The Peace Colloquy was a great weekend. The Presbyterian friends who went with me really enjoyed it. I haven't heard how the Methodist liked it but she didn't miss a session.
The theme was learning to be signal communities. A signal community tries to be a force in their community and meets need as it becomes apparent to them. The signal community from Alabama, that received the #35,000 peace award was the home of Habitat for Humanity. Two people from their community came to receive the award and lo and behold a couple of dozen other members of their community drove 19 hours to be there to see them receive it too. This community was begun in the 1940's and was integrated by the sixties. They suffered a lot of violence against them for being integrated. But they never struck back. They installed lighting all around their community sensing the Klu Klux Klan would not attack in daylight or when it was all lighted. They never suffered any deaths but had bombings and shootings into their community. This was done by Klan "Christians".
The small groups at the colloquy got together twice a day and discussed what their congregations were doing and could do to build a sense of community and move out into their communities. The most important concept is that we must live our religion every day of the week and not just on Sunday. Too many of us Christians tend to do that.
Then there were two workshops to help us realize exactly what a signal community is. I realized my congregation was already a signal community. We try to live our religion. We contribute to two funds to help low income families pay their utility bills and rent, we contribute toward funding a school in the Domincan Republic, when we had our big flood last year, our church donated $10,000 toward the recovery effort. We have a food basket at the church. We participate in the Christmas Child shoebox project every Christmastime, we worked to keep a city block clean monthly until we built our church in the country. Our people serve on many boards in their communities. We have two that serve as auxillary at the hospitals, I serve on the free clinic board, two of our number serve on the senior citizen's board in their community and do lunches for shutins. We adopt two families at Christmastime and provide gifts for their children and food for their holiday dinners. I'm sure there is a lot more that I am not aware of. Our people do not tend to blow their own horns. I am sure we could do more and we will as soon as we become aware of the need.
P.S. Another Methodist couple called last night to get the dates for next year's colloquy. They want to go too.
4 comments:
It sounds like a rewarding weekend and one all of us could use right now. It is wonderful to see people making the effort to reach out, to help where there is need.
Yes, it is, Sylvia. I have attended several of the church's Peace Colloquies and always enjoy them and learn a lot from them.
Thanks for posting about it. I wish that I could've gone this year. Can't believe it's been three years since we met each other at that year's Peace Colloquy.
Have they picked a theme for next year?
No they haven't, Nicholas. They want nominations for next year's peace award to be a woman and they are inviting nominations. The date will be October 23 - 25.
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