On June 13, 2012, Diocesan Council ratified a total of $55,159 in grants recommended by the Ward J. Herbert Fund Board for their first 2012 granting cycle.
The Reverend Rose Cohen Hassan of Trinity Church, who serves as manager of Services at HIGHWAYS (Helping Individuals Gain Hope Will Always Yield Success), has seen a lot of hardship in her life, both in Bayonne where she helps feed and clothe some of the neediest families in the city as well as in her previous assignment in Kearny. But it took overhearing some of her clients one day for her to realize that hardship reaches every level.
It was an eye-opening experience. Hackettstown High School student Justin Simmons was delivering a bag of food to a family enrolled in the United Way Summer Backpack Program last summer. When the family invited the then-16 year-old volunteer in their kitchen, Simmons was stunned to see the nearly empty cupboards.
“The small amount of food on their shelves was what was left from our delivery two weeks before,” Simmons said. “I was shocked. I never knew hunger was such a concern in my own town.”
At Grace Church in Madison, social outreach is a defining aspect of our parish identity as a community of faith. So it is not surprising that for a number of years, a common topic of conversation at our annual men's retreats was how we might complement our "fellowship retreats" (where we explore our own spiritual journeys) with "mission trips" like our youth groups take every other year.
Many people were outraged when Dharun Ravi, who was convicted of bias intimidation for spying on a roommate who later committed suicide, was sentenced to only 30 days in jail. Some went so far as accusing Ravi of “murdering” Tyler Clementi, who was gay. But a gay rights activist speaking at my church in Maplewood Sunday had a different take.
The church is in the midst of a new reformation, and the stakes couldn’t be higher, a prominent progressive speaker told a Morristown audience.
“Religion must stop being what it has been until now, which has been an essential source of intolerance, contempt for the other and even mad apocalyptic violence,” James Carroll said recently at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church. “Survival of religions is not the issue. Neither therefore is survival of the church.”
What matters, he said, is survival of humankind.
If pledge payments are down and the roof is leaking again, it’s easy for a congregation to fall into the habit of focusing on surviving, rather than thriving. The Rev. Canon Gregory A. Jacobs, Canon to the Ordinary, hopes to combat this tendency through congregational cultural change.
“We’ve latched on firmly to a theology of scarcity,” Jacobs said. Congregations need to refocus on the fact that church “is not about the building, it’s about the ministry.”
St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Morristown became an artists’ colony on Saturday. Make that a young artists’ colony.
Some 55 kids ages 6-13 participated in a Children’s Day of Art, rotating through workshops in cartooning, drama, eco-sculpture, music, poetry and pottery–with a lunchtime break to create “food art.”
On Mother's Day more than 300 runners, including children and parents pushing strollers, participated in the "Mother of All Races," a waterfront-route race in Hoboken. Organized jointly by the Hoboken Harriers running club and All Saints Community Development Corporation, the runner registration fees will go to All Saints' Jubilee Center, an after-school program for under-served children who live in public housing.
Local performers organize an arts initiative to breathe new life into St. John's Church and the community of Union City.
