August 27, 2024

As you look around the church, things are beginning to pick up this fall. Rally day is around the corner. Youth events are beginning.

I am also excited to jump into our study, Honoring Our Neighbor’s Faith, this upcoming year.

One of my favorite things to do is ask questions and engage with others on how to answer them. If you have been in any of my studies, you know that I love hearing about your thoughts and ideas as we explore the lectionary texts or other studies, as we did with the By Heart study last year. 

We will continue to do so this year with this study. We get to learn and grow together as a group and as individuals. 

We will explore and discuss our ecumenical and interfaith partners and how they practice their faith, which can help us care for them with respect and care. 

They are our neighbors and friends, a part of our communities, and learning more about their faith practices and values allows us to show them God’s love and grace through care and respect for them. 

I will be learning alongside you. My class this semester also focuses on inter-religious partners, and I am excited to learn about and share this topic with you. 

As I was doing my class readings this week, I was struck by this quote from David Cheetham, a theologian at the University of Birmingham (U.K.): “The pressing issue…of religious plurality is that of acknowledging the ‘other’ and the emergence of dialogue as a modality of relating to the other.” 

We want to care for our world better, and learning more about their faiths is one way we can live out that call. We can always learn something new about what’s important for our neighbors. Who knows, we may be able to get to know them a little better.  

I hope that you will join us in this study this year, or come as you can, because we will learn together. There are plenty of opportunities to join in and follow along. You can pick up the schedule outside the sanctuary and donate $10 to help us cover the cost of the book. 

I pray we can ask questions and have conversations around how we can continue to care for our neighbors more this year. 

Vicar Jennie