Dear Ones,
Think of a sacred experience you have had as part of the All Saints Community. Picture an image in your mind and heart that represents that experience. Just hold it there in your heart.
That’s how we opened our vestry meeting this week: with everyone getting in touch with the heart of what is holy about this community. And as we did we reminded ourselves that the heart of what is sacred … or all those experiences …. is eternal. It is the love that for more than 100 years people have been experiencing in this All Saints Community. Love. Beauty. Courage. Joy. Comfort. Compassion. Love.
It has taken different forms in different generations. Every generation re-imagines anew what it might look like. But the Love is always there. Always.
We talked a lot about what the Love is looking like right now at All Saints Church. It looks like the proposal the vestry endorsed to work with Union Station Homeless Services (USHS) to phase in a partnership called Safe Haven Bridge to Housing, where members of our community who have no housing can find safe haven in designated areas of our campus at night and be paired with caseworkers from USHS who will eventually move them into housing. We are beginning to phase in this model right now … and are actively looking for other faith communities to join us in what we hope will be a growing and effective partnership. You can read more about it here.
We talked about what Love might look like in the future at All Saints Church. Your Wardens Planning Task Force (WPTF), which is working on a new staffing, program and budget plan to present to the vestry, is entering a phase of prayer, study and reflection. We’ve shifted the timetable for completion of this work to the end of August to give ourselves the time we need to do this well. The vestry will not be meeting in July, instead spending the month doing their own prayer, study and reflection … and I hope you will, too. It’s time for all of us to build our vision of tomorrow for All Saints Church … one that takes all that has been holy … all the love … and imagines new forms for it for a new day.
Information about this new timelines and process is on the WPTF page on the website. I do hope you’ll spend some time reading it carefully and holding all of this in prayer.
Love also looks like a subcommittee being formed in the vestry of Norweeta Milburn, Jim White and Kimberly Farnham to take the recommendations of the Racial Justice Advisory Board and put them into practice in the life of the vestry. It looks like a two-month partnership we have struck with Planned Parenthood of Pasadena and San Gabriel Valley to have Juliana Serrano spend 20% of her time leading their diversity and inclusion work. It looks like significant progress being made on finding a web developer that will turn our website into the nerve center of the truly national and global presence All Saints Church is already becoming.
What has the sacred … what has love … looked like for you at All Saints Church? What might it look like in the future? What is our vision of tomorrow? I’ll be praying and thinking about that this month … I hope you will too. And on Sunday, July 26 at 10 am, we will have another Town Hall Meeting in our Forum … and we’ll begin to share what our hearts are saying.
I’ll be on vacation through Sunday, July 19. During that time, anything that would normally come to me will go to Sally Howard. She will be in touch regularly with Associate Rector Alfredo Feregrino and our wonderful wardens, Juan Mejia and Monique Thomas.
It is a deep gift to be in this community with you. A new tomorrow is coming. With God’s help, I can’t wait to build it together.
Con el amor de Cristo,
Mike
