carry one of her new foster babies brought me a familiar sense of comfort and justice. I was grateful to be met by Michael who was serving on our Tech Team for the first time and helped me get my preaching mic on. I don’t take any of that for granted. Our familia is built by the sound of the stories of those who inhabit this soil and each of their stories is a sacred seed re-imagining this ecosystem.
Volunteer Needs
It has been a sweet gift to see our people sign up in new areas of serving on Sundays. MIL GRACIAS as we say in Latin America (a thousand thanks)! There are still several needs to be filled: particularly in all our ages and stages of kids ministries: from birth to graduation. There is a ton of flexibility to fill these roles. For example, you may only have one week each month you’re able to offer. But that one week may be exactly what’s needed to help a team flourish more fully and help carry the load. Would you prayerfully consider any of these opportunities for a season?
If you want to join us in any of these, or others, please follow the link here to see all of the roles and reach out regarding the next steps.
February Fun!
This month we are holding several amazing moments and movements in our calendar. We want to make you aware that we have prayerfully considered how to make note of significant events as well as not overload our volunteer leaders and familia in light of these. Our Grant Collaboration Team has especially been working hard to curate moments that are spiritually formative to our church familia. We look forward to learning about and celebrating Lunar New Year which is observed by the community from Feb.10-24. We will celebrate Black History Month on Feb. 25 and look forward to welcoming guest preachers, poets, artists, and worshipers into our space as we lean into the theme “Joy Comes in the Morning”. The season of Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, Feb. 14 pointing us towards Easter on March 31.
In light of all of these sacred moments, let us not forget the Superbowl on Sunday, Feb. 11 which happens at exactly the same time as our gathering. Please make note that we will observe Sabbath Sunday on Feb. 11 to pace ourselves and our volunteers for the extra special Sundays and Ash Wednesday service that will take place. We invite you to plan ahead and gather a few friends to watch the game as we have done in the past! Community can still happen even when we don’t gather in the sanctuary on a Sunday (remember Nicola’s sermon, y’all). If you’re like me, I’ve always been there for the commercials and the people (jaja! also me laughing in Spanish).
Familia, I pray that the soil of your heart will remain soft with great hope and expectation that God has some sacred gifts to give us as we look forward to this month’s rhythms that hold promise and presence of the divine.
Gracia y paz,
Inés
Church database survey
In an effort to clean up the database and make sure we are communicating to everyone who wants to know what’s happening at the church, we created this simple survey so you can self-identify your relationship to The Church We Hope For. Doing this will help us know who our audience is and keep us from sending emails to those who no longer wish to receive them. The first two options add or keep you on our email list. The others take you off the email list. Easy peasy!
